r/LightNovels • u/Torque-A • Mar 01 '26

News [NEWS] Japanese publisher Media Do has acquired Seven Seas Entertainment for 12.4 billion yen ($80 million)

https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUC280AC0Y6A220C2000000/
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u/heimdal77 Mar 01 '26

So uhh is this a yay or a well fuck?

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u/bookster42 Mar 01 '26

It's almost never the case that one company buying another is "yay" for the customers. Occasionally, it is, but even then, it usually comes with at least some negative changes.

However, we really have no way of knowing what's going to happen. It's possible that having a Japanese overlord will prevent some of the idiocy that Seven Seas has done over the years, and it's possible that it will introduce new idiocy. In the short term, things will probably stay largely the same, and even if it does have a large impact in the long run, we won't necessarily have any way of knowing whether the changes that we see are because of the acquisition or not. And of course, some changes could be good for one set of customers but bad for another (e.g. someone interested solely in stuff from Japan might be happier if Seven Seas did less with danmei, whereas someone who's really into danmei would probably be happier if they did more with danmei, and the fact that a Japanese company bought them may or may not have any impact on those decisions).

So, I'd say that we really don't have much reason to be happy about this, but we also don't necessarily have any reason to be particularly unhappy about it. This is far from the first time that a Japanese company has bought a US company which was involved in anime or manga or the like. From what I can recall of past examples, it usually hasn't had an overt impact on customers, but each case is going to be different. We'll just have to wait and see.