Industry
Crunchyroll and HAYATE plan around 15 new webtoon anime
HAYATE leads development; The Boxer, Teenage Mercenary and The Remarried Empress are the first projects.
Crunchyroll, HAYATE and LINE Digital Frontier are jointly planning anime adaptations of around 15 webtoon titles. The three companies presented a corresponding production partnership at New York Comic Con on October 8, 2026. They intend to collaborate from the selection and development of the source material onward and produce new anime series from it.
HAYATE leads the development of the anime
Under the agreement, HAYATE takes the lead on development and production. LINE Digital Frontier contributes webtoon source material from the catalog of LINE Manga. Crunchyroll participates in development and receives exclusive streaming rights in selected regions for the resulting anime.
HAYATE was founded in 2025 as a joint production company of Aniplex and Crunchyroll. With the new agreement, the company is meant to target Korean and other digital comic sources specifically for anime productions. The partners speak of roughly 15 selected titles that are to be developed step by step for possible adaptation.
Three webtoon adaptations presented in detail
During the presentation, the companies named three projects that have already been announced or newly confirmed. For The Remarried Empress, a first trailer with cast and production team was released. The romance fantasy series is being produced at TROYCA and is set to premiere in 2027.
Teenage Mercenary was also presented with a new teaser visual and video. J.C.STAFF is producing the adaptation under the direction of Manabu Ono. As a third project, the partners announced the TV anime adaptation The Boxer with a first promotional video. breccia and STUDIO JEMI are working together on this series.
The three productions cover different genres: fantasy romance, an action story about a former child mercenary, and a sports drama. Further titles from the planned collaboration have not yet been named.
International streaming distribution
The collaboration was announced in the context of the international growth of the anime market. LINE Digital Frontier belongs to the WEBTOON Entertainment group and operates, among others, LINE Manga in Japan. Crunchyroll will handle distribution of the jointly developed anime in certain markets.
The industry is thus deliberately developing additional webtoon material for anime productions. An overview of the market's economic development is provided in the aninew report on the size of the global anime industry.