Shogakukan readies AI-translated digital light novels
Plus: Manga serializations shift from magazines to digital; Sony Music doubles down on anime music; Sony Music asserts its artists' anime ties; and more
This is the weekly newsletter of Animenomics, covering the business of anime and manga. Today is Wednesday, July 31, 2024.
In case you missed it: Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½ and CLAMP’s Magic Knight Rayearth are among the latest manga titles announced to receive anime remakes decades after their previous anime adaptations.
In the age of streaming video, anime remakes are an attractive strategy for streaming platforms who want to secure titles with mass appeal and keep risk at bay, writes anime journalist Tadashi Sudo.
A high number of live-action adaptations of classic manga titles in the 2010s served as the precursor to the current boom of anime remakes, says business writer Koki Muto.
Shogakukan readies light novel app for North America
Japanese manga publisher Shogakukan is building a smartphone app for reading light novels, serial novels with anime-style illustrations, and translating them into English using artificial intelligence (AI), the Nikkei financial newspaper reports.
Why it matters: Light novels are increasingly used as source material for anime, and the publishing format is growing in readership in North America.
Shogakukan rival Kadokawa’s revenue from light novel sales in North America has grown to one-fifth that of manga sales since acquiring San Antonio, Texas-based light novel publisher J-Novel Club in 2021.
Catch up quick: Shogakukan is partnering with AI translation startup Mantra to launch the app, to be called Novelous, in the United States and Canada by the end of 2024 and plans to translate 400 light novel titles over the next two years.
Among the titles are Too Many Losing Heroines!, recently adapted into anime, and a spin-off of the popular manga Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
Animenomics previously reported that Shogakukan and three other manga publishers invested ¥780 million (US$5.1 million) in Mantra in June.
Mantra’s AI-assisted translation service reportedly helps Shogakukan cut translation costs in half and allows it to quickly ramp up production.
By the numbers: Shogakukan is targeting for the app to register 1 million users and generate millions of U.S. dollars in revenue by the 2027 fiscal year.
The company doesn’t rule out the possibility that titles published on the app will be released in print by local publishers.
The intrigue: Light novels published on Novelous will be displayed in a vertically-scrolling format instead of using distinct pages like a traditional e-book reader.
Dialogue will be displayed in speech bubbles with character icons instead of paragraphs to make reading on a smartphone screen easier.
Zoom out: In Japan, digital sales of light novels have overtaken print sales in recent years and now account for an estimated 60 percent of light novel revenues.
Manga serializations shift to digital as magazines wane
Manga’s serialization medium in Japan has largely transitioned away from print magazines toward digital platforms, with digital manga growing to account more than 30 percent of domestic publishing industry revenues.
Why it matters: Midyear industry data released last week by the Research Institute for Publications paints a stark contrast between digital manga’s growth and the decline of magazine publishing.
By the numbers: Digital manga sales for the first six months of 2024 is 6.5 percent higher than the same period in 2023, at ¥242 billion (US$1.57 billion), according to the newly released data.
Sales of manga magazines for the first six months of the year fell 17 percent compared to the same period last year.
Rewind: As previously reported by Animenomics, only about 7 percent of all manga revenue in 2023 came from manga magazines.
Zoom in: Manga magazine circulation is about 19 percent lower in the month of June than at this point last year.
Sales at convenience stores, an important distribution channel for manga magazines, have evaporated since the COVID-19 pandemic, Gendai Money reports, prompting a major distributor to withdraw from serving that market.
Nikkei also reported last week that about 10,000 Family Mart and Lawson convenience stores will see magazine deliveries end after March 2025 due to challenges in shipment logistics.
Between the lines: Despite new hits from titles being adapted into anime and a growth in webtoon titles, the digital manga expansion has slowed compared to last year’s 8.1 percent growth.
The bigger picture: Screen adaptations, whether anime or live-action, continue to act as a strong sales driver for printed manga volumes.
Of the 20 best-selling manga volumes for the month of June, 13 are from titles that already have screen adaptations, three have pending adaptations, and two are spin-offs of existing adapted titles.
Clippings: Google Play launches manga content hub
Google Play will showcase manga content in an update to Android smartphones in Japan. Users of the smartphone app marketplace will be able to read the first chapters of manga titles for free and view anime trailers. (TechCrunch)
Our thought bubble: Google is poised to benefit from manga and anime’s digital shift thanks to the 15 percent service fee it charges on purchases made using Google Play.
Tohokushinsha Film Corporation, a film producer and distributor that has also funded anime, received a bid from a Singapore-based investment firm for as much as ¥88 billion (US$575 million) to take the company private. (Reuters)
Prior to the bid, the firm called on Tohokushinsha to grow its anime business through acquisitions of anime studios, a strategy that the company dismissed as risky because of the heavy cost burden of operating anime studios.
Kadokawa will restore Niconico’s video sharing and livestreaming service on August 5, two months after a ransomware attack hit its Dwango subsidiary. Book publishing operations will return to normal levels in mid-August. (Press release)
Nagoya’s World Cosplay Summit, which attracts 300,000 visitors to the central Japanese city annually, will hold its 21st edition this weekend, but increasingly hot summers put cosplayers at risk of heat stroke. (The Mainichi)
Netflix’s live-action City Hunter film, an adaptation of the Tsukasa Hojo manga, has received at least 16.5 million views in the first three months since its release, making it one of the platform’s most popular non-English films this year. (Netflix)
Sony Music leverages anime affinity to promote artists
“In the past, promotion was about spreading the word broadly and superficially, but nowadays it’s important to reach a small number of people who are passionate about something.”
— Manabu Tsujino, Sony Music Labels president
Context: Tsujino told the Nikkei financial newspaper that the successes of Sony Music artists like YOASOBI, LiSA, and Creepy Nuts overseas were made possible by the company’s efforts in doubling down on reaching anime fans.
What they’re saying: “The strong affinity with anime is a strength of Japanese music that other countries don’t have,” Tsujino explains.
Rather than focusing on whether a song can be sung in karaoke, Sony Music focused on its potential to become viral through reuse in social media or by developing a secondary method of enjoyment like a dance.
Zoom out: A report published this month by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry found that the most popular Japanese songs heard abroad are songs tied to anime productions.
Yes, but: The report also cautions that artists who have succeeded in finding a following abroad have largely done so through the “efforts and ingenuity” of the individual artists and their own labels.
In the broader Japanese music industry, a song’s or an artist’s connection to an anime production doesn’t always guarantee overseas success.
In mainland China, for example, Japanese artists performing anime music are often limited to performing in anime music festivals rather than being able to perform on their own right in solo shows.
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