Last week, workers at Seven Seas Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based publishing company that sells licensed manga, webcomics, and light novels from Japan, formed the United Workers of Seven Seas union. The union claims Seven Seas employees and freelancers are being “overworked” and “underpaid.” But the company is refusing to voluntarily recognize the union.
Since its founding in 2004, Seven Seas Entertainment has become the “number one independent publisher” in the world thanks to its licensing of popular manga like Dai Dark, Devilman Grimoire and LGBTQ+-centric manga like Bloom Into You and My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness. While Seven Seas’ success, especially during covid, led to staff growth increasing from 10 to 40 members, UW7S claims it also left employees “shouldering” the company’s growing pains without receiving “benefits otherwise typical of the publishing industry.”