Crunchyroll announced a new partnership with Hayate and Line Digital Frontier Corporation to turn a slate of popular webtoons into anime, the streamer revealed during its showcase panel at New York Comic Con 2026. The Crunchyroll webtoon anime adaptations will cover roughly 15 titles, according to Polygon, pulling source material directly from Line Digital Frontier’s mobile app.
Hayate, the anime production company established by Aniplex, will lead development and production on the projects. Crunchyroll will stream the resulting anime exclusively in select territories, per Polygon’s reporting from the panel.
The Details Behind The Webtoon Partnership
The three companies confirmed only a handful of specifics at this stage. Line Digital Frontier, a subsidiary of Webtoon Entertainment, supplies the source stories through its app, while Hayate handles the anime side of production. Crunchyroll’s role is distribution, with streaming rights limited to select regions rather than a worldwide rollout.
Out of the roughly 15 webtoons in the pipeline, three have been named so far: The Remarried Empress, Teenage Mercenary and The Boxer. Polygon reported these as the first titles confirmed from the slate during the Crunchyroll Showcase.
What It Means For Anime And Webtoon Fans
For fans who already follow these webtoons through Line Digital Frontier’s app, the news means their favorite stories are headed to screen with a dedicated production partner in Hayate. Crunchyroll subscribers in participating territories will get exclusive access once episodes roll out, though no release dates have been announced for any of the three confirmed titles or the remaining titles in the slate.
The scale of the announcement, nearly 15 webtoons in development at once, signals a broader effort to mine webtoon platforms for anime material rather than adapting titles one at a time.
Context: Crunchyroll Storyworks And The Hayate Pipeline
This webtoon push follows closely on the heels of another structural move by Crunchyroll’s parent company. Sony launched Crunchyroll Storyworks, a new division dedicated to anime and live-action adaptations developed with Japanese creators, according to Variety. Storyworks is designed to expand the project pipeline for Hayate, Crunchyroll’s joint venture with Aniplex, meaning the webtoon slate announced at New York Comic Con fits into a larger strategy Sony has been building out over the past several days.
Hayate’s dual role, serving both the Storyworks initiative and this new webtoon partnership, points to the company becoming a central production hub for Crunchyroll’s expanding slate of Japanese-creator projects.
What Comes Next
No premiere dates or additional title reveals have been confirmed beyond The Remarried Empress, Teenage Mercenary and The Boxer. Crunchyroll has not detailed which territories will carry the exclusive streaming rights or when production begins on the remaining titles in the roughly 15-webtoon slate. Further announcements would likely come through future Crunchyroll panels or official releases tied to Hayate and Line Digital Frontier.
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