Funimation to Acquire Crunchyroll (Crunchyroll to swallow Funimation content)

[Crimzon]

Originally Posted by Glorian

Might be wishful thinking on my part, but if their release slate was kept slim because of the upcoming move, could we see larger release slates once that's done? Not counting on it, but it would be nice.

This is my hope as well.

[Batman1980]

Originally Posted by Crimzon

This is my hope as well.

Let's hold our breath

[Watershipdownisgood]

Yeah hopefully this means releases of anime shows that don't have Blu Rays yet like Yatterman Night, Chrono Crusade, and others.

[Crimzon]

Originally Posted by Watershipdownisgood

Yeah hopefully this means releases of anime shows that don't have Blu Rays yet like Yatterman Night, Chrono Crusade, and others.

Radiant Season 2, Part 2, Mob Psycho III, Saga of Tanya: The Movie, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes Season 4 please?

[Glorian]

Originally Posted by Crimzon

Radiant Season 2, Part 2, Mob Psycho III, Saga of Tanya: The Movie, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes Season 4 please?

Unfortunately, even if they do up their release schedule, they're probably not going to release stuff they've been sitting on for years; if they'd wanted to, they would have released them many years ago. If they do release more, it'll be current stuff; more titles from 2023 not being skipped.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by Glorian

Might be wishful thinking on my part, but if their release slate was kept slim because of the upcoming move, could we see larger release slates once that's done? Not counting on it, but it would be nice.

I wouldn't count on it given how small the slates have been since June 2022. There's only a handful of months with slates comparable to FUNimation even when you didn't count FUNimation re-releases.

FUNimation releases by month:
January 2022
February 2022
March 2022
April 2022
May 2022

Crunchyroll releases by month:
June 2022
July 2022
August 2022
September 2022
October 2022
November 2022
December 2022
January 2023
February 2023
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023
July 2023
August 2023
September 2023
October 2023
November 2023
December 2023
January 2024
February 2024
March 2024

Originally Posted by Watershipdownisgood

Yeah hopefully this means releases of anime shows that don't have Blu Rays yet like Yatterman Night, Chrono Crusade, and others.

I wouldn't count on the catalog stuff. Much of that stuff is so old now that they wouldn't get much out of sales from a Blu-ray re-release at this point, especially something like Yatterman Night which was very unpopular when it was new, hence the DVD-only release. Chrono Crusade while popular when it was new is now mostly forgotten (it just turned 20 a few months ago), and it also doesn't have a Blu-ray in Japan. FUNimation stopped doing their own upscales a long time ago, the last being Wolf's Rain in 2017, and what happens in like Europe has like no effect here.

Only like Discotek Media manages to get rather old titles to sell anything, and even then, it's around 2,000-3,000 units at best as Justin Sevakis stated most of Discotek's catalog sells around that. Also keep in mind what something has to sell to stay in-print.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...7#post21597447
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...6#post21736696

FUNimation stopped caring about catalog titles, especially home video-wise a long time ago, and after they rebranded as Crunchyroll, LLC in March 2022, they especially do not care about catalog titles for home video.

[Glorian]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

I wouldn't count on it given how small the slates have been since June 2022. There's only a handful of months with slates comparable to FUNimation even when you didn't count FUNimation re-releases.

FUNimation releases by month:
January 2022
February 2022
March 2022
April 2022
May 2022

Crunchyroll releases by month:
June 2022
July 2022
August 2022
September 2022
October 2022
November 2022
December 2022
January 2023
February 2023
March 2023
April 2023
May 2023
June 2023
July 2023
August 2023
September 2023
October 2023
November 2023
December 2023
January 2024
February 2024
March 2024

Oh, I'm not really counting on it, but it would be nice. Even so, their release schedule could increase even without hitting Funi's old levels; even if they did 7-8 releases a month instead of 5-6, those one or two extra releases a month would add up to a lot more shows in the long run. At the very least, I'd guess that's why Chainsaw Man and the Konosuba movie were released in the UK but not the US; they were held back here because of this change.

