Crunchyroll Not Moving Into Manga

In June, Crunchyroll received a $750,000 strategic investment from Japanese cell phone manga distributor Bitway, leading to speculation that the site had plans to begin offering digital manga. In a new interview with About.com, Crunchyroll CEO Kun Gao explains that the investment is not primarily for hosting digital manga, but rather a fund for developing proprietary digital manga distribution technology. While Crunchyroll may eventually add more digital manga offerings to its site, Crunchyroll is not presently licensing manga titles for digital distribution. Crunchyroll is developing software that other publishers and distributors can use to distribute manga online.