Kodansha has announced that the Kodansha Studios subsidiary has been established in Hollywood with award-winning Chinese director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) and film producer Nicolas Gonda (The Tree of Life).
Kodansha Studios is Kodansha’s first foray in Hollywood with a company dedicated to creating, producing, and promotion live-action film and TV adaptations of Japanese manga and novel titles. Kodansha president and CEO Yoshinobu Noma noted that Kodansha is focusing on expansion operations overseas, with the establishment of Kodansha Studios allowing the company to be involved in production and create direct partnerships with global artists, producers and studios.
Kodansha previously teamed up with Azuki to release the special edition U.S. issue of Young Magazine on the Azuki digital manga platform for free to all users. The special edition of Young Magazine contains over 1,044 pages of content on Azuki, and the physical copy was being distributed for free to Anime NYC 2025 attendees at the Kinobuniya booth.
There’s also a fan voting event inside the magazine where readers can choose their favorites from among 16 eligible manga titles. The winning manga will be serialized on Kodansha’s official manga app, K MANGA. The vote will be held on the official website and official X (formerly Twitter) account until November 10, with final results will be revealed on December 15.
Moreover, GlobalComix recently announced over 500 manga volumes published by Kodansha are now available for purchase on the platform, along with the U.S. Young Magazine issue. More than 5,500 additional volumes will be available on GlobalComix on August 27, including day-and-date manga releases and completed series.
Final Weapon interviewed Young Magazine USA editor-in-chief Hidemi Shiraki about the release of the new Young Magazine special edition issue.
