Exclusive: How Crunchyroll’s manga app will turn a new page for anime fans

There’s no clearer sign of anime’s cultural ascendance than the box office haul of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle. The film, which hit U.S. theaters two weeks ago, has pulled in more than $555 million globally, including more than $104 million in North America, making it a bonafide hit for Sony Pictures, which distributed it outside of Japan through its anime streaming arm, Crunchyroll.

The movie’s success reflects audiences’ growing interest in anime. A survey from market research firm Dentsu found that, 31% of people worldwide said they consumed anime at least weekly, with a full 50% of Gen Z reporting they watch it. That’s translated into a boom in Crunchyroll subscriptions. The anime streaming service, which is home to more than 2,000 titles (including Demon Slayer), counted 17 million paid subscribers worldwide in May 2025—more than triple the number it had in 2021. 

Crunchyroll will soon offer those subscribers a way to go even deeper on the source material of some of their favorite shows, with the debut a manga reader app. The company shared a first look exclusively with Fast Company. 

Set to launch October 9 on mobile and October 15 on web in the United States and Canada, Crunchyroll Manga will debut with hundreds of titles, including the manga behind some of Crunchyroll’s top series, including Jujutsu Kaisen, Kaiju No. 8, and Apothecary Diaries. 

For subscribers to Crunchyroll’s $15.99-per-month Ultimate tier, access to Crunchyroll Manga will be free. It will be available as a $3.50 add-on for the $11.99 Mega Fan tier, and a $4 add-on to the $7.99 Fan tier.

It’s a feature that users have been asking for, says chief content officer Asa Suehira. “Crunchyroll has been doing a lot of surveys over the past few years and digital manga has always been the most desired feature on our platform,” he says. “This is compared to shorter content, video games, music, or even discounts or credits toward merchandise.”

Building a bridge between anime and manga

From a user perspective, Crunchyroll Manga is designed to function much like the company’s flagship streaming app, with important connections between the two. 

If a title in the manga app has a corresponding anime series on Crunchyroll, users can choose to start watching the show straight from the manga app. Their device will simply switch to the streaming app if it’s installed. Similarly, if a Crunchyroll anime series has a corresponding manga, viewers will have the option of clicking over to start reading it.

“There’s data saying that 40% of manga readers discover manga through anime,” Suehira says. “We want to create a new habit of discovery through manga, and being able to watch the anime as well. 

Crunchyroll has been clever about how it entices anime fans who might discover the genre through other streaming services. Notably, it will license shows like Jujutsu Kaisen to Netflix, but exclusively stream the latest season on its platform. 

Crunchyroll Manga offers an opportunity for it to replicate that approach in reverse. The service will include manga volumes for series that exclusively stream elsewhere, including Delicious in Dungeon and The Summer Hikaru Died—two anime adaptations that Netflix exclusively distributes. Fans of those series will have sign up for Crunchyroll if they they want to read the manga.

The manga and anime apps will also be linked by user profiles. Any updates made to a profile’s content restrictions in one will be be mirrored in the other. 

The main appeal, though, is the amount of manga fans will be able to access. Suehira says that by partnering with Link-u, which has developed digital manga infrastructure in Japan, “we were able to work more closely with different publishers.”

Making publishers happy

Crunchyroll Manga is actually the second time the company has offered manga. A previous offering shut down in 2023. Suehira says part of that platform’s downfall was because Crunchyroll’s licensing agreement with manga publishers limited how much users could read. It also “limited the opportunities for us to work with the publishers,” Suehira says. 

Crunchyroll Manga will launch with a library of titles from publishers like Viz Media, AlphaPolis, and Square Enix. Crunchyroll says additional publishers will be added in the coming months, including Shueisha, which publishes the Demon Slayer manga.

Part of what has gotten these companies on board, Suehira says, is Crunchyroll Manga’s use of a revenue-sharing model that compensates publishers based on user engagement, similar to how the anime platform pays studios. 

Crunchyroll Manga also offers a legitimate way for burgeoning anime fans to read source material. Suehira says 15 of the top 20 internet piracy sites include anime and manga, and that manga represents 70% of global publishing piracy.

“We want [Crunchyroll Manga] to be a solution to the privacy market and really contribute to the ecosystem in Japan,” Suehira says, adding that the app includes features the prevent screenshots and screen recording. 

Part of working with publishers means tracking a titles popularity, which can inform payments, but also potentially predict a future hit adaptation. 

“[Publishers] want to understand how the crowd is reacting to certain manga or an IP,” he says. “Data on consumption and fan reactions are things we could work together with our partners in Japan to expand the opportunity—whether that’s turning into an anime or selling merchandise.’

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