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Sony is buying Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion

J

JORMBO

Darkness no more
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/9/...streaming-service-crunchyroll-at-t-funimation

Sony will be buying anime streaming service Crunchyroll from AT&T for $1.175 billion, Sony and AT&T announced Wednesday. Specifically, Crunchyroll will become part of Sony’s Funimation, which already licenses many popular shows such as Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist, and One Piece.

Now that Sony owns both Crunchyroll and Funimation, the company has tremendous power over anime in the US at a time when many other media companies are trying to figure out their anime content. Netflix has also invested heavily in both licensing and producing its own anime content.
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“WE ARE EXCITED TO EMBARK ON THIS NEW JOURNEY”
“We are excited to embark on this new journey,” said Joanne Waage, general manager of Crunchyroll, in a statement. “Crunchyroll has built a world-class brand with a passionate fan-base of over 3 million subscribers, 50 million social followers and 90 million registered users. These amazing fans have helped to propel anime into a global phenomenon. Combining the strength of the Crunchyroll brand and the expertise of our global team with Funimation is an exciting prospect and a win for the incredible art form of anime.”

“The union of Funimation and Crunchyroll is a win for anime fans around the world that will elevate the art and culture of this medium for decades to come,” Colin Decker, CEO of Funimation Global Group, said in a statement. “Combining these two great companies will be a win for fans, and enable us to compete at a truly global scale. I am honored to welcome the wonderful Crunchyroll team to a shared mission—to help everyone belong to the extraordinary world of anime.”
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Warnen

Warnen

Don't pass gaas, it is your Destiny!
Nice, hope they get shit wrapped up by April, my subs are due to be renewed then.
 
Happosai

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
Quixz said:
Sony now owns all of anime :messenger_hushed:
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Nope. They own some of the big-selling retro anime and most modern titles. 80% of the retro titles...they ain't got that. On the other hand...isn't it better Sony owning them than AT&T? Anyone ever see how bad AT&T screws things up in the T.V. business; it's not their forte.
 
Bryank75

Bryank75

Banned
They should get a car over to Kadokawa next....

I do wonder what the best name for a joint service would be or will they offer both services separately or jointly for a deal.....
 
I

isual

Member
good business decision as this boosts sony's portfolio, but i really dislike funimation's online webplayer, and by extension, crunchyrolls VRV. i would prefer to keep my crunchyroll account in perpetuity instead of it being absorbed into funimation, and vice versa.
 
Weiji

Weiji

Banned
EHuntingon said:
I look forward to all future anime being censored and de-problematized. We need anime that examines our inherent prejudices and unconscious bias.
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My 2 cents, this solidifies Netflix as the de facto winner. Sony and AT&T couldn’t manage their way out of a cardboard box.

Shame, a legit, well funded anime competitor was one of the few potential risks to their monopoly.
 
kunonabi

kunonabi

Member
Happosai said:
Nope. They own some of the big-selling retro anime and most modern titles. 80% of the retro titles...they ain't got that. On the other hand...isn't it better Sony owning them than AT&T? Anyone ever see how bad AT&T screws things up in the T.V. business; it's not their forte.
Click to expand...

Depends on what they shuffle off to funimation to ruin.
 
Paltheos

Paltheos

Member
Durask said:
Funimation app is literally the worst streaming app of all time.
It is so bad it feels like it was made to deliberately insult and aggravate its users.
Click to expand...

I haven't used their website in a while, but I remember having big problems. Getting to what you want to watch and even clicking next episode was a hassle that sometimes didn't even seem to work, and I recall... loading and buffering issues?

By comparison crunchyroll stepped up their game. For the longest time you couldn't even safely skip around in a video without breaking the player. (It ran on Flash, and I had to run a script for html5 instead to get it running smoothly)
 
v_iHuGi

v_iHuGi

Banned
How long before Sony acquires a big Hollywood studio too? Pictures & Music seems to be all in big spending sprees.

Meanwhile at Playstation we still waiting BluePoint to join 😂
 
AHA-Lambda

AHA-Lambda

Member
Not sure how I feel about this.
Got a feeling that Crunchyroll will pare back the amount of content on the free sub significantly now
 
Carna

Carna

Banned
Us hardcore anime fans, just watch our anime on illegal streaming sites like kissanime and gogoanime, nowadays. Funi and Crunchy are in a drier situation where the hardcore are sick of their anti-consumer bullcrap of censorship, terrible rewrites, practices, appealing to the woke crowd, and voice actors that run the actor industry in dubs of anime/games with rabid nepotism, at this point the consumers that are still supporting this crap (dub fanatics who want to hear the same voice actors in everything, complete with e-celeb youtubers getting roles for popular characters in jjba) should wise up, and realize these modern day anime distributers are becoming no different than 4Kids at their worst.

BUT CARNA!!!!!!! I WANT TO SUPPORT THE INDUSTRY TO HELP THE MANGAKA AND HEAR THE SAME VA FOR EVERYTHING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

and that's how they fool you, if you stood up against 4Kids back in the day, then you should do the same here.
 
Y

YCoCg

Member
Hopefully this means the weird rights issue that prevents Dragon Ball from appearing on streaming services in the UK can also be solved.

edit:
Carna said:
complete with e-celeb youtubers getting roles for popular characters in jjba
Click to expand...

Yo who was that?
 
