Last week, Japanese manga, anime and game publishing giant Kadokawa announced its consolidated earnings results for the fiscal year ended March 2026. According to the report, the company suffered a 51.3% decrease in operating profit compared to the previous year, driven by the poor performance of its core publishing and IP creation business (a 51.6% decrease in operating profits year-on-year).
In the recently published mid-term management plan for the period between FY 2026 and FY 2031, Kadokawa cites “excessive reliance on existing winning patterns” as one of the major factors contributing to the decline in profit across the publishing sector.
Specifically, the company has acknowledged a recent bias towards “proven genres,” such as isekai and narou-kei, inevitably leading towards market saturation and worsening profitability. According to Kadokawa, the formulaic approach and a clear lack of depth of content diversity is what’s been preventing its domestic publication business from exploring new genres and taking on innovative projects.
While Kadokawa has been actively implementing measures and hiring more editors in order to expand the number of published titles without bearing a load on its staff, this has also proven to negatively impact its business, leading to an “increase in titles lacking originality or quality.”
To tackle the issue, the company will focus on rebuilding its “genre strategy,” while implementing stricter criteria for greenlighting projects. Furthermore, a strong emphasis has been placed on the restructuring of the publication business, with the Publication Steering Committee, being established in November 2025 as a system for implementing “fundamental structural reforms.”
On a related note, in an effort “build a leaner and more efficient organizational structure,” Kadokawa has also announced an early retirement program for its employees. Starting June 1, the company will solicit voluntary resignations among employees aged 45 or older who have at least five years of service. Employees who agree to retirement will get an additional severance package on top of the regular severance pay, as well as optional re-employment support.
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No sheet.
I am sorry to hear that. I actually enjoy the isekai genre. I wish there were new ones to check out right now but I’ve seen all of the good ones already. Every anime fan has a favorite genre after all
The isekai genre isn’t the problem as generally the popular ones do well. It could be some of the decisions being made that has hurt them. Such as chasing the western audience and their flirting with censorship. This site just call Megami Tensei a hit and its an Isekai. They alsonhad some of the more popular series ending of close to it. One could argue that the take over attempt also hurt them as well given that groups reputation.
One would think that quite obvious after cranking them out for years. A burnout will come of “fast food” visual novels chasing one another in random in premise or competing tropes.
I hope they turn to those of substance as even animators will get tired shonen and isekai. Not much else getting attention.
Good lord. Only took them a decade to realize it. The average anime and manga enjoyer is suffering for unique pieces of art. Frieren was a rare gem that should set a precedent for quality storytelling and thoughtful world building.
So fiscal years 2026 to 2031…
Theres also the fact that they actually have to pay their employees now… its not burnout of isekai, its that japanese business models dont work in the 21st century… I dont buy their reasoning at all.
The genre isn’t terrible. The lack of originality in the genre is terrible. Everything is copied and pasted. The settings, the abilities, the characters. Swap em around, and nobody could tell the difference.
While some variety would be nice, it isn’t the isekai genre itself that is the issue. Its the 12 episodes of ‘isekai slop’ that they are making for each story. You can’t just pick up every cheap knockoff without a plot of its own and expect it to succeed. A detailed and exciting isekai with a real plot and characters deeper than a cardboard cutout would be just as profitable today as ever.
So the question then is, it this a problem that can more easily be fixed because it’s more on Kadokawa’s end for having this bias, or is the problem a lot more tricky to navigate because the bias is on the authors’ end, meaning the opportunity to pick up things that aren’t in the saturated markets might be difficult to find. That being said, even in the latter case, there is still hope if the editors are willing and able to push the writer to changing the genre, as there are a number of isekai that could just as easily not be an isekai with a few alterations to the beginning, though most of them would then just be generic fantasy, so it doesn’t entirely remove the underlying problem 🤔
Maybe taking down the biggest library of manga, manhua, and comic collection was a mistake? How many people discovered them through Bato?
And now the Anime industry has finally encountered the final boss: Japan’s Risk-Avoidance Culture!
Dun dun duuuuuuun!
Not sure this ll affect other country such as malaysia or not…
Please do mystery, action, sci-fi shoujo and josei please!!!
Perhaps if they would conclude their products instead leaving them with 1 season cliffhanger more people would be invested in new isekai series
Make Highschool DxD Season 5!
It’s almost like when you grow a hate b*ner for piracy sites and chase away 90% of your non-domestic audience you lose profits when they stop buying merch…weird. You’d think us white folk would keep buying stuff from shows/manga we can’t see/read. Called this would happen last year, now they can figure out how to fix the damage they’ve done.
Really?? Excessive isekai? Nah, the amount of isekai per season isn’t 100 % yet, i think you guys are clear to keep pumping isekai slop for another decade.
This is sad to see and I really hope they can bounce back and not have to shut their doors. In my opinion, finish up Re:Zero(which I’ve dropped personally), Tanya and Overlord (for the love of all, do something with Overlord!) and then be done with this entire isekai genre as a whole! Nearly every series these past few years have been majority of isekai and they’re all trash.
I think anime and manga could really use to get away from the cliche’s, tropes and horribly out of pocket forced emoting from characters. It served a purpose and had cultural implications when it started gaining popularity but has caused people to turn away and is why it fails to attract a broader audience. Just get rid of the cringe and it’ll be easy.
Redo Tokyo ghoul in its entirety, Vampire Hunter D ADAPTATION’S, Amagi brilliant park expansion and Rerelease and pick up licensing for Manglobe and other bankrupt studios like Gansta and for rereleases do Jormungand, Darker than Black and others on both streaming and physical media. Ppl are paying hundreds to thousands of dollars for old oops for a reason I’m sure with proper marketing a bunch of title would be a hit like Alderamin on the sky which flopped but shouldn’t have since it was good.
Have they considered looking into the general inability to carry an anime project past 2 seasons?
The “problem” is Shousetsuka ni Narou (amateur novelist submission site) and its ranking system. High-ranked stories get the eyeballs from Kadokawa and the like. Such a ranking system inevitably leads to trend-chasing, which is how so many “me too” stories get in there. Kadokawa needs to have more discretion in choosing what to adapt.
I am reminded of “Welcome to the NHK” where Yamazaki tries to create a character that will hit all the popular trends and ends up with some moe-catgirl-zombie-maid-frankenthing. When an author tries to hook everyone, they hook no one.
Kadokawa just like other anime websites have no new English dubbed animes.