Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - SonyFuniCrunchyKadoRoll
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TD912
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I’ve noticed CR recently being offered through Amazon Prime Video as a channel subscription. It’s a completely separate system from their existing site and apps. Guessing it’s another way to try and bump up subscriber numbers but it almost feels like they’re licensing content out under their own branding in a way.
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1261 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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Certain things about that Bloomberg article annoyed me, namely overplaying the supposed decline of Crunchyroll (things aren't going as well as Sony wants them to right now, but it's not "we're about to completely lose our massive lead and maybe go under bad") and fierce competition. Amazon wound things down on anime years ago, Anime Strike was a failure, they didn't extend the noitaminA deal, and many things on there now were put up by others (Ex: REMOW, Studio Khara). Amazon isn't that interested in pursuing anime themselves anymore.
Many examples used in that article were horribly outdated. For example, they brought up One Punch Man (which did hit CR, but only in like Europe). OPM S1 aired in 2015, and S2 aired in 2019. The reason it hit Hulu was because it had been licensed by VIZ Media, which has been using Hulu for simulcasts since InuYasha: The Final Act in 2009. Hulu has NEVER in its entire history licensed an anime directly, its entire library was put on there by other companies. Additionally in 2016, it purged nearly its entire library of anime. animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2016-05-27/.102530 https://web.archive.org/web/20160605014552/https://anitay.kinja.com/the-great-hulu-anime-purge-of-2016-1779962449 https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/7577-free-legal-streaming-anime-master-list-v2?p=562511#post562511 https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/7577-free-legal-streaming-anime-master-list-v2?p=562773#post562773 https://fandompost.vbulletin.net/forum/anime-manga-discussions/us-blu-ray-dvd-and-simulcast-industry-news/7577-free-legal-streaming-anime-master-list-v2?p=563035#post563035 With Netflix, Jojo was a good example, but Beastars and Little Witch Academia were not. Beastars aired in 2019, and Little Witch Academia aired in 2017. Netflix isn't really competiting with Crunchyroll because if they were, they would be trying to grab 10-20+ shows a season. Netflix has been in the delaycasting game since Knights of Sidonia in 2014 (though Starchild (RIP) didn't get the memo). Netflix vs. Crunchyroll simply doesn't look anything like FUNimation vs. Crunchyroll from 2015-2021, nor ADV Films vs. Bandai Entertainment vs. Geneon Entertainment vs. Media Blasters in the 2000s. "What about FUNimation?" They didn't become a big player until the late 2000s, namely after Geneon collapsed (mainly due to overprinting everything to the moon (like éX-Driver: The Movie) resulting in retailer returns among other things, recommended listening) and were able to pick up a bunch of their shows for cheap after the anime DVD bubble had burst. Though they didn't hold the actual license of some titles until much later. animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-07-03/funimation-agrees-to-distribute-select-geneon-titles animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-12-30/funimation-to-distribute-gungrave-anime-for-geneon animenewsnetwork.com/news/2008-12-31/funimation-entertainment-to-distribute-samurai-champloo As for Disney, they pick up a few titles per season, and that's it. Saying they're significant competition is very misleading. The closest competitor Crunchyroll has is Sentai Filmworks (which runs HIDIVE and is now owned by AMC Networks) which for years now has been licensing only a couple of titles per season. Quite the change from 2012 when people were worried about Sentai licensing too many titles and repeating ADV Films' mistakes. animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1027448 For anyone curious how HIDIVE compares to Crunchyroll for subscribers, HIDIVE has 300,000 subscribers as of 2020. Sadly there isn't more recent info. animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5460043#5460043 The rest of the article? Confirmed what had been increasingly obvious, the suits aren't fans of anime and are out of touch. The "pipeline of content" corporate speak reminds me of the thing they put out when they shut down Right Stuf. animenewsnetwork.com/this-week-in-anime/2023-09-26/.202812 https://bsky.app/profile/bigonanime.bsky.social/post/3ka5ifolvuh2p (Glad I screencapped this comment pushing back on that corporate speak as the comments are now all gone following them shutting down the comment section earlier this year.) Here's some social media reactions to that Bloomberg article that may be of interest. Lance Heiskell is talking about Mike DuBoise BTW. animenewsnetwork.com/news/2013-07-11/funimation-parent-hires-universal-studios-vp-as-executive-vp
Context for those that don't get what "We know anime fan wants" means...
