Manga Entertainment

• 1. Introduction

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  Manga Entertainment was founded in London in 1991 with a name that turned out to be slightly misleading. The company's core business was anime, not manga, though it did publish some manga titles under a Manga Books imprint. How a UK record label subsidiary became one of the most recognizable anime brands in the English-speaking world is a story of rapid expansion, multiple corporate handoffs, and an industry that transformed around it.

  Who were the founders, and what did they build? What happened when the company outgrew its origins? And why does the Manga Entertainment name still exist today, decades after the original company essentially dissolved into a chain of larger corporations?

• 2. Island Records Roots

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  Chris Blackwell and Andy Frain founded Manga Entertainment in London in 1991, with Laurence Guinness playing a key role, as a subsidiary of Island Records' Island World Group. The company was originally called Island World Communications before taking on the Manga name. IWC took over the company number for Golden Square Music, though it had no actual relationship to either IWC or Manga in any meaningful prior sense.

  The music industry parentage shaped how Manga moved into new markets. By late 1993, Manga UK had entered Australia, riding what the company described as strong import sales. Their first choice for an Australian distributor was Village Roadshow, but they ultimately launched titles there in January 1994 through PolyGram Video, the Australian division of Island's parent company PolyGram, alongside a local independent called Siren Entertainment.

• 3. North American Push

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  Manga Entertainment crossed into North America in 1993 by purchasing a company called L.A. Hero, which became the foundation for Manga U.S. The move put the brand on both sides of the Atlantic at roughly the same moment it was establishing a foothold in Australia, creating three distinct regional operations within just a few years of its founding.

  Australia's operations eventually passed to Madman Entertainment in the late 1990s. Madman inherited the Australian rights to the entire Manga U.S. and UK catalogue, and kept Siren Entertainment on as a distributor until 2001, when Madman launched its own distribution arm called The AV Channel.

• 4. Corporate Carousel

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  On the 13th of May 2004, IDT Entertainment, a division of IDT Corporation, announced it would purchase Manga U.S., folding it in as a subsidiary. The following year, 2005, Manga UK and Manga U.S. began operating independently from each other, even though they remained under the same ownership umbrella. Liberty Media then purchased IDT Entertainment in 2006 and renamed it Starz Media.

  By 2011, Manga U.S. had ceased licensing new products after the release of Redline and was absorbed into Starz Media. On the 8th of August 2012, Liberty Media announced it would spin off Starz Media as a separate publicly traded company. That spin-off completed on the 15th of January 2013, bringing all subsidiaries along with it.

• 5. The UK Branch Diverges

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  On the 26th of February 2015, the UK branch was acquired from Starz Media, together with its parent Anchor Bay UK, by managing director Colin Lomax. Anchor Bay UK was renamed Platform Entertainment, which held exclusive rights to the Manga Entertainment branding and catalogue in the UK and Ireland.

  In June 2016, Lionsgate announced it would acquire Starz Inc., a deal completed in December 2016. That same month, Kaleidoscope Film Distribution announced it had purchased Platform Entertainment and confirmed it would split Manga UK off to operate separately. After Platform Entertainment stopped distributing Manga titles, releases in the UK shifted to Spirit Entertainment. Colin Lomax, who had engineered the UK branch's independence, died between Christmas 2017 and New Year's Day 2018.

• 6. What Remains

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  Lionsgate Home Entertainment relaunched Manga U.S.'s website along with its Facebook and Twitter pages in 2017, signaling a possible revival of the brand in North America. That revival never fully materialized. Lionsgate licenses the Manga Entertainment brand name from Crunchyroll, which absorbed the UK branch in 2022 under the name Crunchyroll UK and Ireland, also currently known as Crunchyroll Ltd.

  As of April 2026, Manga U.S.'s website had shut down entirely. Some titles that once carried the Manga Entertainment label, including Ghost in the Shell, have since been rereleased under the main Lionsgate banner, with the Manga name no longer in front of them.