Set on making anime a “cornerstone” of its entertainment business alongside video games and music, Sony has been significantly expanding its anime production and distribution capabilities over the past few years. While the current scale of the group’s anime-related businesses is by no means small, they consider themselves to be in a “take-off” phase.
Sony’s CSO Toshimoto Mitomo, in charge of global IP development, recently told Toyo Keizai that Sony’s anime business can most closely be compared to the PlayStation’s PS1-era. “It’s in a phase roughly equivalent to the period between the launch of the PS1 and PS2.”
PlayStation saw immediate success with the launch of the PS1 three decades ago, but the console’s popularity and commercial performance soared in the following years, with annual revenue multiplying from $2 billion to $30 billion between the PS1 and PS5 eras. Mitomo seems to be implying that Sony’s anime business is currently in an early but explosive growth phase, with further expansion yet to come.
That’s not to say that Sony doesn’t already have big hits and an extensive global distribution network in place. Last month, the group’s anime production company Aniplex released Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba The Movie: Infinity Castle in Japan, which has since made roughly $120m in the box-office, becoming the tenth highest-grossing film in the country’s history. Sony also owns Crunchyroll, one of the biggest anime streaming platforms in the US.
However, the group intends to further expand its influence and reach within the anime scene, and it has been making assertive moves to this end. In January, Sony became a major shareholder of Kadokawa after acquiring a 10% stake for roughly $340 million. Through the capital alliance, Sony gained access not only to Kadokawa-owned anime studios (like Doga Kobo) but to the publisher’s numerous original IPs (such as manga and light novels, the most common source material of anime). In turn, Kadokawa announced that it would be leveraging Sony’s backing to further increase its yearly output of new original publications.
Furthermore, in July, Sony announced that it would be acquiring a 2.5% stake in Bandai Namco Holdings for approximately $464 million. The two companies entered a strategic business partnership with the aim of deepening their ties in the entertainment industry, particularly anime IP expansion. Through these multi-million-dollar deals, Sony seems intent on building an anime empire comparable to the scale of the PlayStation brand.
