Crunchyroll and Funimation Team up to Bring Anime to Everyone

[Steven Bogos]

Crunchyroll and Funimation Team up to Bring Anime to Everyone

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Anime fans rejoice, the two biggest English-translated anime providers are teaming up to your benefit.

If you're an anime fan, you've no doubt heard of Crunchyroll - the biggest independent anime streaming service, and Funimation - the largest North American licencor and distributor of anime. Well today I've got some really good news: the two companies are teaming up to bring as much anime to as many people as possible!

What does this mean? Well, Starting on Thursday, Crunchyroll viewers can watch subtitled versions of Funimation's summer simulcast titles, including: D.Gray-man Hallow, First Love Monster, and Puzzle & Dragons X. Additionally, some absolute anime classics that Funimation has in its catalog, like Cowboy Bebop and Psycho-Pass are available right now on Crunchyroll.

On the other end, FunimationNow viewers will be able to watch Broadcast Dubs of some of Crunchyroll's summer simulcast titles like 91 Days, Mob Psycho 100, and Orange. Gen Fukunaga, CEO and president of Funimation, told Anime News Network [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-09-08/crunchyroll-funimation-announce-partnership-to-share-content-via-streaming-home-video-est/.106234] that the decision about which of Crunchyroll's titles will get an English dub is "primarily being driven by Funimation," but that the two companies meet every week to talk about titles.

Lastly, Funimation will be handling the distribution for Crunchyroll's burgeoning home video release titles and EST (electronic sell-through) releases.

"The problem is, the market was fragmenting up a bit - you had other players coming in, [like] Amazon [and] Hulu ... The issue with some of those big players is that they're maybe not as concerned with the fan experience as Crunchyroll and Funimation," Fukunaga explained. "working together ... [Funimation and Crunchyroll] can provide a better experience ... that really works for the fans."

It's a good day to be an anime fan!

Source: Anime News Network [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2016-09-08/crunchyroll-funimation-announce-partnership-to-share-content-via-streaming-home-video-est/.106234]

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[Lightspeaker]

"The problem is, the market was fragmenting up a bit - you had other players coming in, [like] Amazon [and] Hulu ... The issue with some of those big players is that they're maybe not as concerned with the fan experience as Crunchyroll and Funimation," Fukunaga explained. "working together ... [Funimation and Crunchyroll] can provide a better experience ... that really works for the fans."

That is very hypocritical coming from the CEO of Funimation to be honest. For years now they've had an absolutely "wonderful" habit of buying up the rights to the English-language version streams of various anime series. ALL the rights to English-language version streaming, for every English language territory.

What's the problem with that? Well...until this year Funimation only served North America. That is to say it was not possible to sign up for their service outside of North America. Therefore if you want English-language anime in...say...the UK then you've had to hope that Crunchyroll or Netflix or someone else would get the rights to it. Otherwise you'd simply not be able to stream it since Funimation would actively lock it away from you.

I find it a bit rich for the CEO of Funimation to be going on about being "concerned with the fan experience" and the "market...fragmenting up a bit" when his company has been quite literally denying people access to series for so long BY fragmenting the market and then geolocking those series that they managed to get.

Still, this is good news if we can finally get our hands on some of the stuff that they've been keeping from us. And Crunchyroll is a wonderful company.

 

[The White Hunter]

Know what's really shitty?

None of it fucking comes to Europe.

None of it comes the to the fuckign UK and Ireland.

And I would pay for Crunchyroll, if I could get funimation content outside of year-late DVD releases!

 

[gigastar]

And yet they still wont beat the service offered by the bootleg streaming sites.

 

[Saelune]

Crunchyroll and Funimation Team up to Bring Anime to Everyone [who pays for the service].

Just adding that for the sake of clarity. Its fine I suppose. If I had the money for it, Id probably pay for the service, but its still something that should not be overlooked.

 

[Kaymish]

will it be coming down here to NZ ? probably not which means i will have to either grab those DVD,s and Blurays that manage to not be region locked or resort to less ethical means and i bet those less ethical means will still be better quality than the official distributors

 

[Zontar]

will it be coming down here to NZ ?

From what I've read it seem Funimation is using this as a jumping off point for streaming across the English speaking world (it's definitely coming to the UK), and it even seems they're leaving the door open for non-English dubs in the future.

 

[Lightspeaker]

will it be coming down here to NZ ?

From what I've read it seem Funimation is using this as a jumping off point for streaming across the English speaking world (it's definitely coming to the UK), and it even seems they're leaving the door open for non-English dubs in the future.

Sheer speculation here on my part: I wonder if Funimation's attempt to break into the UK market earlier this year has been a colossal failure. That definitely isn't outside the realms of possibility given that they've snubbed the UK for years. They have zero market penetration here prior to that attempt given their locking their content to North America and the act of doing so may well have had the effect of winding up a lot of people to the point of flat out not using their service. I know I personally very deliberately haven't signed up to their thing because honestly I get plenty of anime on Crunchyroll and Funimation made it VERY clear for many years they didn't want me as a customer, so they're not getting me so easily now they've decided they do want my money after all; frankly I'm annoyed. In comparison I've had an active Crunchyroll subscription for at least two years straight now.

Outside of that I'm sure that a fair number of people have been driven to bootleg sites. As far as funimation streaming content goes...its not available here. At all. Full stop. Its not exactly a big step from there for people to rationalise that if Funimation is actively stopping you from paying for their service despite holding the rights to a series you like hostage then its not unreasonable to find other ways to access it. Logic along the lines of "if I COULD pay for it I WOULD, but they're stopping me". Personally I just go buy the discs if there's something I want to watch that I can't access on Crunchyroll, but my financial situation is better than most and DVD and Blu-Ray anime series can be expensive (I recently bought World Conquest:Zvezda Plot and it set me back ?27, hardly pocket change). Many people can't afford to do that and streaming services are crucial for their entertainment needs.

