Crunchyroll‘s parent company, Sony, is expanding its anime presence in India with a new anime series in development with Japanese partners under its Sony Pictures Entertainment India (SPNI) subsidiary.
Variety reported this week that Sony Yay!, the Indian pay television channel operated by Sony Pictures Networks India (SPNI), is developing a new mythological anime series, tentatively titled Project K. SPNI exec Ambesh Tiwari described Project K as “possibly India’s first anime series.” While declining to mention which mythological character the series will depict, he added, “This is a very anime story with a little guy who has some kind of powers, then a full physical transformation happens.” Project K will be developed in collaboration with Japanese partners, who will help ‘build the series with authentic anime storytelling elements,’ per Variety’s report.
Related
Official Sailor Moon T-shirts, hoodies, commemorative cards and light wands become available to make U.S. fans feel like an anime magical girl.
Sony Expands Anime Presence With ‘Possibly India’s First Anime Series’
The new Indian anime series is part of several initiatives at Sony Yay!. Yoshinori Kobayashi’s children’s manga series Obocchama-kun, which first debuted in Monthly CoroCoro Comic in 1986 and received an anime adaptation by Shin-Ei Animation in 1989, will begin releasing new episodes specifically tailored for India this spring. The original series was dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. An Indian studio will be responsible for the animation production while Shin-Ei Animation will write the script under Kobayashi’s supervision. Sony Yay! has also brought over numerous popular anime series like Naruto, Jujutsu Kaisen and Black Clover.
An anime boom in India promises major revenue, given it’s one of the most populous countries in the world. It was just announced that TV Asahi will release Crayon Shin-chan films in India for the first time when Crayon Shin-chan: Our Dinosaur Diary and Crayon Shin-chan: The Spicy Kasukabe Dancers in India debut in May and October 2025, respectively (via Licensing Magazine). The Sony Group’s Crunchyroll streaming service revealed last year that it planned to develop Indian anime titles based on “Indian characters, themes, and stories” and opened its second regional office in Hyderabad. A Crunchyroll subscription in India costs as little as 79 rupees (91 cents) to incentivize an easy move away from piracy, for which the country is among the world’s most notorious, behind the U.S. and four others. The government is also making attempts to crack down on illegal distribution.
Related
Manga Revealed as the Fastest-Growing Piracy Medium in the World – And America Is Leading the Way
Manga surpasses TV piracy to become the most pirated medium in the world, with the United States leading the way in illegal consumption.
In a press release earlier this week, the Government of India reported on the progress of the WAVES Anti-Piracy Challenge, a competition inviting companies to present innovative anti-piracy solutions through technologies like watermarking and fingerprinting. Japanese anime producers identified purported “leakers” through similar technologies applied to titles like Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen. The WAVES Anti-Piracy Challenges received 1,296 registrations and joins public-private anti-piracy partnerships in Asia like the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (MiST) fund announced last year, aiming to promote technologies that can auto-detect illegal streaming sites using AI.
Source: Variety
