Kicking off a spectacular Asia-Pacific content showcase held on Wednesday (November 30) in Singapore, The Walt Disney Company revealed that it is expanding its longstanding partnership with Japanese powerhouse Kodansha to co-produce a growing slate of anime originals for the streaming service Disney Plus.
The expanded collaboration will also include international licensing of exclusive manga-based anime titles produced by Kodansha , starting with Tokyo Revengers: Seiya Kessen-hen ( Tokyo Revengers 2nd Season: Christmas Showdown Arc ), which will launch exclusively on Disney Plus and Disney Plus Hotstar (Indian) in January 2023 .
“ We are thrilled to deepen our strategic collaboration with our long-standing partner Kodansha on such an exciting genre ,” said Carol Choi , Disney 's executive vice president of original content strategy in APAC . “ Japanese anime occupies a white space in our content development plans and we believe this expanded collaboration will be a game changer in Disney's future animation strategy in Japan. We look forward to bringing Kodansha's prized intellectual properties and anime titles to the global stage ."
Like competitors like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video , Japanese anime, along with Korean drama content, has been a mainstay of Disney 's original content strategy as the company looks to expand its subscriber reach in the growing Asia-Pacific region. According to consultancy Parrot Analytics , global demand for anime content grew 118% in the past two years, making it one of the fastest-growing content genres in the entire pandemic (the firm measures its demand metric combining consumer data with social media activity, social video, and independent research).
Tokyo Revengers Synopsis
Takemichi Hanagaki's second year of high school was the high point of his life. He had respect, a gang of friends he could count on, and even a girlfriend. But that was twelve years ago. Today she is a nobody: a rickety nonentity who is mocked by the children and who is always forced to apologize to her youngest boss. A sudden piece of news about the Tokyo Manji gang's cruel murder of his only girlfriend with her brother only adds insult to injury. Half a second before a train ends her unfortunate life forever, Takemichi remembers that same day twelve years ago, when she was still dating Hinata Tachibana.
After being forced to relive the very day he began his downward spiral, Takemichi meets Hinata's little brother. Without thinking, he admits to his apparent death before returning to the past. Takemichi urges him to protect his sister before inexplicably returning to the future. Miraculously, he is not dead. Stranger still, the future has changed. It seems that Takemichi can alter the flow of time. Given the chance to prevent the tragic death of his ex-girlfriend at the hands of the Tokyo Manji gang, Takemichi decides to fly through time to change the course of the future.
Fuente: The Hollywood Reporter
(c)Ken Wakui, Kodansha/Animation "Tokyo Revengers" Production Committee