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DESTROYA

DESTROYA

Member
Carna said:
Us hardcore anime fans, just watch our anime on illegal streaming sites like kissanime and gogoanime, nowadays. Funi and Crunchy are in a drier situation where the hardcore are sick of their anti-consumer bullcrap of censorship, terrible rewrites, practices, appealing to the woke crowd, and voice actors that run the actor industry in dubs of anime/games with rabid nepotism, at this point the consumers that are still supporting this crap (dub fanatics who want to hear the same voice actors in everything, complete with e-celeb youtubers getting roles for popular characters in jjba) should wise up, and realize these modern day anime distributers are becoming no different than 4Kids at their worst.

BUT CARNA!!!!!!! I WANT TO SUPPORT THE INDUSTRY TO HELP THE MANGAKA AND HEAR THE SAME VA FOR EVERYTHING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

and that's how they fool you, if you stood up against 4Kids back in the day, then you should do the same here.
Click to expand...
WTF is 4Kids ?
 
Pejo

Pejo

Member
California censoring team looking like

giphy.gif
 
Y

YCoCg

Member
What stuff has been censored by the way? I keep hearing about this but never noticed it in any of the shows I've watched.
 
Happosai

Happosai

Hold onto your panties
kunonabi said:
Depends on what they shuffle off to funimation to ruin.
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I don't think it will affect me too much. Most of the classic titles (especially the more obscure ones) of anime are yet-to-be released on blu-ray or digital and are still left back in the DVD era. On top of that, there really wasn't much from Funimation going into my physical collection. I mean, I had a Lupin the lll movies boxset, Dragon Ball seasons 1-5 (the original animation), the Dragon Ball movies boxset, and Slayers season 1-3 on Funimation. Beyond that, I really don't care for Funimation and found their ads for anime to be a cringe-fest. A couple others have already pointed out in this thread that there are better ways to watch anime online other than Crunchyroll. I figured that out a long time ago and literally only used Crunchyroll to test out and explore it to see if there was actually anything on it I would watch. It's cartered more toward mainstream and modern anime fans and I just really didn't care for it. So, whoever buys it...it's cool. Look at it this way, it's more than likely all streaming services that become popular are going to be bought out by someone like Disney, Sony, or a similar company. The big media giants don't want stand-alone services challenging their own monopolies. It's always been that way.
 
A

AnotherDayAnotherDollar

Banned
Good acquisition by Sony. They do not have the scale and cannot compete with Disney, Netflix, ATT, Comcast and (if they want to throw money at it) Apple and Amazon when it comes to general streaming service. Might as well carve themselves a niche in Anime for either A) Future acquisition or B) Good revenue stream.
 
S

SLoWMoTIoN

Unconfirmed Member
MiyazakiHatesKojima said:
@SLoWMoTIoN won.
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This doesn't affect me at all lol.
Carna said:
Us hardcore anime fans, just watch our anime on illegal streaming sites like kissanime and gogoanime, nowadays. Funi and Crunchy are in a drier situation where the hardcore are sick of their anti-consumer bullcrap of censorship, terrible rewrites, practices, appealing to the woke crowd, and voice actors that run the actor industry in dubs of anime/games with rabid nepotism, at this point the consumers that are still supporting this crap (dub fanatics who want to hear the same voice actors in everything, complete with e-celeb youtubers getting roles for popular characters in jjba) should wise up, and realize these modern day anime distributers are becoming no different than 4Kids at their worst.

BUT CARNA!!!!!!! I WANT TO SUPPORT THE INDUSTRY TO HELP THE MANGAKA AND HEAR THE SAME VA FOR EVERYTHING OVER AND OVER AGAIN

and that's how they fool you, if you stood up against 4Kids back in the day, then you should do the same here.
Click to expand...
No "hardcore" anime fan watches streaming alternatives.

Read the fucking manga.
 
N

NahaNago

Member
Happosai said:
Nope. They own some of the big-selling retro anime and most modern titles. 80% of the retro titles...they ain't got that. On the other hand...isn't it better Sony owning them than AT&T? Anyone ever see how bad AT&T screws things up in the T.V. business; it's not their forte.
Click to expand...

The big worry is that Sony will start censoring anime like they do games.

I do find it weird that Sony is going after streaming content for anime. This is honestly something they should have done during the ps3 era when they had embraced Japanese content a lot more. Then again it is possible that Sony is trying to tie more closely/combine the anime fandom with the playstation fandom. But why they don't just buy or create some anime studios is just weird to me.
 
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Y

YCoCg

Member
NahaNago said:
The big worry is that Sony will start censoring anime like they do games.
Click to expand...
I keep asking for examples! Is that what this fear is based on??? They're a completely different department! Funimation has uncut anime on their app and defaults to that once the Blu-ray's are out, the only time you'll see "censored" stuff is for the simulcast/simuldub which uses the Japanese TV broadcast versions.
 
N

NahaNago

Member
YCoCg said:
I keep asking for examples! Is that what this fear is based on??? They're a completely different department! Funimation has uncut anime on their app and defaults to that once the Blu-ray's are out, the only time you'll see "censored" stuff is for the simulcast/simuldub which uses the Japanese TV broadcast versions.
Click to expand...

Most folks are basing this fear off of the censorship Sony has done with games from Japan.
 
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Y

YCoCg

Member
NahaNago said:
Most folks are basing this fear off of the censorship Sony has done with games from Japan.
Click to expand...
But Sony Interactive and Sony Media are separate divisions like Sony Pictures and Sony Music. Yes there's easier crossover but they handle their own things in their own terms. Sony have owned Funimation for years now and uncut content has still been provided.
 
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