The news fell this week: the American publisher HarperCollinss has acquired the manga publishing activities of Crunchyroll in France and Germany. This acquisition will add the manga category to the portfolio of the two local HarperCollins companies. The transaction should be finalized in the second half of 2025, subject to the approval of the regulatory authorities. The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed.
At the end of the transaction, the team will always be directed by Hideki Iyama-Desseigne (already at the head of Crunchyroll manga in France and in Germany currently), under the responsibility of Chantal Restivo-Alessi, CEO of international edition in foreign languages at Harpercollins. The current operations of the company will be provided by HarperCollins France and Germany.
« We are delighted to expand our manga portfolio in Europe, relying on our already flourishing Japanese activities “Said Brian Murray, Chairman and CEO of HarperCollins. “” As the only large Western publisher present in Japan, this acquisition strengthens our expertise and our capacities in this growing sector. This is an important step in the expansion of the International HarperCollin Manga program, not only in Europe, but also in English -speaking markets. »
« We are impatient to welcome and invest in French and German publishing teams and in their activities, as well as to strengthen our relations with Japanese manga publishers “Said Chantal Restivo-Alessi.
« I would like to thank the manga employees of Crunchyroll in France and Germany, whose new head office at Harpercollins will allow them to continue to discover the manga to fans of these markets “Said Rahul Purini, president of Crunchyroll. “” We will continue to offer fans the best experience of 360 ° anime possible. »
In the immediate future, beyond these declarations, it is difficult to know which orientation will take the Manga catalog of Crunchyroll editions and the publications linked to it in France and Germany. We bet that we will know more in the coming months.
HarperCollins Publishers is the second largest publisher of consumer books in the world, present in 15 countries. With more than 200 years of history and more than 120 publishing houses around the world, HarperCollins publishes around 10,000 new books each year in 16 languages and has a paper and digital catalog of more than 200,000 titles. Writing in dozens of genres, HarperCollins counts among its authors of the Nobel Prize winners, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott medals, as well as the Man Booker Prize. HarperCollins, whose head office is in New York, is a subsidiary of News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) and is accessible online at Corporate.harperCollins.com.
For its part, Crunchyroll is above all the world brand of the most prolific anime. With the ambition to animate an even more important part of popular culture, Crunchyroll offers fans many simulcasts and events, with the largest library dedicated to anime. Crunchyroll, LLC is an independent joint venture between Sony Pictures Entertainment, based in the United States, and Aniplex, Japanese subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc., both subsidiaries of the Sony group based in Tokyo.