I still don't really understand the reason for the shift in release slates anyway; Funi bought Crunchyroll, not the other way around, so I'd have thought the Funi staff would have just continued regular business under a Crunchyroll skin (i.e. the same type of release schedules as before). But clearly the purchase changed something.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by Glorian

Oh, I'm not really counting on it, but it would be nice. Even so, their release schedule could increase even without hitting Funi's old levels; even if they did 7-8 releases a month instead of 5-6, those one or two extra releases a month would add up to a lot more shows in the long run. At the very least, I'd guess that's why Chainsaw Man and the Konosuba movie were released in the UK but not the US; they were held back here because of this change.

I still don't really understand the reason for the shift anyway; Funi bought Crunchyroll, not the other way around, so I'd have thought the Funi staff would have just continued regular business under a Crunchyroll skin (i.e. the same type of release schedules as before). But clearly the purchase changed something.

Much of the shift is likely due to management at Sony Pictures which owns them both, and so much of the industry outside of asia. Also many of the Crunchyroll staff ended up in different roles. It's clear they're pushing streaming much more, especially given how home video hasn't been the main money-maker for close to a decade at this point, it's a smaller priority. While like physical manga sales have exploded, anime on home video has not, the sales remain mostly stagnant.

The push for digital-only is a bad strategy though, you're reducing the number of revenue streams (again, I wonder why the only way Netflix can increase profit now is to jack up prices a lot on a yearly basis, why is there basically only one single revenue stream?), and while it's not where it used to be in the 2000s, you can still make money through home video. Many of the people buying are already Crunchyroll subscribers, it's a way to make them pay for the same content twice, and they stubbornly refuse to realize that.

[AreaFive]

Originally Posted by Crimzon

Saga of Tanya: The Movie

[ZeroRo]

Originally Posted by Glorian

Unfortunately, even if they do up their release schedule, they're probably not going to release stuff they've been sitting on for years; if they'd wanted to, they would have released them many years ago. If they do release more, it'll be current stuff; more titles from 2023 not being skipped.

An example of a missed opportunity D gray man Hallow

[psychopuppet]

We are only going to see stuff from CR Sony feels is appropriate to sell at Walmart.

[BoopityBoop]

Originally Posted by ZeroRo

An example of a missed opportunity D gray man Hallow

That series had its Japanese Blu-ray release cancelled. It's safe to say that it'll never get a release over here.

[Gowho]

Originally Posted by ZeroRo

An example of a missed opportunity D gray man Hallow

Funimation's guilty of many things but not releasing Hallow was not their fault.

[Takao]

The astonishing thing to me is the implication that Sony's owned Funimation since October 2017 yet hadn't taken home video distribution internal until now. Crunchyroll (under quasi-Warner) didn't do home video themselves and had scattered deals across four different publishers (Discotek, Funimation, Sentai, Viz), but that shouldn't impact the titles Funimation held or licensed themselves. Did they sign a 10 year contract with Universal or something?

[Nothing371]

Originally Posted by BigOnAnime

While like physical manga sales have exploded, anime on home video has not,

See I don't understand this. I guess it must be very young people whom haven't started much of a collection.

But I couldn't start collecting manga even if I wanted to; it takes up an enormous amount of space. I barely have room anymore for regular and hardcover books that are important. The bookcases have been full for over a decade. But it seems even stranger to me when I consider it from the JP household perspective where people buy fewer and nicer things, take good care of their stuff, and don't have a lot of extra space.

[BigOnAnime]

Originally Posted by ZeroRo

An example of a missed opportunity D gray man Hallow

It never got released because Katsura Hoshino was unhappy and it led to no physical release anywhere in the world. The Japanese home video release was cancelled. Yes we have had instances of getting stuff here when the Japanese release was cancelled, but this was at the request of the mangaka herself. Remember that the original creator has a lot of control over their creation in Japan, and thus worldwide. This is not the fault of FUNimation/Crunchyroll. It would have gotten a release in like late 2017/early 2018 if not for the poster controversy, and probably a few other things with that anime adaptation.

Translation of Hoshino's Instagram post by togaochi on Tumblr

Do not make this about Yullen. It is not about Yullen.