Also relevant: animenewsnetwork.com/news/2007-04-10/fans-confront-bandai-visual-about-pricing (To listen to the audio, you'll need the Ruffle browser extension because Flash is no longer supported.) https://animesuperhero.com/forums/threads/bandai-visual-tries-to-use-japanese-pricing-for-r1-galaxy-angel-rune-hilarity-ensues.4322171/
In regards to Toho deciding to handle things themselves (Acquiring GKIDS, releasing My Hero Academia: You're Next), I wish them luck, but it should be noted the track record of Japanese companies distributing anime themselves is rather poor. The only success story is Aniplex USA, and even then, many Aniplex Japan titles began to go to FUNimation and Crunchyroll instead (Ex: Ayakashi Triangle, Back Arrow, My Dress-Up Darling, Shadows House, Tomo-chan Is a Girl!). Here's the list of failed attempts. Bandai Visual USA (Liquidated into Bandai Entertainment in 2008.) Broccoli International USA (Shut down in 2008, the anime division was Synch-Point, the most notable release of theirs was the FLCL anime in 2002.) Kadokawa Pictures USA (Shut down in 2009.) Ponycan USA (No new releases since Sound! Euphonium 2 was finally released in late 2018, all their releases have recently been removed from the Crunchyroll Store and are OOP.) Toei Animation USA (Air Master and Slam Dunk DVDs cancelled in 2006 after just a few volumes each. Slam Dunk reportedly sold in the double digits, couldn't even crack triple digits.) Voyager Entertainment (Star Blazers 2199 release cancelled in 2014 after 4/6 volumes released, FUNimation later got it in 2017.) Interesting how things played out in the years since this article was published in 2006. animenewsnetwork.com/news/2006-06-27/adv-sojitz-deal-continues-trend Well, that was one lengthy post... Fun fact, I didn't get into anime until November 2008 when I was 14 and in the 8th grade, so after the anime DVD bubble had popped, yet I know about so much that happened before then. Wish the non-anime people that kept reporting on the potential Kadokawa acquisition by Sony as "owner of Elden Ring developer" had bothered to do the same level of research I did to obtain all of this knowledge. For fun, I'll also leave this here.
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Iritscen
 Subscriber Posts: 815 |
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@BigOnAnime: That's a lot of information to absorb. Where do you think things are headed, since Japanese licensors are unhappy with C'roll and at the same time C'roll is becoming more corporate and unlikeable for American users? Is there any room for an upstart competitor on the Western side to come in and start "stealing" licenses to new shows before C'roll can get them? Or will the Japanese studios start building their own streaming pipeline to the West? After all, Funimation was originally started by a Toei executive's nephew as a way for Toei to bring Dragon Ball to the U.S. What's to stop the studios from making their own streaming site?
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Thulebox
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@BigOnAnime
Incredible write up on this. Rational, level-headed and well informed takes including no unnecessary finger waging (how ever could this be possible when Crunchyroll related in this climate) plus lots of sources including industry insights from people who haven't been highlighted in pretty much any reporting lately when talking about this subject. Your comment is the kind of article I love reading through. |
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NJ_
 Posts: 3123 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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They actually tried this but failed. Remember Daisuki? That did very little except give people a backup for Dragon Ball Super since both Funimation & Crunchyroll sites crashed on some weeks. There were other shows exclusive to the service as well like Aikatsu but they didn't last long. |
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FishLion
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That seems fairly plausible, I feel like in today's information ecosystem it would be much easier to make shows and pitch a streaming service all in one then it was when other distribution companies were attempted, especially if they pitched it as a way to get anime directly and on time without licensor chaos I could see a bunch of producers having an SVOD/distribution group. Especially as big players consolidate, we may get an anime streaming scenario much closer to how the major streaming platforms compete in the US. |
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Thulebox
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That does not seem plausible at all. Streaming is a costly endeavor and if its the publisher themselves they'd have maybe 1 or 2 shows per season unless they're a bigger publisher like say Kadokawa who's already mostly aligned with Sony with some shopping around to Netflix or someone else for a higher bid on a show here or there. Nearly every attempt from Japanese publishers to expand to North America in the past has failed so I'm not sure why it would be different now. |
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TheSeventhSense
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That's a facetious response to a statement that may be overgeneralizing a little but is still on the right track. Ultimately, it may not always be easy, but it's something that sites much larger than Crunchyroll can manage. And yes, CR did feel slightly worth visiting when it had a sense of community. |
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Thulebox
