Within the past few days, Crunchyroll has been in a lot of drama, they have esentially pissed
off most of their users due to the recent problematic decision they've been making.
If you want to watch anime legitimately, then Crunchyroll is your only option,
and they know this. With Funimation gone, which was their primary competitor,
they can do whatever they want. I'll be addressing a few important points in
this video to answer the question: is Crunchyroll attempting to monopolize western anime streaming?
This isn't a full story on Crunchyroll video, so I'll be keeping this section short and concise,
with only information relevant to the full picture. When Crunchyroll first started,
they were a completely different company. There weren't any major issues. We had both Funimation
and Crunchyroll, both companies trying their hardest to gather new users on their platform.
Whenever any company out there in the world has any form of competition, this leads to all the
companies involved trying to one-up the rest and this proves beneficial to the consumers.
The perfect example I could give you is Netflix. They have multiple competitors such as Disney+,
HBO Max and many more. Netflix has to keep improving their platform so that they could
keep their users, this eventually lead them to start producing Netflix-original shows
and many other minor changes. They couldn't get away with the same formula,
since the other streaming platforms were already doing it better. But what happens when they don't
have any competition? What happens when they're allowed to get away with anything? Since if you,
as a consumer, don't like the platform, there's nowhere else you can go.
In 2014, Crunchyroll was a subsidiary of Otter Media, which is a subsidiary of
AT&T's WarnerMedia. 2 years later, Crunchyroll was partnering with Funimation, Crunchyroll
would stream selected Funimation titles, while Funimation would stream selected Crunchyroll
titles, as well as their upcoming dubbed content. A win, win situation for all parties involved.
However a year later in 2017, Sony would acquire Funimation.
This deal allowed Funimation to have synergies with Sony's Animax and Kids Station divisions
and "direct access to the creative pipeline". This would lead to the partnership of Crunchyroll and
Funimation to end. It’s important to also know that Sony owns Aniplex, A-1 Pictures, Cloverworks
and many other companies. It would make sense why the ended up purchasing Funimation. Overall,
there wouldn't be any major complaints, but this would all change in December 2020.
Sony and Funimation would acquire Crunchyroll from AT&T and WarnerMedia. Following the acquisition,
Sony stated that they wanted to create a unified anime subscription experience using their existing
anime businesses as soon as possible. This led to Funimation merging with Crunchyroll to create
one large anime streaming platform. Concerns were building up, but most of us were hopefull
that this wouldn't lead to any major changes. But unfortunately, they would make some announcements
that would change the company forever and showcase the direction the company was heading.
This is just the start, who knows what future changes they will make.
This also isn’t the first time Crunchyroll has been in some controversy, in 2020, it
was revealed that Crunchyroll severely underpaid their translators, they have 5 million paid users,
and can afford to make Crunchyroll original shows, but are still underpaying their translators.
$80 dollars per episode, an amount you can hardly live with. It’s severely inconsistent,
you could get a dialogue-intensive episode, a full fighting episode, or something beyond your
expertise. They’ve been doing this for decades. I’m not even gonna mention the unfaithful,
political and downright incorrect translations we’ve seen before.
If you wanna learn more about this, I’ve linked both a video and article in the description below.
We’re getting a bit sidetracked but let’s return to the meat of this video.
The first news we received after the merge with Crunchyroll and Funimation,
was that all of Funimation’s content will be transferred to Crunchyroll, great news right?
What followed next was the complete opposite, dozens of animes removed from their platform.
Food Wars, No Game No Life, Akame Ga Kill and so much more. I’ll put the full list on screen so you
can check it out yourself. This just makes the content library of Crunchyroll so much smaller
than it already is. If you’re wondering why they’ll get removed, well, Crunchyroll has
been following this for quite a few years now. The reason behind the removal is an expired license.
Basically, Crunchyroll acquires a limited-time license from the producers of the anime
in order to stream on the site. And all of these animes are owned by Sentai Filmworks and they
will be moved to Hidive. Hidive is a sort of recent anime streaming service owned by Sentai
Filmworks so it makes sense why they’ve decided to move these animes to their own platform.
What I don’t understand is why Crunchyroll only gave a one-week
notice about the removal. I’m sure they knew about the licensing much earlier,
but one week isn’t enough time to watch even a fraction of these shows. Sure,
the reasoning is understandable, and I’m glad Hidive is standing up against their monopoly,
but Crunchyroll’s next announcement wouldn’t be understandable at all and completely one-sided.
The next few announcements were equally as disappointing for both free users
and premium users of the Crunchyroll platform. They have decided to remove ad-supported viewing,
something they’ve had on their website for years. It’s very important to notice
that all currently available content will continue to be available to watch for free.
To watch all new and continuing series in their entirety, free users will
need to subscribe to one of Crunchyroll’s premium tiers, which start at $8 per month.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they make it a fully paid platform and increase the
subscription price in the near future. I can’t seem to find any logical reason for this change,
so many people watch these episodes with ad-supported viewing. Even though the ads
are ridiculously annoying, free users didn’t have any complaint because they
could legally watch these new episodes anytime, but that’s no longer the case.
Not everyone can afford a Crunchyroll subscription
and especially the younger audience who rely on the free ad-supported viewing.
All of the free tier users who can afford a subscription and want to support Crunchyroll
are already subscribed. This change is just pushing even more users to piracy websites.
If you want to support your favorite anime, a subscription to Crunchyroll barely does anything.
Purchasing merchandise such as Blu-rays, manga volumes or anything else officially
produced by them, is the best way to go. With Funimation gone, Hidive might be trying to take
their place and compete with Crunchyroll, but they still have a long way to go.
Hidive already has a decent library and a lower subscription price so who knows.
We do have something pretty interesting though, for future seasonal lineups Crunchyroll has been
planning on releasing more and more shows, at least that’s what it seems like. Their
Spring 2022 lineup is just stacked with every show you could possibly wish for.
I can understand that Crunchyroll is making some of these decisions featured in the video with good
intentions, hopefully, but they could be abrupt or unnecessary from a consumer’s standpoint.
So is Crunchyroll attempting to monopolize western anime streaming? I’ll leave it up to you,
the viewer, to decide on your own answer. That’s gonna be it for this video,
make sure to subscribe, comment, like the video and peace out.