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If there’s one thing that fans might expect from a manga publisher, it’s to push into new media via animation or filmmaking, but one of the largest manga publishers in Japan is looking to a different medium altogether with one of its latest ventures, as attendees at PAX West 2025 can discover for themselves, with Shueisha Games demonstrating that gaming can add new audiences — and an entirely new international base of creators — to its already extensive library.

“We're a subsidiary company of Shueisha, which is the manga publisher for stuff like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Naruto, and the entire Shonen Jump,” Alonzo Omotegawa, community development associate at the company, tells Popverse on the show floor at the Seattle Convention Center. “One of the CEOs and the top people on the board was thinking, ‘Well, we're good at publication with all these creative mangas and stories — why can't we do that for the video game industry, specifically for indies?’ Japan actually doesn’t really have much of a support background for indie developers. We wanted to change that.”

The company is showing off six titles at PAX West: Bakudo, Sekiro Dodgeball, Atmosfar, No Straight Roads 2, Opus — “a deep, emotional, story adventure, basically about a guy losing his way and his life, but ended up in this crazy ethereal realm… think of it as like Spirited Away with camera mechanics” — and Omotegawa’s personal favorite, ANTHEM#9, which he describes as “a puzzle gem match deck builder, as if the gameplay is going to be like Candy Crush and Slay the Spire had a baby.”

“Our focus is to bring really talented indie developers based in Tokyo and bring that out to the world,” Omotegawa said. “But we also don't want to just, I guess, cut out opportunity just focusing on Tokyo people. We also want it with international people. So, Atmosfar is a developer based in Sweden, Opus and Vapid are developers based in Taiwan, Metronomik is based in Malaysia. Our main focus is basically this saying we have in the company: Shaving off diamonds in the rough and bring that brightness to the world.”

Shueisha Games can be found at Booth 525 in the Arch Exhibitor Hall of the Seattle Convention Center through September 1, and online at Sheuiesha Games' website for those not lucky enough to get to PAX West 2025.

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