Merging Lanes: TOHO’s Acquisition of GKIDS – This Week in Anime

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Merging Lanes: TOHO's Acquisition of GKIDS - This Week in Anime

With the recent announcement of TOHO‘s acquisition of GKIDS, Lucas and Steve discuss the rise corporate influence in the anime space.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Various Godzilla moves are currently available on Criterion Collection. The First Slam Dunk is available on Blu-Ray and Netflix, and Look Back is in the midst of its theatrical run.

Steve

Well, Lucas, we’re only a week away from Halloween, so it’s time to talk about something really scary: ~~murders and executions~~ mergers and acquisitions.

Lucas

That’s right, Steve! The boogeyman of the modern anime industry is back! And it won’t rest until the economy built around anime is as close to a monopoly as it can be—while still maximizing profits, of course.

In case you missed this morsel of spooktacular news, just last week TOHO announced to the world that they had “reached an agreement to acquire a 100% equity share of GKIDS, Inc.,” which I believe is corporate speak for “we own your shit.”

Is this good? Is this bad? Is this some exciting new third thing in between the two? That’s what we’re here to discuss.

And, boy, am I excited to figure that out with you. Whenever a TWIA topic touches on an event that’s making mainstream headlines, I know I’m going to have a great time because, no matter what, I get to call out some subpar reporting!

Take Reuter’s coverage, for instance. They’re usually a pretty inoffensive-to-respectable outlet, but it sure is weird that they shoehorn in a reference to the live-action and U.S.-produced Shōgun show in their reporting of this merger instead of any of the anime IP that are set to be affected by this event.

Sorry for the immediate digression, but I gotta stick to my guns and call out mainstream media’s unpreparedness to cover niche art and industry news whenever the chance arises.

Please, Reuters, leave the anime reporting to the professionals. And by that, I mean our excellent newsroom here at ANN. Not me. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have to interface with this industry’s business side. I just enjoy the cartoons. But annoyingly, the business side keeps surfacing and waving its arms in my face. It’s very rude.

How many arms does the business side of anime even have!? It feels like these mergers keep happening more and more frequently!

This is probably a great place to start this conversation. While this news is certainly eyebrow-raising in a vacuum, my concern right now largely stems from this being the latest in a long line of industry mergers or buy-outs.

Yeah, I mean, I guess the end goal is one very large businessman with two very large arms who can do anything he wants. And to be fair, this is a fact of any industry. Corporations acquire other corporations all the time. Lately, though, it’s felt like antitrust lawyers have been sleeping on the job. In the American anime industry specifically, almost all the big players are now owned by even bigger players in the wider entertainment business. Sony owns Crunchyroll. AMC owns Sentai Filmworks. Heck, even you and I are owned by Kadokawa (I think that’s how that works).

Living under late-stage capitalism is one big series of business-related fits and starts where, as soon as the dust settles from the last round, corporate executives try to shore up as much wealth and influence as they can before someone else beats them to it.

This is also a great opportunity to remind readers that, even though we’re about to talk somewhat affectionately about businesses that are now varying degrees of defunct, corporations are not your friends, and you should not have any emotional attachment to a “brand.”

Now, that being said, for as long as I’ve been aware of them, I’ve been a huge fan of pretty much everything GKIDS has done. Most recently, they allowed me to cry in public during a theatrical showing of Look Back. And I thank them for that.

They also brought my favorite animated film of 2023, The First Slam Dunk, stateside, and hosted a screening of it at last year’s Anime Expo, which was the absolute COOLEST way to watch that movie.

That’s been GKIDS‘ bread and butter: bringing anime to da movies. It’s easy to take the current amount of variety for granted, but there was a time when your options for seeing an anime film in a theater were Ghibli, Ghibli, and more Ghibli. In fact, GKIDS‘ first big license acquisition was the theatrical distribution rights to Studio Ghibli‘s library. But they didn’t stop there.

That’s right! They played a role in getting BELLE to theaters, handled distribution for the last Evangelion movie, and seem to elevate smaller and more independent films as well. The folks at GKIDS do great work, and I hope everyone there will materially benefit from this acquisition.

Not to undermine my previous point, but things can improve at a place of business after they’re bought out. This kind of buy-out has potential and benefits, but I can’t help but worry when this kind of news becomes a trend.

I’ll also say the specifics of this particular TOHO + GKIDS blend sound harmonious. Reading between the lines of their press release, I don’t think anyone at TOHO anticipated the amount of overseas commercial and critical success Godzilla Minus One netted them. And if, in response to that, overseas distribution jumped up TOHO‘s priority list, they probably sought out GKIDS because they clearly already had the infrastructure and connections to make wide theatrical releases work smoothly.

That’s both a more optimistic reading of this news and a fair one. This could be a big step in most Japanese production companies no longer viewing overseas markets as ancillary. A greater focus on international audiences could mean more media is brought to global anime fans, more revenue in the global animation industry as work in that space has waned, and more revenue all around. We could be staring down a win-win-WIN situation!

“Could” obviously being the operative word! There are a lot of unknowns, although it is heartening to read that GKIDS‘ staff and management aren’t changing. That’s smart. They know what they’re doing. Leave them alone. This also isn’t the only big TOHO acquisition this year, as they also bought Science SARU. That means they now double-own the DAN DA DAN anime (animated by Science SARU and licensed by GKIDS).

