Crunchyroll Storyworks Explained: What Sonys New Division Means for Anime

Crunchyroll Storyworks is a new Sony division, announced on October 7, 2026, that will turn stories from outside Japan into anime and turn existing anime into live-action films and series. It sits inside Crunchyroll, which Sony already owns, and it adds one more piece to a company that now funds, produces, distributes and streams a large share of the world's anime. No titles have been announced yet, so this is about what the move means more than what it will make.

What Is Crunchyroll Storyworks?

Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Ravi Ahuja announced Storyworks at the first Crunchyroll Anime Future Forum, held at the Javits Center in New York, which brought together more than 90 companies including MAPPA, Toho and Aniplex. The division has two jobs:

• Global stories into anime: finding stories from outside Japan, such as books, comics and webtoons, that can be adapted into anime with Japanese creators.
• Anime into live action: developing live-action feature films and TV series based on Japanese anime properties.

Storyworks is not an animation studio. It develops and packages projects, and reports say it will feed anime projects to Hayate, Sony's production company for global anime. Crunchyroll chief content officer Asa Suehira said: "Storyworks will build a creative bridge between Japan and storytellers around the world — one that protects what makes these stories distinctive while creating new possibilities for creators." To understand why this matters, you need to see who is running it and what sits around it.

Who Runs It

Tohru Iokibe, a 25-year Sony veteran, is managing director of Crunchyroll Storyworks and reports to Suehira. Before this, he managed cross-media projects between Sony Pictures Entertainment and PlayStation Productions, the arm that turns PlayStation games into films and series. That background points toward the live-action side of the job, which is where Sony already has experience. The bigger story is the network Storyworks plugs into.

How Much of Anime Does Sony Own?

Sony's anime business is spread across several companies:

The pieces are already working together. At New York Comic Con this month, Hayate, Crunchyroll and LINE Digital Frontier announced a partnership to adapt webtoons into anime, starting with The Remarried Empress. Put simply, Sony can now fund a show, produce it through Aniplex or Hayate, animate it at a studio it owns, stream it on Crunchyroll and develop a live-action version through Storyworks. That raises the obvious question.

Is Sony Becoming an Anime Monopoly?

Not in the legal sense. Sony faces real competition, especially from Netflix, which took 38% of the roughly $5.5 billion spent on anime streaming subscriptions in 2023, according to Parrot Analytics data reported by Animenomics. Other publishers, TV networks and studios still fund and make most anime, and Sony owns only about a tenth of Kadokawa. Bloomberg also reported that Crunchyroll was likely to miss an internal target of 25 million paid subscribers by the end of 2025.

What Sony does have is concentration. No other company combines a top anime producer, its own studios, the largest anime-only streamer and now a division built to move stories in and out of anime. That gives it a lot of say over which shows get made, how they are funded and where fans can watch them. Studios selling to Sony have fewer alternative buyers at that scale, which ties into why so many studios struggle to make money. Here's what I think about it.

Kairo's Take

Sony is getting too big in anime. When one company can fund the show, own the IP, animate it and control the platform fans watch it on, greenlights drift toward safe formulas, independent studios lose bargaining power, and fans have nowhere else to go if prices or policies change. I'm skeptical about the live-action side too: anime's exaggerated expressions and framing rarely survive the jump to real actors, with rare exceptions like Netflix's One Piece and the Rurouni Kenshin films. Webtoons and Western stories can become great anime, as Solo Leveling proved, as long as Japanese creators keep creative control. Global money isn't bad for anime, but if a single corporate board gets to define what anime is, the medium loses the weird, risky and authentic edge that made it a global phenomenon.

Frequently Asked Questions About Crunchyroll Storyworks and Sony

What is Crunchyroll Storyworks?

It is a Sony division inside Crunchyroll, announced on October 7, 2026, that adapts stories from outside Japan into anime with Japanese creators and develops live-action films and series based on anime.

Who runs Crunchyroll Storyworks?

Tohru Iokibe, a 25-year Sony veteran who previously managed projects between Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions. He reports to Crunchyroll chief content officer Asa Suehira.

Has Crunchyroll Storyworks announced any projects?

Not yet. No titles were revealed at the October 7, 2026 announcement.

Does Sony own Crunchyroll?

Yes. Sony completed its $1.175 billion purchase of Crunchyroll from AT&T in August 2021. Crunchyroll is co-owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment and Aniplex.

What anime companies does Sony own?

Through Sony Music Entertainment Japan it owns Aniplex, which owns the studio CloverWorks and founded A-1 Pictures. It also owns Crunchyroll, the Aniplex and Crunchyroll joint venture Hayate, which bought the studio Lay-duce, and about 10% of Kadokawa.

Is Sony an anime monopoly?

No, not legally. Netflix took 38% of anime streaming subscription spending in 2023, and many other companies fund anime. But Sony controls an unusually large share of anime production, distribution and streaming in one group.

For more on the business of anime, read our explainers on why anime studios are going bankrupt and how much anime animators make, or browse the latest anime news.

Sources: LevelUp and Animehunch (Storyworks announcement), Animenomics (Kadokawa deal, Netflix share, Crunchyroll subscriber target), Wikipedia on Crunchyroll, Aniplex and Hayate. Diagram by GachaPath; simplified. Cover photo: Sony headquarters by Shuichi Aizawa (cropped by Koh-etsu), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0, cropped further.