About the studio
Media Factory was founded December 1, 1986 as a subsidiary of recruitment giant Recruit Co., Ltd., which is a slightly unusual pedigree for a publisher that would go on to shape a chunk of anime's source material. It published Soul Eater and ran the Monthly Comic Alive and MF Bunko J imprints, sitting on production committees for adaptations of its own titles along the way. *A job-listings company accidentally becoming a manga powerhouse, that's a plot twist.* Kadokawa Corporation acquired Media Factory for roughly 8 billion yen in 2011, and by October 2013 it had been fully absorbed into Kadokawa, continuing today as an imprint rather than a standalone company. Media Factory's independent chapter only lasted about 27 years, but in that window it managed to leave a real mark on manga and light novel publishing, one that Kadokawa has kept alive under its own roof ever since.