Kadokawa Admits Isekai Has Become Saturated!

A Kadokawa has finally admitted that the isekai genre has reached a point where it has become saturated! The topic gained even more attention after the company revealed a sharp drop in its profits and pointed to excessive focus on this type of work as one of the main problems in its publishing business.

The Japanese giant in the anime, manga, and games industry released its financial results for the fiscal year ending in March 2026, showing a 51.3% drop in operating profit compared to the previous year. The publishing and IP creation segment was the most affected, with a 51.6% decline.

According to the company’s own report, the strategy based on “proven successful patterns” ended up harming creative diversity. Among these patterns are precisely the isekai and narou-kei genres, which have dominated a large portion of recent publications. Kadokawa acknowledged that this concentration led to market saturation and reduced profitability.

The company also stated that the aggressive expansion in the number of published titles, without a proportional increase in editorial quality, resulted in a rise in works with little originality. This directly contributed to the weakening of the sector.

To try to reverse the situation, Kadokawa announced a restructuring of its genre strategy, along with stricter criteria for approving new projects. The company also created an editorial management committee to implement structural reforms and reorganize the publishing model.

Within this context, the opinion of the author of Mushoku Tensei also caught attention among fans and readers. He commented that even if the isekai market goes through a possible decline in the future, authors of the so-called “narou-kei” still have a strong skill: analyzing the market, identifying patterns, and quickly producing works that meet demand.

According to him, this means that even with structural changes and possible saturation, the cycle tends to repeat itself, since these creators remain highly adaptable to consumption trends.

In the middle of all this, an early retirement program was announced for employees aged over 45, as part of a restructuring effort to make the company leaner.