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Now that's over generalizing. Who are these sites bigger than Crunchyroll that can manage? I can't think of a single dedicated VOD streaming service that has ever had comments like Crunchyroll had and user created content sharing services like Youtube are not the same. Also let's be honest the comments on these sites are landfills of toxic waste unless the individual creators take it upon themselves or those they put in charge to moderate. |
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Greed1914
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Yeah, I don't see that happening either. BigonAnime did a nice job summarizing how well publishers have done in their own attempts to simply penetrate the home video market. I recall the companies on the list that folded were ones that thought they knew the market, which to them meant handle it the same as the Japanese side. When the only survivor had to learn to make some changes, and is also part of the existing behemoth, I can't see where it makes sense to jump into streaming themselves. If licensing fees from elsewhere are enough to cover production budgets, that seems like the much easier call. |
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Iritscen
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Oh man, I forgot about Daisuki! Looks like that was an attempt to do exactly this:
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juaifan
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The Bloomberg article had a few interesting tidbits for me. On one hand "hiring fans" is always a double edged sword because you never know what kind of "fans" you're hiring. Plenty of people say they're fans of something and then immediately want to change everything about something. So I can understand wanting to treat anime purely as a business. It's probably safer for the customer to focus on success and sales as it's less of a risk you end up with stuff like Crunchyroll Originals made by "fans" no one actually wants
The bit about Crunchyroll using mangaka's characters in ways they don't approve of to be interesting. I'd love to know the examples there. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2700 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I will forever believe that the reason why Daisuki wound up having barely anything exclusive, including some of the rare catalog additions that to this day have only ever seen official English release via Daisuki (Vifam, L-Gaim, Fafner -Right of Left-), is because they absolutely borked their initial attempt at gauging anime fan interest. For those unfamiliar, Daisuki early on had a series of online surveys to see what anime people would like to see made available for streaming in English. However, instead of doing something reasonable, like making a curated list of titles for people to choose from or simply letting anime fans write in some picks... Daisuki literally just made giant lists of every single anime listed on their partner companies' catalog websites. The end result was literally hundreds of anime for fans to pick from, including titles that were already streaming elsewhere, and Daisuki didn't limit how many titles could be selected on each survey, either. Therefore, I absolutely think that anime fans, the often overzealous people we can sometimes be, submitted survey results that were so absurdly packed with selections that the people running Daisuki probably just threw their hands into the air & gave up, since we essentially told them "We want ALL OF THE ANIME YOU GOT!" & they got cold feet over it. Sunrise was pretty much the only company involved that actually bothered to attempt offering any of their catalog via Daisuki. |
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Iritscen
Subscriber Posts: 815 |
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Wow, no intelligent curation of the list, huh? That was just asking for bad results. But if Sunrise was the only studio offering content for the service, it makes it sound like there were internal problems with the coalition too.
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wjbraden
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I kind of doubt Daisuke was shooting for any sort of exclusivity in the first place, as that's not how the Japanese streaming market works (their model is to have everything streaming on as many platforms as possible after their TV airing, the only exception being a handful of direct-to-streaming titles that Netflix outright bankrolls and has exclusive worldwide distribution rights to, including Japan typically). I think that pretty much gets to the crux of the issue regarding Japan handling distribution on their own - the Japanese market is just fundamentally different from how it works elsewhere. The "failed attempts" of Japanese production/distribution entities that @BigOnAnime mentioned more or less tried to do things the way they work in Japan, yet learned the hard way that it doesn't work abroad (Aniplex somehow thriving, despite their outrageously overpriced home releases akin to the Japanese model, but they've been better about that in recent years, so maybe that's why they came out unscathed; Sony money probably also has helped keep them going). Many Japanese entities probably don't possess the marketing power or know-how required to speak to international viewers in a way that's practical, and they likely realize this (I think of Toei, who's braved things on their own for many of their titles again in recent years, and how misguided their approaches have been in trying to promote and distribute said titles, it's quite frankly always a mess, and vastly different from how others in the biz do business). So best to just leave things "to the pros" so to speak, leaving international distributors to do their job (even if that "job" isn't the best, as we're seeing with modern day Crunchyroll, Netflix, etc). |
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