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Kadokawa Establishes 3D CG Anime Studio Kadan

Media company Kadokawa Corporation announced on Tuesday that it has founded a new 3DCG and visual effects anime studio named Studio KADAN.

The studio is "centered" on Hiroyuki Seshita (seen right), an anime director who has headed many previous Polygon Pictures 3DCG anime productions, including Knights of Sidonia, Ajin, Godzilla: Planet of the Monsters, Blame!, and Levius. The studio will utilize Seshita's prior experience with 3DCG animation.

Seshita is also the vice president for the new studio, while Kadokawa producer Takeshi Kikuchi is the president and representative director. Kadokawa maintains a 97.5% stake in the company.

The company will focus on production of full 3DCG animation with a "cel look," extended reality (XR) 3D modeling, projection mapping, video game CG, and visual effects for live-action films.

Kadokawa and Bushiroad each acquired a third of the shares of the studio Kinema Citrus in December 2019.

Kadokawa Corporation announced on April 28 that it had acquired the U.S. light novel and manga publishing company J-Novel Club. Kadokawa intends to strengthen its e-book business and drive further expansion of its light novel business in the English market through this acquisition and the reinforcement of J-Novel Club's collaboration with its BookWalker Global online manga and light novel service and GeeXPlus, BookWalker's internet influencer talent agency subsidiary. The company plans to implement J-Novel Club's "Digital First" strategy, releasing more new titles first digitally while complementing and contributing to Yen Press, which Kadokawa also owns jointly with Hachette Book Group.

Kadokawa reorganized its corporate structure last October. The company replaced its previous six departments with 13 different groups, each of which has a "chief officer" executive bearing the title of their respective group. Kadokawa noted that the restructuring would allow the company to achieve a more flat and horizontal corporate structure.

Earlier this year, Kadokawa formed a capital alliance with CyberAgent, Inc. and Sony to strengthen its game and animation businesses. The company's goals are to strengthen the Global Media Mix Strategy to expand Kadokawa's IPs worldwide, and to cooperate with CyberAgent and Sony for "mutual exploitation of each other's business, expertise, and other strengths." Kadokawa will issue CyberAgent and Sony 1,422,475 shares each, which will give each company 1.93% ownership.

Sources: PR Times, The Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web