Clownfish TV: Audio Edition
Anime and Manga Go DEI?! Blackstone Buys Major Japanese Manga Publisher!
They’re coming for manga and anime! American equity firm Blackstone just bought a major Japanese e-publisher of manga, while BlackRock is investing heavily in WEBTOON. Will they start pushing more DEI in Japanese entertainment? Well, if video games is any indicator... ➡️ Tip Jar and Fan Support: http://ClownfishSupport.com ➡️ Official Merch Store: http://ShopClownfish.com ➡️ Official Website: http://ClownfishTV.com ➡️ Audio Edition: https://open.spotify.com/show/6qJc5C6OkQkaZnGCeuVOD1 Blackstone’s acquisition of a major Japanese manga publisher raises concerns about potential censorship, data mining, and Americanization of content, while also highlighting the untapped potential of manga and anime as a cultural phenomenon. 00:00 Blackstone buys major Japanese manga publisher, causing concern for anime and manga fans as investors known for DEI and ESG mandates focus on the industry. 02:28 American company Blackstone buys Japanese manga publisher, raising concerns about censorship and data mining. 05:05 Blackstone Inc. is acquiring Japan’s largest e-manga platform for $1.7 billion, recognizing the untapped potential of manga and anime as a cultural phenomenon and planning to expand original content catering to a primarily female readership. 08:12 Content creators should focus on creating original content to monetize their intellectual property as Blackstone and Black Rock gain control over Japanese manga publisher. 10:36 Blackstone invests in major Japanese manga publisher with plans for a five-year strategy and potential public offering, while also backing webtune, which is not profitable. 13:04 Solo leveling DVD sales for Volume 4 are extremely low, indicating a lack of popularity compared to other shows. 13:56 Venture capitalists investing in Japanese manga and anime companies raises concerns about industry impact, while Black Rock shifts focus to diversity and inclusion. 16:18 US company buying Japanese manga publisher may lead to Americanization and changes in content, causing concern among fans. About Us: Clownfish TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary channel that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer’s point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles. Disclaimer: This series is produced by Clownfish Studios and WebReef Media, and is part of ClownfishTV.com. Opinions expressed by our contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of our guests, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. ClownfishTV.com is an unofficial news source and has no connection to any company that we may cover. This channel and website and the content made available through this site are for educational, entertainment and informational purposes only. These so-called “fair uses” are permitted even if the use of the work would otherwise be infringing. #Games #Anime #DEI #Manga #News #Commentary #Reaction #Podcast #Comedy #Entertainment #Hollywood #PopCulture #Tech
Hey guys, this is the audio edition of clownfish TV. If you guys are unfamiliar with clownfish TV, please check out the video versions of these episodes on the clownfish TV YouTube channel and also on the clownfish gaming YouTube channel. Please subscribe for more podcast. Check out D-Res, that's our other podcast. The episode will begin in a couple of seconds. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) Hey guys, welcome back to clownfish TV. This is neon. I'm not here with geeky sparkles in this episode, but we're gonna talk about investors, venture capitalists hovering around the anime manga and webtoon spaces. Black rock and black stone. They both used to be part of the same company. Both of these companies do invest in entertainment and when they invest in entertainment, they're tend to be strings attached. A lot of DEI and ESG strings. According to some people, the extent of which, again, according to who you ask, could be debated, but there is a pattern every time one of these companies gets involved in video games or Hollywood or whatever it is, it tends to lead to changes that are noticeable by consumers. It tends to lead to more DEI mandates and content that is best described as being current year. And now they've basically got their sights set on anime, manga, webtoon, of course they do. Of course they do. You know, it might be maybe this isn't a cause for alarm. You know, maybe this is a bit premature, but it is a pattern that we've seen happen again and again. And I can tell you, as someone who has personally dealt with investors, sometimes they have more sway over your company than you initially thought they would. I'm not gonna go into details, but let's just say that sometimes you make a deal with the devil thinking you're gonna get short-term gains and they wind up having more control over your output and your income than you anticipated. And you really just have to ride it out. And sometimes they invest in these companies and then they wind up running them into the ground. That's a whole nother, that's a whole nother rabbit hole. But let's talk about this because anime and manga fans are freaking out now because they're like, oh my God, they've already ruined AAA gaming. They've already ruined Hollywood and here they come for our Japanese comics too. So before you get into it any further, please subscribe for more pop culture news views and arounds guys, know who's today. People say I should do like Woot, Woot, Woot. Yeah, so we got a couple of different stories here. And we talked about this before, we talked about BlackRock investing in WebTune. WebTune is going public. And the reason that they go public, the reason that they ask for investors or investment dollars is because they wanna get bigger. And I think what happens is a lot of companies today, they don't want to do their time. They wanna blow up overnight. The founders wanna cash out. They usually have a five or 10 year plan and it's not like it used to be where you start a business and you grow it organically and you make it sustainable and you stay in business for decades. And in a lot of cases it becomes a family business. Now everything is corporate owned now. So WebTune is taking money from BlackRock. Apparently they're gonna invest $50 million or something into WebTune and that warranted a headline, a market watch. And then we're gonna talk about this company, Infocom, Japan's largest e-Manga platform is going to get purchased by Blackstone, American company