Max Arguile, founder of Reemsborko, and Jerome Mazandarani, animé expert and consultant, tell LicensingSource.net why the opportunities have never been better for animé licensing in the UK.
Animé (Japanese animation) and manga (Japanese comics) have never been bigger in the West. If you don’t believe us, ask any school librarian what their students are reading and requesting. The answer will be manga. Go to any Waterstones – the manga section is now bigger than all the superhero graphic novels combined. Rather than trying to beat this trend, many major Western comic publishers, including Marvel and DC, have decided to join it and are now expanding their manga offering, having Japanese artists and writers reinterpret their most famous characters.
Successful mangas become animés and here in the UK, the opportunities have never been better for animé licensing. Why is this? Consider the disparity between what we see in Southern Europe, where every supermarket has a strong offering of animé merch, and here, where the retailers are only slowly understanding that this is a cash cow.
The timing is also right for content availability. From spring this year, for the first time ever, Dragon Ball fans have been able to legally watch every episode of Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super, for free, courtesy of Crunchyroll (a streaming service that you should consider as the ‘Netflix of animé’) and later this year, the newest version – Dragon Ball Daima – arrives (broadcast details TBC).
Netflix has not done badly with the live action version of One Piece, which drew both an audience that were new to the IP, as well as fans of the original animé to make it a top-performing show on that platform. The live action series was the most watched TV series on the platform for the period 1 July to 31 December 2023 with over 71 million views. The anime series, produced by Toei Animation, is one of the most viewed anime of 2024 so far on Crunchyroll sitting in the top five global rankings. Licensees that had merchandise based on the animé saw a massive rise in sales when the live action series landed.
2024’s big global breakout hit is Solo Levelling, produced by A1 Pictures and Aniplex (maker of recent smash hit Demon Slayer). It’s a very exciting sci-fi themed action-adventure drama and a second season is in the works. Most notably Solo Levelling is not based on a hit Japanese manga but on a Korean webtoon.
And finally, speaking of Demon Slayer, Sony and Aniplex have announced that the season finalé will be told over a new animated film trilogy that will happen initially as a theatrical release. This is going to be massive.
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2024 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
