Streaming anime has been growing more and more every year and is a booming business. Demand for Japanese animation content has doubled in recent years, and anime has continued to flourish even during the worst of the pandemic. So all streaming platforms want a piece of the pieand the competition is getting intense.
Until now Netflix and Crunchyroll were the two big platforms to watch streaming internationally, but this year Disney+ has entered the game with force by licensing some seasonal anime. ‘Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War’ has been the biggest series so far, but the platform already has big plans to continue expanding its streaming catalog.
With the Kondasha under his arm
This week it has been confirmed that Disney+ will be in charge of distributing the second season of ‘Tokyo Revengers’ internationally, which was one of the great anime series of last year. It’s a really big goal, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney+ has signed an agreement with the publisher Kodansha to exclusively license anime based on their manga.
With these signings, Disney+ seeks to fill a gap in its catalog and has scored a huge goal. The Kodansha is one of the largest manga publishers in Japanand among the titles that have been published in their magazines over the decades we have hits like ‘Shingeki no Kyojin’ and ‘Hajime no Ippo’.
Manga like ‘Blue Lock’, ‘To Your Eternity’, ‘Edens Zero’, ‘That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime’, ‘Tomodachi Game’, ‘Vinland Saga’ and ‘Blue Period’, to name a few, now They even have anime series going. So Potentially the future of all these titles would be on Disney+where their new seasons would be broadcast.
It would be necessary to see what happens with the seasons that already exist and are available on other platforms, since they could become exclusive to Disney+ in the future. Although right now, for example, ‘Shingeki no Kyojin’ has been broadcast in simulcast on Crunchyroll, the last part of its final season could go directly to the Disney platform.
The original animes are coming
Of course, they are not the only animes that Disney + has underway. We already know that the second season of ‘Star Wars: Visions’ is in production, but it will also premiere various original stories more besides Kodansha animes. It has already been confirmed’Bullet‘, an anime from the director of ‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ that Sunghoo Park will carry out with his own study, E&H Productions.
is also underway ‘Phoenix: Eden 17’an anime based on ‘Phoenix’ from the legendary osamu tezuka and that is animated by STUDIO4ºC. This massive anthology was considered by Tezuka to be the most important work of his life, so expectations are very high with this adaptation.
The last confirmed project for now is ‘Dragons of Wonderhatch’ a hybrid series that will mix elements of live action and anime and that has featured the illustrator of ‘The Promised Neverland’. Posuka Demizu has developed the character designs and some of the main designs that will be seen in the series.
Imagine a world where dragons roam. Check out concept art from #DragonsOfWonderhatch by @demizuposuka. Coming soon to #DisneyPlusPH. pic.twitter.com/AUdsnkkyOB
— Disney+ Philippines (@disneyplusph) November 30, 2022
There is still no release date, although it is expected that ‘Dragons of Wonderhatch’ will arrive on the platform during the first months of 2023.