Blackstone at $1.7 billion deal. I think this might happen to WebTune eventually too. So there's definitely something going on. So these companies, I believe kind of parasitic, they do chase trends and they see that while the American comic book market is down and Western animation is down and Hollywood is down, manga and anime are doing fine, WebTune, at least in terms of users is doing fine. But to borrow a term from Corey Doctorow, venture capitalist gain involved, usually leads to in shitification, which is I believe these websites will become in shitified and probably stripmind and your data will be stripmind and they'll probably start censoring more and more heavily. I'm sure they will, they absolutely will because these companies, again, regardless of how you feel about the extent of the, I guess the depth of the rabbit hole of DEI and ESG, they do have guidelines that they adhere to when they acquire a company and they do enforce those guidelines on the companies that they invest in. And it might not be quite the conspiracy theory that some people make it out to be, but they're not going to allow lowly stuff probably on the site or, you know what I'm saying? Like if they do already, like that's probably not going to happen. So let's talk about this one first. I think Robertus actually posted this and it's making the rounds on Twitter. It's coming from anime hunch, American company Blackstone Inc. to acquire Japan's largest e-Manga site in a $1.7 billion deal. Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager is set up to acquire Infocom, Japan's largest e-Manga platform and a deal valued at $1.7 billion. This marks Blackstone's biggest private equity transaction in Japan to date. Blackstone will purchase a majority stake in Infocom and launch a tender offer for the remaining shares at $6,000 yen each. The deal values Infocom's equity at about $275 billion or $1.7 billion. The deal will give Blackstone access to Japan's booming digital manga market, which is estimated to be worth $3 billion. So they're basically buying half of it. You know, it's like they're just like gobbling it up. Infocom's main revenue source is MECACOM, like a popular website and app featuring serialized manga for a small fee per chapter. And that's kind of a long lines of what WebTun is doing too. Except that WebTun is Korean. MECACOM is a leading destination for digital manga in Japan, boasting a vast library of titles catering primarily to female readers in their 30s and 40s. It contains both popular titles, as well as original ones, however, it's their romance manga that has garnered much attention. According to Bloomberg, Blackstone's move is a shrewd investment recognizing the untapped potential of Japan's soft power empire, which would be manga anime. 'Cause that's where it starts, right? It starts in manga, becomes anime, and then becomes video games, and it becomes a cultural phenomenon. So if you start at the source, if you want to kind of change the direction of things, I'm just saying, they highlight the growing global influence of Japanese manga and anime and suggest that Blackstone is ahead of the curve in capitalizing on this cultural phenomenon. Blackstone plans to expand Infocom's original content, focusing on genres popular with its primarily female readership, demographic with growing disposable income. Well, more and more women are not having kids, you know? I think, especially millennials, you know? Kids are expensive, what are you gonna do, you know? And it just seems like a lot of, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's the same demographic that WebTune has, actually. You know that while Infocom has a small English language business in North America, Blackstone, would prioritize building up original content creation in Japan before expanding overseas. So they're not gonna like, Americanize it, but I do believe they're going to have a lot of influence on the content, the output. Because again, regardless of how you feel about the extent of the DEI and ESG stuff, it is there. It is on their website. This is what they're all about. And, you know, a lot of times went. And again, just, it's not even these companies. And again, you know, BlackRock and Blackstone, they actually started the same company. I was like, why are there too? They started the same company, then there was a conflict between the founders and they split, but they have a lot of the same ideology, which they're pushing into various businesses that they invest in, they invest in like everything. But again, I'm telling you as someone who has personal experience in this, any investor, whether it's Blackstone, BlackRock, or even just, you know, an individual or a small group, when they invest in your company, you have to answer to them. And you're gonna change your business based on what they tell you because they gave you a bunch of money. And that might even be in the fine print. You got to do what we say because we gave you money. And the long-term game is they invest in you so you can grow your business as fast as possible. And then everybody caches out. If you're taking venture capital, if you're having these companies buy, or you're going public, just in general, you're going public, the end game is eventually to cash out. But what happens is these companies keep selling pieces and pieces and pieces of themselves off. And then they don't have a lot of control. And this is how founders lose control of their companies because people have gotten away from the idea that you start a business, you grow it, lean and mean, organically, and you don't take outside investments and you take it public and that's the way to go. Disney would not be in the shape it's in right now. I don't think if it were a privately owned company, but then the flip side is Disney wouldn't be as big as it is right now. If it were a privately owned company and very few people have the money to keep their company private and still be able to compete, right? I mean, that's the thing. You're competing with Amazon. It's really hard to compete with Amazon on your own. And it's not even worth trying, I think. If you're a content creator, just make good content and then just put it wherever people are. Yeah, so this is what they said. This is the more original content we have. We can monetize the intellectual property over time. We can create animation or merchandising around that, which is going to be the potential opportunity in the mid-term. So they're going to go to the source of weed culture and they're