CyberAgent, the Tokyo internet group that owns the streaming service ABEMA, has bought part of MHD, the parent company of Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man studio MAPPA, and signed a business alliance with the studio. Both companies announced the deal on Wednesday 11 November, the day CyberAgent reported record full-year net profit. Neither disclosed the size of the stake or the price.
MAPPA was quick to say what the deal does not change: its management stays in place and it remains an independent studio. It drew the same line in January, when Netflix widened its partnership with the studio. One of Japan’s most sought-after animation houses now has two deep-pocketed partners in under a year, and insists it answers to neither. For CyberAgent, the stake ties its fast-growing anime business to a studio that makes global hits, in the year ABEMA finally began to make money.
Key facts
- CyberAgent (Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime, 4751) has signed a business alliance with MAPPA and bought part of the shares of MHD, MAPPA’s parent. Both MAPPA and MHD are based in Nakano, Tokyo, and led by MAPPA president Manabu Ōtsuka
- Stake size and price: not disclosed by either company
- MAPPA’s management is unchanged and it remains an independent studio
- Areas the two will explore: planning and production, broadcast and streaming, games, merchandise and events, in Japan and abroad
- CyberAgent’s Media & IP segment, home to ABEMA and its anime business, had revenue of ¥250.0bn ($1.59bn) in the year to 30 September, up 8%
What the companies have agreed
The two releases frame the deal as a pairing of MAPPA’s “power to create” with CyberAgent’s “power to deliver”: the studio’s animation craft on one side, the experience CyberAgent has built running media, games and advertising on the other. They say they will consider working together across a title’s whole life and across borders. No titles, volumes or exclusivity terms were announced, and the language throughout is of areas under consideration rather than commitments. Nikkei describes it as a capital and business alliance.
The deal formalises a long relationship. MAPPA titles have aired on ABEMA and been turned into games by CyberAgent group companies, and the two presidents first met about eight years ago, Takahiro Yamauchi said in a conversation CyberAgent published on Wednesday. Ōtsuka traced the first commission to Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, which CyberAgent’s games subsidiary Cygames brought to MAPPA for its 2014 broadcast, long before the studio had made its name.
In the same conversation, Ōtsuka said MAPPA wanted to make and deliver its work better, and faster, for audiences in Japan and around the world, and that doing so would take good partners as well as the studio’s own growth. He played down any idea that the tie-up would transform the studio, and said MAPPA often felt overseas audiences had found its work before it went looking for them. Yamauchi said CyberAgent would bring its marketing and ABEMA’s reach to each title, with the two teams talking early about how best to release it.
MAPPA and Netflix
MAPPA, founded in 2011, animates Jujutsu Kaisen and Chainsaw Man and made the final season of Attack on Titan. It also runs its own rights business, handling merchandise, streaming and events in Japan and abroad in-house, a role Japanese studios have usually left to the production committees that finance their shows.
On 20 January Netflix said it would stream a slate of original MAPPA series exclusively and simultaneously worldwide, Japan included, and that the two would develop them together from story to merchandise. Ōtsuka said at the time that the arrangement rested on MAPPA’s “core belief in being an independent studio”, creatively and in business. Wednesday’s announcements do not mention Netflix, and neither company said how the two partnerships will fit together or whether a future MAPPA title could carry both.
CyberAgent’s anime build-out
CyberAgent has been assembling an anime business for a decade. ABEMA launched in 2016 with a dedicated anime channel. In 2017 CyberAgent and Cygames set up the CA-Cygames Anime Fund to invest in series led by other companies, taking streaming and game rights in return, and in February 2024 the group created an Anime & IP division to develop and produce titles of its own. Its studio, Cypic (formerly Cygames Pictures), is animating Kagurabachi, a TV series due in April 2027 on which CyberAgent is lead producer. Yamauchi told Wednesday’s results briefing that the series would head a group-wide push across ABEMA, games and advertising, Gamebiz reported.
What the results show
In the year to 30 September 2026, CyberAgent’s revenue rose 11.1% to ¥970.6bn ($6.18bn), its 29th consecutive year of growth, and operating profit rose 7.7% to ¥77.2bn ($492m). Net profit attributable to shareholders reached a record ¥43.0bn ($274m). The Media & IP segment doubled its operating profit to ¥14.8bn ($94m), mainly on smaller losses at AbemaTV, the company that runs ABEMA. Yamauchi told analysts that ABEMA had turned profitable in its tenth year on air.
Media is still the group’s thin-margin business. Media & IP earned about 5.9% on its revenue, against about 21.6% in games, which made ¥60.0bn on ¥277.4bn (FilmBunch calculation from segment totals before inter-segment eliminations). For the current year CyberAgent forecasts revenue above ¥1tn for the first time, at ¥1.07tn ($6.82bn), but operating profit down 14.6% to ¥66.0bn ($420m).
The wider market
Japan’s anime market reached a record ¥4.45tn ($28.4bn) in 2025, with 57.1% of spending now outside Japan, according to the Association of Japanese Animations. Money is moving into the business that surrounds the studios. Toei Animation, TBS and TV Tokyo recently backed the licensing platform AniBiz, and Toho, whose TOHO animation label licenses Jujutsu Kaisen, grew revenue in its IP and anime division by 15.6% in the six months to August.
What is not known
The price, the size of the holding and whether CyberAgent takes a seat on MHD’s board were not disclosed, and nor were MHD’s other shareholders. CyberAgent’s results for October to December are the next filing that could show the holding, if it is large enough to be broken out.
Our reading
CyberAgent has bought part of MHD, MAPPA’s management is untouched and the studio calls itself independent. On everything disclosed, this is a minority investment with an alliance attached, not a takeover. What it buys CyberAgent is proximity: an early say in how titles from one of the few Japanese studios with global hits are released, with its media, games and advertising arms ready to work them. For MAPPA, a worldwide streaming deal with Netflix and a shareholder with a Japanese platform, a games business and an advertising arm reduce its dependence on any single buyer. Netflix’s exclusivity applies to the original slate it commissions, which leaves the rest of MAPPA’s output open to both.
For rival rights holders, the question is how much of MAPPA’s pipeline the two partners will claim between them. The first test will be the next MAPPA title that ABEMA carries, and whether its game and merchandise rights stay inside the CyberAgent group.
Sources
- CyberAgent, partnership with MAPPA and investment in its parent MHD (press release, 11 November 2026, Japanese)
- MAPPA, partnership with CyberAgent (corporate news, 11 November 2026, Japanese)
- CyberAgent Way, conversation between Takahiro Yamauchi and Manabu Ōtsuka (11 November 2026, Japanese)
- CyberAgent, consolidated financial results for the year to 30 September 2026 (kessan tanshin, 11 November 2026)
- Nikkei, CyberAgent ties up with MAPPA (11 November 2026; investment amount undisclosed)
- Gamebiz, CyberAgent full-year results briefing (11 November 2026; Kagurabachi TV anime, April 2027)
- Netflix, Netflix and MAPPA strengthen strategic partnership (20 January 2026, via The Futon Critic)
- Netflix, Netflix and MAPPA strengthen strategic partnership (About Netflix, 20 January 2026)
- Anime News Network, CyberAgent announces business alliance with MAPPA (11 November 2026)
- European Central Bank, euro foreign exchange reference rates, 30 September 2026 (USD 1.1355, JPY 178.27; ¥157.0 per dollar), and 31 December 2025 for the 2025 AJA total (¥156.7 per dollar)