Kadokawa recently announced that it had acquired the Singapore-based SOZO Pte Ltd, the company behind Southeast Asia’s largest anime event, Anime Festival Asia (AFA). With SOZO as a consolidated subsidiary, Kadokawa aims to “strengthen its real-world event and direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses and” enhance its recognition as a company. With the aim to expand the overseas reach of Japanese content and its own IPs, Kadokawa has been making numerous efforts to extend its scope to the international market, and the acquirement of SOZO seems to be one part of that mission.
Established in 2008, AFA is a yearly event held in different Southeast Asian countries with a cumulative total of approximately 3 million attendees. This year’s AFA Singapore 2025 was held at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre from November 28 to 30, and featured multiple corporate and fan exhibitions, talk shows with anime voice actors, directors, and other industry staff, as well as live concerts.
In addition to AFA, Kadokawa plans to host several large-scale anime events like music concerts featuring anime songs and IP-related events. It will also focus its efforts on expanding the talents of creators and artists on its video-sharing service NicoNico, which is currently bouncing back after the Kadokawa cyberattack in June and a decline in paid subscriptions due to credit card restrictions and the removal of adult content. The company plans on featuring NicoNico creators at the aforementioned overseas concerts and live events.
SOZO’s addition to the Kadokawa Group is part of the latter’s overseas expansion efforts. Following its purchase of Mushoku Tensei animation studio Chiptune earlier this year, the company turned to increasing the production value of its anime to appeal to a global market. Kadokawa’s manga division is also making international strides, as last year’s Wordless World Manga Contest and the currently ongoing World Manga Contest foster the creation of manga on a worldwide scale.