going to inject their blackstone Now, it's not everything, it's not like they bought cadancher or whatever, but you know what I'm saying? It's still, it's a sizable investment in this company. Sony was previously reported to be competing with Blackstone to acquire Infocom, and I wish they would have on some level, I wish they would have. Blackstone envisions a five-year plan for Infocom culminating in a public offering. However, a psychomotor acknowledged possibility of other companies being interested in acquiring the business due to its strong content portfolio. They want to cash out, that's what's going on. Well, BlackRock now is backing WebTune, and we did talk about this in another video. WebTune is going public. WebTune is not profitable. So the common theme here, usually when a company goes out to investors is they're not profitable or they're not profitable enough and they need, they know that if they get more money or they think if they get more money, they can become profitable. Some of these companies never actually become profitable. They just keep taking venture capital and they keep chugging along for another five years. Again, another round of venture capital, you chugging along for another five years and you've talked some other suckers into. As long as you show growth, all these investors are looking for an exit strategy. And they will actually tell you that. Like when they invest in your company, it'll be like, what is your five-year plan? What is your 10-year plan? What is the exit strategy? Basically, when do we get a massive return on our investment? If we give you a bunch of money right now to grow your business faster. But everybody's taking this shortcut and it leads to ruin most companies. Now, all these tech companies that are folding, you can look at it and be like, oh, the common denominator is they took venture capital from these companies, you know, from Blackstone or BlackRock or whoever and they thought it was gonna go on forever and the business model was never sustainable. So I'm like, web tune is web tune, even sustainable. I mean, it's like they've been chasing eyeballs. Can they convert those eyeballs into customers? And I don't know because I'm looking at this. Like they do have some hit series that they've, you know, printed and I know that in the case of Laura Olympus, they're getting a TV show and stuff and they've done, you know, different anime. But this is a web tune. Now it's not on web tune, it's on another platform. I can't remember which one, but solo leveling, people are saying is not doing very well. It's sold 103 copies of DVD volume four. I thought they had left some zeros off. I gotta give a hat tip to RGE news here. The sales numbers for solo leveling DVDs has not improved volume four. I haven't been following this at all. Raging Golden Eagle says DVD sales and current year likely won't be high, but comparing it to how many other shows sells a good indication of popularity. 103 copies, 104 copies, that's crazy. That's less than a bottom rung kickstarter. That's true. You know, so here's the thing. These venture capitalists might be investing in these companies and they're not gonna get the return on investment that they're hoping for. They're gonna need to get a couple of hits, but there's a lot of stuff on here that's just not going to perform. I mean, if Infocom is mostly romance stories unless they get like a fruits basket or something or an Inuyasha, like I don't know how they're gonna make their money back on it. But yeah, everybody's concerned about this 'cause they're like, hey, why is every AAA Gaming Studio going woke, quote unquote woke? Because you've got BlackRock and Vanguard and all these companies investing in them and they do. I mean, again, I think people oversimplify it. They're like, well, this company's gonna come in and invest in this other company and all of a sudden they're gonna go woke overnight. No, but there are certain criteria. There are certain criteria that need to be met to get their money and they will ask you this during your initial meetings, like what do you plan to do? Or once they give you the money, you need to defer to us. And they know that it's a toxic term now because here we have BlackRock, the guy in charge of BlackRock, Larry Fink, saying that he's gonna stop using the term ESG. It doesn't mean that they're gonna stop doing it. They're just not going to broadcast it as loudly as they have been because it has become something else. Now, originally ESG was mostly environmental sustainability and stuff like that, which, you know, it's something I actually have some experience with because the company I used to work for, software company I used to work for, we created software for the US government and for major corporations that tracked environmental issues and it was about regulatory compliance and a lot of these companies, you know, they do have to comply with ESG, which is like, hey, you can't be dumping a bunch of oil into, you know, Lake Erie or whatever because that's not good for your ESG score. They're Halliburton, you know what I'm saying? So that was what it initially meant and then they started rolling DEI into ESG. So it wasn't enough to just be environmentally stable. Now you had to be like, you know, diverse with the people that you hired and that was part of, you know, the long-term plan too. But yeah, I mean, it's a thing and I think that we are going to potentially see some ramifications here. Now, anytime a US company buys a Japanese company, I think it leads to bad things. I think it's going to be very Americanized here in a couple of years. They say they're not going to change things. They're absolutely good. Somebody somewhere in the chain of command is going to say, hey, yeah, let's do some more like, I don't know, totally spies type stuff or something. Let's bring in more diverse voices from America and let's just do what, you know, let's do a crunchy roll originals, high guardian spice, but everywhere. That's what we're going to do. So I do think it's going to change things. I think people have a right to be very cautious and very leery, but there we go. Going to wrap it up. Please subscribe. We'll talk later. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Thanks again for listening. More news and videos are available on our website at www.clownfishtv.com and on our YouTube channel, clownfishtv. You can buy official merchandise, clownfish, comic books and more at shopclownfish.com. 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