The Anime Business Episode 8 Checks In with Yen Press’ Kurt Hassler

Posted in: Comics, Manga, TV, YouTube | Tagged: The Anime Business, Yen Press

In The Anime Business Episode 8, Yen Press Publisher Kurt Hassler charts the rise of the U.S. anime and manga markets since the early 2000s.

Anime distributor AnimEigo and parent company MediaOCD have announced the debut of Episode 8 of The Anime Business, a documentary series featuring interviews with a variety of pioneers of the Western anime industry. The latest installment features an insightful conversation with Kurt Hassler, Yen Press Publisher and Managing Director and the CEO and President of Kadokawa World Entertainment.

Hassler recalls being profoundly impacted by his early experiences with manga, most notably by Rumiko Takahashi (creator of Ranma ½ and Urusei Yatsura). He played a major role in helping manga to penetrate the North American retail market during his tenure as a buyer for Waldenbooks and Borders in the early 2000s.

Buoyed by the success of publishers such as TOKYOPOP, Del Ray, and VIZ Media, Hassler co-founded Yen Press in 2006 with former DC Comics VP Rich Johnson and financing from the Hachette Book Group. He has gone on to build the publisher into one of the biggest manga/manhwa brands in the United States with bestsellers such as Yotsuba & I, Toilet-bound Hanako-kun, Delicious in Dungeon, Solo Leveling, and Semantic Error.

In the interview, Hassler notes a commitment to original content from the very beginning and highlights several Young Adult graphic novel series by award-winning creator Svetlana Chmakova. He was also an early advocate for Light Novels and published hits that included That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime and So I’m a Spider, So What?, and Ascendance of a Bookworm. Hassler and Yen Press have also enthusiastically embraced Korean content, led by Editor-in-Chief JuYoun Lee, and the bestseller, Solo Leveling. He also notes the burgeoning world of WebToon and how it is transforming content and its delivery.

The Anime Business is a first-of-its-kind series featuring a wide range of entrepreneurs and visionaries that helped to pioneer and shape the North American anime and manga industries. It is produced and hosted by industry veteran and MediaOCD founder and AnimEigo CEO Justin Sevakis. Episodes 1-7 of The Anime Business and bonus clips are also now available to stream on the AnimeEigo YouTube channel.

Justin Sevakis was the original founder of Anime News Network in 1998, and he contributed many of the site’s most popular columns for many years, in addition to co-hosting ANNCast, the #1 anime podcast worldwide, from 2009 to 2015. Sevakis was the first in-house video and subtitle editor at Central Park Media, a prominent 2000s-era anime distributor, and worked on Grave of the Fireflies, Project A-ko, and many other bestselling releases. With his current company, MediaOCD, he has produced more than 1,600 Blu-ray discs for the North American market and pioneered restoration efforts for classic anime, including Project A-ko, Digimon Adventure, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, and the forthcoming Macross II. He acquired anime distributor AnimEigo in 2024.

All episodes of The Anime Business will be available in English, and Japanese subtitles will also be available via a special grant from the Kleckner Foundation. Additional episodes and interviews are in production now. AnimEigo and MediaOCD invite fans to donate to help support and crowdfund future episodes of The Anime Business. Episode 8 is available now on the official AnimEigo YouTube channel.

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