A Conversation About Global Publishing With Kadokawa’s Staff

• Interview Location: Anime Expo 2026
• Interview Format: In-person, One-on-One

Anime Herald: What is the role of a manager and chief editor?

Satoshi Arima: I’m the head of the MF Books light novel label within Kadokawa. As a label, we publish an estimate of six books every month. My main job is to supervise the quality of those light novels. I’m also in charge of supervising the other editors within the label. We currently have twelve editors. I manage them and supervise all of the books they are working on within the label.

In addition to my supervisory roles and responsibilities, I am also still making books myself as an editor working on the front line. I do that busily every day while seeing how the label grows, and making sure we get bigger and bigger every year.

Anime Herald: Do you only handle books in the Japanese market, or do you handle books overseas as well?

Satoshi Arima: Within the MF Books label, we mainly publish books for Japanese readers within Japan. Kadokawa is the main company within the Kadokawa group. It focuses on the domestic market. But we do have a few group companies such as J-Novel Club that do publish the English versions of those. But within Kadokawa directly, we are not currently publishing books in English for overseas audiences.

Anime Herald: Now seems like a good time to talk about the Kadokawa panel.

Anna Haas: Our main objective this year at Anime Expo is to introduce our second contest that we are going to be holding for foreign English-speaking writers who want to enter the Japanese light novel market. It is a new initiative that Arima-san started within Kadokawa outside of the MF Books label as a way to work directly with overseas authors. Since we don’t publish English books ourselves, this is a global project. We call it the UGC (User Generated Content) global publishing project. I’m sure Arima-san can tell you more about the details as he was the one who launched it.

We started this project last year. We’ve held one of these English writing contests already, and frettiko and Kazesenken are two of the authors we started working with as a result of the contest. frettiko was the grand prize winner of last year’s contest. Kazesenken was one of the web novel authors we scouted as a result of this project. We’ll have them speak at the panel about their experiences working with the Japanese editing teams at Kadokawa and having their works published in Japan.

We are looking for future authors, writers, storytellers, that are aiming to break into the Japanese market. Because Kadokawa is such a big company, and we are just an editing label within it, we have the connections to turn it into a manga, and possibly even an anime, if people like it and the book sells well. We have a target release for 2027 for the books from the first contest.

Anime Herald: What was your original idea for the project and how did you sell it withinKadokawa?

Satoshi Arima: The beginning may have been when I first came to Anime Expo seven years ago. I saw firsthand how big of an impact anime culture had overseas. The anime business within Japan has been growing every year. There are a lot of people who break into the market as amateurs by writing stories, being discovered, having those stories turned into published light novels, having those light novels adapted into a manga, and then an anime. We’ve seen that happen with fans in Japan. I thought we might be able to offer that to writers and storytellers overseas.

That was my first step. I began researching online web novel platforms that we could use to approach authors from other markets. For this project we are working together with Honeyfeed, a web novel platform that a lot of writers use.

(Editor’s note:Honeyfeed is officially listed in the contest.)

Anime Herald: Were you one of the judges?

Satoshi Arima: Yes.

Anime Herald: What separated frettiko from the rest and made her the winner?

Satoshi Arima: frettiko’s novel is centered around her real life dog, Little Toast. She wrote a story about a hero isekai’d into another world with his dog, and that is actually frettiko’s dog. The name of the story is “Isekai’d with my dog, I’m not the hero?!”

Anime Herald: I now understand why she won.

Satoshi Arima: She can tell you more in detail, but the story is about the protagonist and his dog. From a judging perspective, it was a very catch contest that we think a lot of people who own or like dogs can easily relate to. It’s easy to grasp the initial concept of the world. People understood what it was about from the title. That is something we look for in titles. This was an easily accessible concept we feel people would relate to and be drawn to.

We praised that during the evaluation. Our main goal is to take those stories to Japan, adapt them into Japanese, and publish them in Japan, and hopefully be hits. If they are a hit in Japan, they can become a manga, an anime, and then be sent back overseas. From the world to Japan, and then from Japan back into the world. That’s the idea of this project. We think her novel will be loved by many people around the world.

