Japanese advertising giant Dentsu is entering a partnership with Kodansha that will give potential clients across North and South America direct access to a portfolio of Kodansha intellectual properties, Variety reported on Friday. Under the arrangement, Dentsu becomes the central point of contact for brand marketers seeking to build campaigns around Kodansha’s manga and anime titles.
The deal covers sponsorships, tie-in campaigns, live events and fan experiences tied to the properties, according to the report. Kodansha and Dentsu have not published the financial terms of the partnership, nor a full list of the IPs that will be made available to marketers.
Which properties are involved
The IPs named in connection with the partnership include Attack on Titan, Ghost in the Shell and Blue Lock. Those sit within a Kodansha catalogue that also includes Akira, Cells at Work!, Tokyo Revengers, Initial D and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, which adapts a light novel series.
It is a roster with an unusually long commercial tail. Akira and Ghost in the Shell are among the most internationally recognized manga of their eras, while Attack on Titan, Blue Lock and Tokyo Revengers represent the publisher’s more recent global hits — the kind of titles that already support merchandise, collaborations and event activations in Western markets. Bringing them under a single agency contact is intended to make those kinds of brand deals easier for companies outside Japan to arrange.
A publisher that has been expanding westward
The partnership fits a wider push by Kodansha into Western markets:
- K MANGA: Kodansha launched its own manga distribution service in May 2023.
- Kodansha Studios: the company announced in November 2025 that it had established a Hollywood studio with Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) and film producer Nicolas Gonda.
- Legal action: in the same month, Kodansha won a lawsuit against internet infrastructure company Cloudflare, filed alongside several other Japanese publishing companies.
Taken together, the moves point to a publisher that is building its own direct channels to overseas audiences rather than relying solely on licensing partners. Pairing that with a marketing partner for brand tie-ins is a logical next step.
Why Dentsu
Dentsu was founded in Tokyo in 1901 and now operates in 120 countries and territories. The company created a dedicated anime unit, Dentsu Anime Solutions, in July 2023. As a wholly owned subsidiary under Dentsu Japan, that division focuses on selling and licensing anime to broadcasters and distributors both domestically and overseas.
That existing infrastructure is what makes the Kodansha arrangement practical. Dentsu already negotiates with broadcasters and distributors on the anime side, and it now positions itself as the entry point for brands that want to attach themselves to Kodansha properties through sponsorships or fan-facing events in the Americas.
Why it matters
For fans, the immediate impact is indirect: more brand collaborations, pop-up events and sponsored activations built around Kodansha series in the Americas, rather than anything that changes how the manga itself is published. For the industry, the significance is structural. It signals that Japanese publishers now view North and South America as markets worth servicing with dedicated commercial infrastructure, not just translated volumes.
It also reflects how manga has moved into mainstream brand marketing. When an advertising group the size of Dentsu sets up a formal route for Western companies to license campaigns around Attack on Titan or Blue Lock, it treats those properties less as niche fandom and more as general-audience entertainment brands. That has been the trajectory for several years, but a partnership of this type formalizes it.
The same week brought other signs of the business side of manga shifting. Yen Press announced 17 new English licenses, while Kakao Entertainment moved to shut down the Tapas platform in North America — a reminder that the market’s growth is reshaping established platforms as well as opening new opportunities. Readers wanting something concrete can look to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, one of the Kodansha IPs at the center of this kind of franchise marketing.
Source: Anime News Network, citing Variety
Featured image: Anime Dispatch graphic. Dentsu has partnered with Kodansha to market the publisher’s manga IP to brand clients in the Americas.