Hoshino clearly states that fans are welcome to enjoy her characters how they wish. What she is upset about is that the animator who created the poster in question chose to specifically take her characters out of character and do the "sex/yaoi sells" route. Which is disrespectful to her and her characters. Especially when they didn't even run it by her beforehand, and the art, quite frankly, is shitty because of how hard they tried to sexualize it. Kanda has literally been mutilated, I shit you not. The human body does not twist like that, and his abdomen could grate cheese for Christ's sake. It's embarrassing.

So please, to the fans out there getting hurt and salty because they're assuming Yullen is involved, that is not the case. And to those of you using this to your Yullen-hating advantage, as a fellow person not on board with the ship I suggest you grow the **** up.

Hoshino and her content have been disrespected by the anime company and she is upset about it, don't mitigate this into a stupid shipping war.

As for whether Hoshino goes through with deleting her Instagram, that is her choice. We should continue to support her in whatever decision she makes. #keepwalkinghoshinosensei

https://www.deviantart.com/chikitawo...hino-628152957

Originally Posted by Nothing371

See I don't understand this. I guess it must be very young people whom haven't started much of a collection.

But I couldn't start collecting manga even if I wanted to; it takes up an enormous amount of space. I barely have room anymore for regular and hardcover books that are important. The bookcases have been full for over a decade. But it seems even stranger to me when I consider it from the JP household perspective where people buy fewer and nicer things, take good care of their stuff, and don't have a lot of extra space.

I'll never understand it either. You would think as anime exploded in popularity, sales would increase and be back more like they were in the 2000s anime DVD bubble, but only manga has seen the physical sales increase, despite the cost and space required.

As much as I'm a diehard fan of physical media, I decided quite a while ago that for many manga, I would be content with much of it being digital. It's been quite a while since I regularly read and collected manga (primarily 2009-2013), and I do intend on getting back into it someday, but it does take up a lot of space, and my collection isn't that individual big series-wise. It may be strange to hear this from someone that loves 2000s singles anime releases and has double to triple+ dipped on many series, but so many manga and light novels take far more space than say my twelve Eureka Seven DVD singles. Like just look at how things compare to all 22 volumes of the Strike the Blood light novels.



My plans are to finish collecting many titles I already started despite their length (Ex: Rin-Ne, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Arata: The Legend), and then for stuff that's like 20+ volumes, I would buy only the first volume physically, then the rest digital. If it's like under 20 volumes, I would be fine getting it all physically, depending on the title. Only a few really long series would I want physically, that being like Bleach, Naruto, One Piece (the old Big Three). Light novels, I'm not much of a reader there, so I won't be collecting much there physically. So far I've collected just Strike the Blood, and I'm collecting Hollow Regalia (from Gakuto Mikumo, the creator of Strike the Blood) and Date A Live. Still need to get around to reading more of them, I haven't even started Hollow Regalia nor Date A Live.

[BigOnAnime]

I'll leave this here...

Originally Posted by WTK

It will be interesting to see what changes the public will be able to see. I don't expect things to remain the same.

Some things to consider (at least for me)...

Solicitation:
- Will the monthly slate still be announced in one announcement? Or will they scatter them (similar to how WHV handles VIZ Media home video releases)?
- Will it still be announced around the middle of each month (scattered or not)?
- Will the number of home video releases actually change per month (About the same? Fewer? More?)?
- Will more re-releases be released? Will select OOP titles come back in-print?

Pricing:
- Will the MSRP increase (again) especially for LE?
- Will the consumer discount (vs. the MSRP) be even smaller?
- Will the MSRP change from ending in $0.98 to $0.99?

Fulfillment:
- Will the warehouse in Grime, IA going remain as the primary one?
- Should we expect more pre-orders to ship around/after the release date?

https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/for...351#post859351

[TThomas]

https://help.funimation.com/hc/en-us...nd-of-services

Funimation streaming service will shut down April 2nd.

Still a number of shows is not yet available on Crunchyroll (at least in the US) or missing a language option:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...DpvmHoE-c/edit

[El_Fez]

And yet again, we clearly see: you do not own any digital media.

[AniPhantom]

Originally Posted by El_Fez

And yet again, we clearly see: you do not own any digital media.

And this, sirs, is why we buy physical media.