As a result their only possible chance of making any kind of inroads into UK streaming is to team up with probably the biggest UK player that is generally reasonably well-viewed and appreciated (even if they've had some pretty big hiccups themselves): Crunchyroll. It makes a lot of sense from the point of view of a failed attempt to get into the UK market.

 

[Fox12]

Does this mean we can finally get a decent blu-ray release of End of Eva and the Satoshi Kon filmography? No? Oh...

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I was giddy when i saw the news from Crunchyroll in my inbox this morning. But i already knew it deep down what i will see, when i'll search for Cowboy Bebop on the site:

Sorry, due to licensing limitations, videos are unavailable in your region.

Thanks for nothing, once again. I really want to pay for my animus but the industry makes it really hard for me. It seems i've to finish watching the few animes i can actually watch from europe and then start pirating the rest again, because there's just no way to get animes otherwise in europe.
Except maybe import them for like +100$ for half a season, to which i say fakka yuu.

 

[RaikuFA]

They're not taking it off of Hulu are they? Cause I have Hulu and I need my Jojo fix.

 

[Charli]

'Anime for everyone!' Unless you're outside the USA, in which case gtfo and buy our overpriced dvds.

 

[Orga777]

I always wonder how much of the region locking has to do with Crunchyroll/Funimation and how much has to do with what the Japanese studio's say when they agree to license out the shows. If the Japanese companies say that they can only stream X series in X countries, then that is what Crunchyroll/Funimation are going to do.

 

[barbzilla]

Crunchyroll and Funimation Team up to Bring Anime to Everyone [who pays for the service].

Just adding that for the sake of clarity. Its fine I suppose. If I had the money for it, Id probably pay for the service, but its still something that should not be overlooked.

Not exactly true. If you re-read the OP, you will see that it states CR + FUNi are allowing anyone (regardless of subscription, you just need a free account) to watch said shows in English Subtitles, but if you want to spring for the sub, then you can get an English Dubbed version of the shows to watch.

 

[Fappy]

Glad to see 91 Days is getting a dub so soon. It's been really great so far, and considering it takes place in the US I hope they get some authentic accents for the dub. IIRC it mostly takes place in Illinois.

 

[Lightspeaker]

I always wonder how much of the region locking has to do with Crunchyroll/Funimation and how much has to do with what the Japanese studio's say when they agree to license out the shows. If the Japanese companies say that they can only stream X series in X countries, then that is what Crunchyroll/Funimation are going to do.

Er...that's exactly what licensing is for. Licensing is sometimes done by language, sometimes done by region; but in general is an agreement that "you can stream this in X countries in X language".

The problem is Funimation's tendency to buy up the English-language streaming rights for EVERYWHERE, but only serving North America. Japanese companies have no control over whether the one who is licensing it actually streams somewhere and assuming the license is for a fixed amount and not a % cut then they won't care either.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

"The problem is, the market was fragmenting up a bit - you had other players coming in, [like] Amazon [and] Hulu ... The issue with some of those big players is that they're maybe not as concerned with the fan experience as Crunchyroll and Funimation,"

Other companies are taking money away from us and we don't like having competition.

 

[ASnogarD]

I wanted to watch One Piece and / or DBZ but...

'This video is not available in your region'

Co-incidentally I can pay ?100's to buy physical DvD sets, and companies wonder why piracy is so rife.
A suit sits and decides its not worth it, so a region cant legally stream it, and people are expected to just agree and walk off.

I remember when getting anime was only possible via fan subs, someone in Japan would copy TV programs and send digitised video to the groups who would try subbing the program and then distributing it, often via IRC bots.
It was only when the suits noticed that this was kind of popular, a fan based had grown around this 'Japanese Cartoons', a fan base no one was monetising...

I dont mind giving CR a few pennies but why cant we at least have equal value in the UK subscription to the US subscriptions.

Yeah I know, business and licensing, just not that long ago the suits didn't care about some idiot westerners going gaga over Japanese cartoons.

 

[Saelune]

Crunchyroll and Funimation Team up to Bring Anime to Everyone [who pays for the service].

Just adding that for the sake of clarity. Its fine I suppose. If I had the money for it, Id probably pay for the service, but its still something that should not be overlooked.

Not exactly true. If you re-read the OP, you will see that it states CR + FUNi are allowing anyone (regardless of subscription, you just need a free account) to watch said shows in English Subtitles, but if you want to spring for the sub, then you can get an English Dubbed version of the shows to watch.

Im not seeing where it says anything about free.

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

Know what's really shitty?

None of it fucking comes to Europe.

None of it comes the to the fuckign UK and Ireland.

And I would pay for Crunchyroll, if I could get funimation content outside of year-late DVD releases!

Except you are wrong, if you have a Crunchyroll subscription some of it will be available in European countries.

OT: I'm fine with this, three new series for Norwegian viewers. Sure, I've seen it before, but if this means more anime in Europe I'm happy.

Crunchyroll and Funimation Team up to Bring Anime to Everyone [who pays for the service].

Just adding that for the sake of clarity. Its fine I suppose. If I had the money for it, Id probably pay for the service, but its still something that should not be overlooked.

Not exactly true. If you re-read the OP, you will see that it states CR + FUNi are allowing anyone (regardless of subscription, you just need a free account) to watch said shows in English Subtitles, but if you want to spring for the sub, then you can get an English Dubbed version of the shows to watch.

Im not seeing where it says anything about free.

It's free in the sense that you get shit quality, ads and later than premium users. At least on CR, no idea when it comes to Funi.