Keiji Ota, Head of Anime at Toho, did an interview in the Financial Times where he stated that there is a shift away from streaming intellectual properties exclusively through a single streaming service. The reason for this statement is that he believes the strength of Japan’s IP and anime is being recognized around the world.
He believes that expanding overseas is the country’s biggest challenge, and to meet this challenge head-on, he believes that anime series should not be exclusive to one streaming service and should be available on multiple platforms to increase the anime’s reach as much as possible.
We are beginning to see this shift as streaming services such as Crunchyroll and Netflix are claiming exclusive rights less frequently. We’ve seen major series such as Dan Da Dan and Dragon Ball Daima being made available across multiple platforms, which has only helped increase their popularity.
This statement from Toho comes after a $1.2 billion globalization effort… an effort that seeks to play out over the next three years. By 2032, Toho hopes to have an overseas sales ratio of 30% as a result of these efforts.
This also comes at a time when Sony has been trying to get the biggest share of the anime streaming world, having purchased Funimation, then Crunchyroll, and merged the companies into one. They also recently invested heavily in KADOKAWA, which controls many anime studios along with manga and light novel distribution channels (not to mention FromSoftware, which makes Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and other massively successful video games).
Source: CBR