Anime Herald: It’s amazing, we’ve had hundreds of isekais, but I can’t think of a single one with the pet as the main focus.

Where did you get the idea to send your pet to a foreign land?

frettiko: Funnily enough, I saw an advertisement for the contest. I suggested it to my fiancee, because he is the writer between us. He comes up with stories. He refused because he was busy with work. I thought, “That’s such a shame,” because he could write such a good story. I kind of got frustrated with it. I was sitting in my room thinking “What if I wrote something? Do I even have any good ideas? I’m not a writer.”

The dog walked in, and I thought, “I bet you would make a great story.” I kept rolling with that loose concept because I would want to read a story about my dog because my dog is the cutest dog in the world. I managed to crank out the story in thirty days, because the contest deadline was coming up. I guess I won.

Anime Herald: How long was it?

frettiko: 80,000 words, which I think was around the max. I had to write about a chapter a day to finish on time.

Satoshi Arima: It was around 250 pages.

Anna Haas: The project has a minimum of 50,000 words.

Anime Herald: What was your initial reaction when they contacted you?

frettiko: I was in Japan when I got the email [saying] I had made it to the top 10. I was very upset because of the time difference. I couldn’t tell anyone because everyone I loved and cared about was sleeping. I was by myself with this knowledge.

frettiko: About a week after I got home, I was getting ready for bed quite late, and I saw the email that I had won. I shot up, but my fiancee was walking the dog, so again I was all alone with these feelings. I started crying and he was like “Oh no, something bad has happened. What happened?”

Anime Herald: Our dog is being sent to another world! It is going to Japan to be isekai’d!

frettiko: It was very emotionally overwhelming to say the least. It was delightful news.

Anime Herald: Congratulations. I am glad your hard work paid off.

frettiko: Thank you.

Anime Herald: Please tell me about your novel.

Kazesenken: Let me show you the title first. That should spark a lot of questions.

“Why Kill? When Witches Can Be Tentacled!”

Kazesenken: That is the exact expression I kind of wanted.

Anime Herald: I met the man who created the original (Toshio Maeda). You are familiar with the Japanese laws of what you can and cannot show. The man who created that loophole, the tentacles, was here at Anime Expo in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I am wondering what his reaction would be to see what he has created is now in the light novel space.

Kazesenken: The title itself is not what you think. Me and a friend were thinking of light novel titles that sounded as bad as possible.

Anime Herald: Success!

Kazesenken: I came up with this one, and we were sitting there laughing non-stop for fifteen minutes. Then, we asked what we could do with this. I started writing a pilot chapter just for the fun of it. I came up with a story where there are these witches who are being persecuted because they are in possession of this grimoire. They just happen to have it. They are not doing evil with it. But because they have it, people react “You are connected to the demon lord. We will kill you!”

The main character is an American YouTuber. He gets isekai’d. He gets swatted by someone who hates him and is sent into this other world as a Jellyfish. That’s where the tentacles come in.

Anime Herald: Okay.

Kazesenken: Initially, I was watching a YouTuber talking about how Isekai doesn’t have any good ideas anymore, it just keeps recycling the same things over and over. I thought, “Okay, I’ll isekai you over there.” That sparked a little funny comedy thing. I would take the American YouTuber personality. All of his memes and culture and he would just have a blast, doing what he does best, using his YouTuber charisma to stand for all of these witches. To change the public perception of how people think of them.

Anime Herald: I see. A YouTuber in another world, as a jellyfish.

Kazesenken: This title was kind of a joke because of how YouTubers would put all of these clickbait titles for their videos.

Anime Herald: This is an original idea with… a very catchy title. Is the title what you first noticed?

Satoshi Arima: Yes. I didn’t really understand or grasp what it might be about, but it is written in a way that makes you want to find out. That made me more curious about it.

Anime Herald: Were you impressed when you read it?

