Forum - View topicINTEREST: Funimation President: 'We Tried to Renew Deal with Crunchyroll'
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Asrialys
 Posts: 1164 |
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But are they going to fix Re:Zero Part 1.
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Raikuro
Posts: 347 |
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It would be great if they could add everything Funimation has as an additional subscription, like Hulu did with Showtime. Would much rather see simuldubs through a decent functional player than Funi's crappy interface. |
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Romuska
 Subscriber Posts: 810 |
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While they’re at it, are they gonna stop locking the subtitles on their blu-rays? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11586 |
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Funimation has already put out a dub on BD/DVD and BD Limited Edition, and BD Essentials is coming up in a month or so. What more could possibly happen with Season 1 (other than the license expiring)? If you don't want a dub or BD, Eastern Star's DVD is still available. Season 2 is also out in dubbed BD with all the bells and whistles. The movies are all out finally. I'm sure Season 3 is in the wings as well. |
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SWAnimefan
Posts: 634 |
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To me, I feel that Sony wanted to use Funimation as a means to promote their Sony Streaming Service. Using very popular titles like Dragonball as the needed customer pull. Then using the growing unpopularity of Crunchyroll's direction as an excuse to no longer have a partnership. With Crunchyroll no longer having the pull of the popular Funimation titles, they no longer are a major competitor and thus the Sony Streaming service gets more viewers. More viewers, more money. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
 Posts: 2175 |
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I know Crunchyroll is constantly expanding the languages and countries they stream in. I can see them not wanting to give Funimation global streaming rights to everything (or anything). It directly conflicts with what they're doing.
The deal probably made a lot more sense when it was we share subs, you share dubs, and we license shows together to save money rather than we want to obliterate all of your expansion plans. |
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DragenGD
Posts: 8 |
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Hmmm, that seems a bit odd but maybe I misread it...
If the stated reason was Sony saying they had the technology to offer Funimation's stuff world-wide instead of being partnered with Crunchyroll, then why would you turn around and sign with another service like Hulu? Why didn't Sony just follow through with their plans to make Funimation stay a solo service? |
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TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1892 Location: USA (mid-south) |
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Probably because Funimation and Sony aren't quite ready to implement those plans. What they probably wanted was the benefit of the partnership with CR while they built their international expansion, and then once they had themselves in a position to be competitive, they would then drop out of the partnership. |
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Mr. sickVisionz
Posts: 2175 |
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Funimation is in a VERY weird spot. Sony has a 95% controlling stake in them, but they're actually "owned" by a totally different company: WarnerMedia. WarnerMedia owns 10% of Hulu so Funi x Hulu makes sense. Sony and WarnerMedia are totally 100% rival companies though. It'll be interesting to see how Funi fares in this weird ass scenario. Whether they get the benefit of two international conglomerates working in synergy or they're the victim of two international conglomerates constantly butting heads over the direction Funi should be going. |
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JMmelegrito
 Posts: 47 Location: Philippines |
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In my opinion, it feels like Fukunaga's just passing the buck to Crunchyroll and putting the blame on them, especially in making the issue public, making his company look good to the anime fans.
Funimation is saying that they want to expand globally, but I think it's still a tricky situation, especially here in Southeast Asia. I'm sure licensors like Odex (Singapore), MediaLink (Hong Kong) and Mighty Media (Taiwan) would not make it easy, which is why Crunchyroll has only a few titles in SE Asia. Also there's the question of Animax, which is owned by SPE TV. Their linear channels may have closed down in Europe and Africa, but its still a very well-known brand in the Asian region. There could be some backlash if Animax will be treated as chopped liver, in favor of Funimation. |
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gaptoothsailor
 Posts: 100 Location: New York |
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This sounds disingenuous because like others have said, Crunchyroll already has multiple foreign languages subbed and have been working on international dubs as well. All I see Funimation doing with exclusive international licenses is sub-licensing them out to other distributors in those foreign countries, which arguably takes longer for the fans. And Hulu? I remember just a couple years ago when Sailor Moon was on Hulu through Viz's Neon Alley and there were constant complaints from Canadians because Hulu wasn't available there. What is Funimation going to do with getting content out to Latin Americans still in the Northern Hemisphere when their licenses apply to exclusivity in North America (that was the scope of their deal for My Hero Academia, IIRC)? Gen was talking about branding when it came to Netflix's acquisition of Evangelion. I can only hope that their intent to brand things on a more global scale are actually feasible and affordable for those same international fans.
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 5163 |
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If there's ever another anime bubble burst, it won't be because of the over-saturation of the market this time or even because of fansubs but because of the bad decisions of corporate politics.
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Narutofreak1412
 Posts: 338 |
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It's funny how they said they cancelled the deal because of crunchys global restrictions, but where I live Funi is completely unavailable (can't even access their website) while I could watch the region-restricted Crunchy shows with my european premium account just fine through a US proxy site like rabbit.
The shows removed by Crunchy and now being Funi-exclusive actually became unavailable for me and I unfortunately have to use big no no ways of watching/finishing them :< |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I think a lot of you guys are misinterpreting what Fukunaga is saying and blaming Funimation for something that they are expressly trying to rectify by exiting the partnership. Funimation wasn't trying to drop CR because CR wasn't international enough, they were trying to drop CR because CR was placing restrictions on Funimation's international expansion as part of the partnership. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13615 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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Your points in the first paragraph make sense. However, Sony has not exactly had a firmly-established history with anime licensing here. The exception is obviously with Aniplex USA. So, why was it only within the last 1.5 years, through Sony Pictures USA, that Sony bought out Funi, outside of the government approval and the time/money needed to purchase a company? |
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