An article from Variety is reporting that several of the top Japanese Anime and Manga studios, such as Toei Animation, Kodansha and Nippon Animation studio, are coming together to launch their own YouTube channel. A name has even already been chosen for the channel, it will be called Animelog or Anilog for short and it is set to stream shows from the animated studios. The channel will give the animation studios complete control over the distribution of their shows.
Toei Animation is likely to be the most well known animation studio outside of Japan, dating back to the 1960’s the company boasts some of the biggest anime shows including; Dragonball, Digimon, Transformers, One Piece, Cyborg 009, Tiger Mask and so many more. Kodansha are known more for their Manga publications, founded all the way back in 1938, Kodansha hold the licences for many of the most popular Manga outside of Shonen Jump, owning titles such as; Fairy Tail, Seven Deadly Sins, Attack On Titan and Noragami. Nippon Animation is most well known for the Hunter x Hunter and beyblade anime series and they first started producing anime back in 1970.
This all comes off the back of Japanese animation studios and manga publications finally winning their battle to have sites such as KissAnime and KissManga and other such illegal streaming sites shut down. This coincides with stricter piracy laws coming out of Japan allowing the copyright holders to remove files from such illegal streaming sites permanently as well as harsher punishments for those found illegally downloading or streaming. As the animation companies try to ensure that people only stream from paid for sites such as Netflix, Funimation and Crunchyroll.
Of course news of this YouTube channel have caused some worry over streaming sites such as Funimation and Crunchyroll who act as third party distributors outside of Japan through the use of licensing agreements.
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