Japan's No9 raises fresh funds from LINE Manga operator for webtoon push
What's the deal? Japanese manga IP publisher No9Dealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has raised additional funding from LINE Digital Frontier, which operates the LINE Manga service. The round, announced November 9, 2026, was led by LINE Digital Frontier; the amount was not disclosed.
What's the endgame? No9 plans to use the money to strengthen its webtoon business and push its original titles overseas. The company produces Kami Blood Savior and I Alone Am the Strongest Transcender , two of the most popular domestic webtoons aimed at male readers.
Why now? The investment deepens a capital and business partnership the two firms launched in December 2024 to build No9's original webtoon production and expand abroad. It also sits within LINE Digital Frontier's broader US$76.9M, three-year plan to invest in Japan-originated content.
A concrete test: No9's new series The Assassin Hero's Star Voyage will get a worldwide simultaneous release through WEBTOON Entertainment's Global Drop initiative, which launched in September and aims to deliver titles globally at once.
What could go wrong? Few Japanese webtoons have found a foreign audience, and the industry has yet to produce sustained overseas hits. "Japanese webtoon titles have struggled to achieve sustained success abroad," WEBTOON has acknowledged, citing language, cultural, and distribution hurdles.
The signal: The deal ties a Japanese IP producer to a major global distribution platform under LINE Digital Frontier's "Japan to Global" banner. Whether that structure can convert domestic hits into worldwide ones remains the open question for the sector.
Read more: prtimes.jp
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