Oh man, I just realized that this scene is gonna hit WAY differently when the anime gets to it now!

And I’ll admit that a part of me is looking for reasons to be optimistic in the anime space. By all accounts, the anime bubble is going to burst again, and I welcome any and all developments that seem to stymie that collapse.

And until that inevitable reckoning comes, at least we’re free to theorycraft some of those potential positives. One of GKIDS‘ mainstays has been their reruns of Ghibli films year-round. That’s a great program! Imagine if they can do the same for classic Godzilla films. Or Akira Kurosawa movies. Or weird tokusatsu stuff I haven’t even heard of. TOHO has a huge library.

SO MANY Godzilla movies are either trapped in licensing hell or squirreled away onto obscure corners of the streaming landscape (though you can watch a surprising amount of them on the Criterion Channel!).

However, my wish list is topped off with a re-release of the BAOH OVA, based on Hirohiko Araki‘s manga of the same name. Is it the best work in TOHO‘s catalog? No, but it’s sick as hell and an important part of Araki’s filmography.

It could happen! But this is the part where I feel like I’ve been gassing this up too much for a piece of news I was actually pretty bummed by. I’m a student of history (not really, but roll with it). I remember what happened to Bandcamp. They were DRM-free trailblazers. They were my favorite way to listen to and purchase digital music. Then Epic bought them. Then Epic sold them like a year later. Then their new owners fired a bunch of the staff to make some numbers look good for their shareholders.

Bandcamp is still kicking, to be fair, but it feels like it has a big countdown timer hovering over it.

I totally know what you mean; there’s a “nothing good lasts forever” malaise hanging over a lot of the tech and entertainment sectors right now. To use an anime-specific example, Right Stuf was rad! In my limited purview, they seemed like a company owned by people passionate about anime who cared about connecting people to cool anime merch. Then they got folded into Sony/Crunchyroll.

And while Crunchyroll seems like a perfectly adequate way to buy physical anime media and merch (though they did obfuscate more adult merchandise to another site that isn’t advertised super well), Right Stuf not existing anymore feels like we lost a part of the Western anime community’s identity.

I actually think you’re being a little too kind to the Crunchyroll store, lol. My experience with it has been demonstrably worse than Right Stuf. A ton of basic functionality and UX stuff has been lost, and it’s significantly curtailed my anime purchasing in the past year. It sucks, and it’s a perfect example of senseless enshittification.

Hey now, Crunchyroll has to put a lot of work into not supporting comment sections anymore! Why, I bet it puts so much work into not supporting comments sections, forums, manga hosting, and a wealth of other elements it had while it was an independent or even pirate site that CR barely has the bandwidth to operate a digital storefront!

For those in the cheap seats, I’m being facetious, and anger is a natural reaction to something getting worse and more expensive. Or even staying the same and becoming more expensive! My rent just went up, and it sucks that I’m about to pay $100 more to live in an apartment that’s identical to the one that was $100 cheaper last month.

It all quite literally adds up. It’s the accumulation that wears you down. TOHO may prove to be benevolent overlords, but their presence nevertheless reminds us that we have overlords. And even if I put on my big MBA pants (which I also don’t have), I think there’s something soul-crushing in our current reality where companies can’t really grow successful anymore. Or rather, “success” is now defined as getting big enough to grab the attention of a bigger company that can absorb you. Is that something to aspire to?

I hate that I’m about to quote South Park, but I’m also exhausted by the current “start-up, sell out, bro down” model of financial success. I believe that “success” is best measured by how many waking hours you spend doing the kind of work and having the kind of experiences you enjoy. No one’s goal when they start a company should be to sell it, but instead to create a space where they can maximally benefit from the kind of work that makes them the most fulfilled.

To that end, we should laud the players in the American anime scene who still maintain their independence. Because their numbers are dwindling fast. Keep up the good work, Discotek. No one else is putting together a Criterion-caliber collection of Kite in 2024. You’re keeping it real.

Same as all the anime outlets keeping it indie! If anyone reading this can do so, y’all should really check out and support sites like Anime Herald, Anime Feminist, Yatta-Tachi, ButWhyTho?, and a host of others that I’m sure I’m forgetting. Corporate overlords and their influence are inescapable facts of life in the year 2024, but we can still make spaces our own by starting and supporting community-first companies and platforms.

It’s rough out there, but it’s not hopeless. Good people are doing good work. And I’ll also once again return to the refrain that GKIDS and TOHO may play perfectly nicely together. Time will tell. You may find I’ll forgive quite a lot as long as it doesn’t interfere with seeing Angel’s Egg on the silver screen.

Hey, so long as nobody breaks what’s working, I can foresee this being the last big conversation about this particular anime M&A.

But as long as the wheels of capitalism keep spinning, you can count on us at “This Week In Anime” to keep griping about them. Not even Kadokawa can stop me. I love complaining too much. You can’t put a price on that.

Hey, I got here by writing about socio-economic issues as they relate to niche media, and you better believe I’m not stopping anytime soon!

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