Satoshi Arima: Initially, the protagonist turning into a jellyfish was a new and interesting concept. Also, the fact that they were an American anime fan, and an influencer/YouTuber who gets isekai’d. We felt that, for Japanese readers, seeing what overseas anime fans would get up to in another world would be a new concept. That’s not something a Japanese anime fan could write because they haven’t lived that experience. That was a new concept we thought Japanese readers would be interested in. 

Also, the heroine, Maribelle, her troubles within this world, and how she partners with the protagonist, Snazzy, is very intriguing and drives the story forward. Overall, the story was super-well made. The issues and troubles that the heroine and protagonist face, and the results through the story, were one of the things we most praised from this story.

Anime Herald: How many applications did you have?

Satoshi Arima: 1,248 novels applied to last year’s contest.

Anime Herald: How did you have people read all of them?

Satoshi Arima: The judges don’t read all of the submissions. The way the contest works, and the way Honeyfeed works, is that there are a few steps in the evaluation process. It starts with the users of Honeyfeed. The readers are the first ones who read, comment on, and like the stories. Only the stories that were most praised by a group of volunteer judges who go through all of the submissions, and the highest rated by the community within Honeyfeed, are reduced to a group of ten finalists. Those finalists are read and judged by the Japanese editorial team. They then pick one grand prize and two more runner-up finalists.

Anime Herald: It makes a lot more sense when the judges only have to read less than 1% of the total submissions.

Satoshi Arima: Within Japan, this is very similar to how Japanese web novel sites work, as well. When we do contests within Japan on Japanese web novel sites, it is the readers who first look at the stories and rate them. The stories that have the highest rating and best engagement are the ones that Japanese publishers most focus on when choosing winners.

Anime Herald: Can you give an example of a Japanese contest winner that has eventually had an anime released in the United States?

Satoshi Arima: There are a lot of famous anime that originated from Japanese web novels. “I Got a Cheat Skill in Another World and Became Unrivaled in the Real World, Too” is one example.

Anime Herald: How did Toast react when you told him he won the contest?

frettiko: Well, he only has one eye, but that doesn’t take away from his one-thousand yard stare. I would say “no reaction,” but he did get a treat at least.

Anime Herald: Good dog! You earned it.

Anna Haas: There are so many web novels that have become anime.

Satoshi Arima:Re: Zero – Starting Life in Another World,Overlord,Sword Art Online,The Rising of the Shield Hero, were all scouted from web novel platforms.

Anime Herald: This is a good idea because these web novel platforms are so competitive. Unless you are among the best, you will be ignored.

Do you have any questions for us?

Satoshi Arima: We are looking for writers and storytellers all across the world who are looking to break into the Japanese light novel industry. For example, frettiko saw the news about the contest, and wrote her first novel. How would you recommend we spread the message to English speaking writers?

Anime Herald: Are you familiar with the term “fan-fiction”? It’s not uncommon for a writer to start doing fan fiction and write something very popular. One example would beFifty Shades of Gray.

frettiko: Based on Twilight.

Anime Herald: You know ball.

frettiko: Not to brag, but I think that might be why I won the contest. I didn’t have writing experience, but I had close to thirty years of anime experience. That knowledge of taking in so much of the industry and the culture helped me write something that was easily translatable into the Japanese market.

Going off of what Anna-san said, this is an anime fan’s dream. This is our lottery. Even just seeing the contest as something advertised, I never would have thought to try before.

Kazesenken: Going off of that, this was picked up four years after I wrote it. At the time, I was not thinking about writing for Japan. I was just writing a fun story using my anime knowledge of memes and tropes to bring some laughter to the community.

frettiko: This is our fan-fiction. This is a love letter to everything that we’ve been watching for the last twenty years.

Kazesenken: Being able to see something like this attract the attention of Japan was a giant hurdle.

frettiko: Yes.

Kazesenken: I think a lot of people have had this perception that English would never break into Japan. They have their own writers, why would they need us?

frettiko: This is a huge opportunity for the weebs of North America and Europe.

Anime Herald: Thank you very much.

You can find frettiko on herYouTube channeldoing anime reviews.