Dwango, Kadokawa Connected, and BookWalker are merging, with Dwango remaining as the surviving company. The other two will be dissolved. The merge is set to take place on April 1, which is the beginning of the fiscal year in Japan.
Kadokawa-owned Dwango stated that due to the competitive market, the company saw it as necessary to consolidate the three main companies involved in digital content within the Kadokawa Group. The merger should allow better allocation of development resources and improve business efficiency.
BookWalker (stylized as Book☆Walker), which runs an e-book store aimed at manga, light novels, and magazines, announced that all of its services will remain operational with no change for users and that only the parent company name will change. The store launched in 2010 in Japan while the BookWalker Global (international store) was launched in 2014. BookWalker has three subsidiaries: ComicWalker web manga/webtoon-focused app, GeeXPlus (talent management and global media company), and Trista (focused on the development of reading software).
Kadokawa Connected, founded in 2019, provides advisory, infrastructure, and operational services for the broader Kadokawa Group, including Dwango-oprated niconico.
Source: Dwango Press Release, BookWalker Announcement, Anime News Network
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