Crunchyroll is lining up a pipeline of webtoon anime. At its showcase during New York Comic Con, it announced a co-production partnership with HAYATE and LINE Digital Frontier aimed at adapting LINE Manga original webtoons, with around 15 titles targeted under the deal.

The first wave already has names. The Boxer is newly confirmed as a TV anime, Teenage Mercenary now has a 2027 broadcast window and The Remarried Empress was announced the same day.

Who does what in the deal

According to the joint release published by LINE Digital Frontier on October 9, the three companies will work together from the planning stage. HAYATE leads development and production with Crunchyroll and LINE Digital Frontier, and Crunchyroll gets exclusive streaming of the finished shows in certain territories. The release does not list which territories.

The ownership lines are worth knowing. HAYATE is an anime production company founded in 2025 as a joint venture between Aniplex and Crunchyroll. LINE Digital Frontier runs the LINE Manga app in Japan and sits under WEBTOON Entertainment. Crunchyroll is itself a joint venture of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Aniplex, which belongs to Sony Music Entertainment. So this is largely a Sony-side production machine teaming up with one of the largest webtoon platforms in the world.

The Boxer gets a Japanese and Korean studio team

The Boxer, by JH, follows a teenager named Yu who lets bullies beat him in an alley until a legendary trainer known as K spots a monstrous talent in him and takes him on as his last student. LINE Digital Frontier says the webtoon has passed 1.06 billion global views as of September 2026.

The cast:

  • Yu: Kouki Uchiyama
  • Ryu: Kensho Ono
  • K: Tomokazu Seki
  • J: Toshiyuki Toyonaga

Animation is a co-production between new studio breccia and Korean studio STUDIO JEMI, with a Japanese and a Korean director sharing the chair. Masahiro Suwa handles character design and Toshiya Ono writes the series composition and scripts. No broadcast date was given, but a teaser PV is out.

Teenage Mercenary brings heavy hitters behind the camera

Teenage Mercenary is the one with the most proven staff. Manabu Ono directs and handles series composition, Koji Haneda does character design, Hiroyuki Sawano scores it and J.C.STAFF animates. It now has a 2027 broadcast window and a new teaser visual.

The webtoon, written by YC and drawn by rakhyun, follows a high schooler who survived a plane crash at age eight and spent ten years as a mercenary before coming home to his family. It ranked first in LINE Manga's annual rankings in Japan in 2023 and again in 2024, and the release puts global views at more than 2.84 billion as of September 2026. More is coming through the official site at teenagemercenary-anime.com.

What it means for viewers here

Crunchyroll already streams in the Philippines, so these shows landing there would be the natural path. Still, the release only promises exclusivity in "certain regions," so Southeast Asian availability is something to confirm once each show gets a date. In the meantime, all three webtoons can be read in English on WEBTOON.