HAYATE, LINE Digital Frontier Corporation and Crunchyroll have announced a new anime co-production partnership built around adapting roughly 15 select WEBTOON series titles. Crunchyroll will stream the finished anime in select territories, while HAYATE will lead development and production alongside LINE Digital Frontier and Crunchyroll.
The announcement landed during the Crunchyroll Showcase at New York Comic Con, which is why fans searching for boxing anime are seeing The Boxer alongside The Remarried Empress and Teenage Mercenary. Those three titles were the only ones singled out with fresh materials: a special promo trailer for The Boxer, a new teaser visual and special promo trailer for Teenage Mercenary, and a character art reveal, special promo trailer, plus main production staff and cast for The Remarried Empress.
For Leo Watanabe, the deal is about turning stories that already travel well on screens small and large into bigger franchises. He said HAYATE sees a tremendous opportunity to transform globally loved digital-native stories into world-class anime franchises, and that the company wants adaptations that stay faithful to the originals while using anime’s own strengths. The logic behind the partnership is clear: WEBTOON titles already have built-in audiences, and the companies are betting those readers can become anime viewers without much friction.
There is still one missing piece. The companies say they will work from the development stage on around 15 titles, but only three have been publicly named so far, which leaves most of the slate hidden for now. That gap matters because it tells fans what is confirmed today and what is still being held back, even as the first wave of announcements gives the partnership immediate weight.
The timing also fits a wider market that keeps expanding. The Association of Japanese Animations said the anime industry reached a record-high market size of $25.36 billion in 2024, with markets outside Japan at $14.33 billion and Japan at $11.03 billion. Crunchyroll’s Asa Suehira said bringing great stories to anime fans around the world is at the heart of what the service does, and Hiroshi Mori said Japanese anime has become a cultural force loved by audiences around the world. The next question is not whether the pipeline exists — it does — but which remaining WEBTOON titles will be pulled into it next.
