Funimation and Crunchyroll Working Together

Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have them legit shook.
Fukunaga also stated about the reason behind the partnership, "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." He added, "working together ... [Funimation and Crunchyroll] can provide a better experience ... that really works for the fans."
 
Also here : Crunchyroll and Funimation Partnership Announcement

This is interesting: "Finally, we will be working together to distribute Crunchyroll titles through Blu-ray, DVD, and Download-to-Own, both dubbed and subbed. Currently planned titles include Ace Attorney, Alderamin on the Sky, Bungo Stray Dogs, JOKER GAME, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress and ReLIFE, with more to be announced in the future, so stay tuned for announcements on availability and street dates."

- Does this mean the previously announced physical releases of Gintama, Big Order etc will be done via Funimation too?
 
For the streaming side, this sounds great. Funi have a huge catalogue of older shows, something CR was sorely lacking, so having those in there, even if sub only, sounds amazing, and for CR streaming shows to be getting broadcast dubs is also great for those who like them. Personally I'm excited because it means I won't have to tolerate Funi's pretty shoddy video player for any shows they pick up, nor will I have to get two subscriptions. However, it is a tad worrying from a physical standpoint. If you think about it, if CR is now partnered with Funi, and Funi are partnered with AL, that essentially means Manga and MVM are getting increasingly little shows to licence, and I think it could potentially spell some bad times for both of those. Universal are pretty safe given how big they are, but having Universal and AL releasing 90% of titles isn't really a good thing. AL clearly have too much on their plate already at this point, the constant stream of pushbacks should already atest to that, so adding even more to that just sounds like trouble. Plus, it could also push out more casual anime buyers seeing as Universal and AL always prioritise LEs first, with Standard Editions coming months later, if at all.
 
The only bad news I can see so far is Funi Now is going to have just one subscription level, based at £4.99 for sub and dub. I can see Funi getting less day and date Sub releases, but hopefully more dub licenses and get them quicker since they don't have to focus on sub content as much.

It may mean AL get better deals for content, and may get dub assets quicker if Funi are doing those and Funi are able to get on with dubs a lot earlier on in the production cycle.

We can only wait and see. Other than maybe the companies getting access to too much anime, and going back to ADV/anime boom times, I'm seeing little negative at the moment based just on this deal.
 
It might depend on how closely they'll be working together for licensing in future. As I understand it, Sentai would often get shows that were either licensed by Crunchyroll for streaming only or where Sentai sub-licensed the streaming part to Crunchyroll. If Crunchyroll and Funimation are pooling resources for licenses then they could potentially get more shows for less (especially since there'll be much less competition for streaming licenses, so they could spend less on that aspect). That could make things more difficult for their competition.

Less competition isn't inherently a bad thing but it'd mean that customers are a bit more at the mercy of the good intentions of the people running the remaining companies.

I suppose it remains to be seen exactly how it'll work. At least in the short term there should be some benefits. It's possible that the end result could basically just be that there are more releases, more dubs and more easily accessible anime on Crunchyroll and that's pretty much all good.
 
This is fantastic news, I'm very happy that I can now watch some of the Funi shows. Hopefully a lot of the shows will have UK as a viewable region on Crunchyroll.
 
Funi have a huge catalogue of older shows, something CR was sorely lacking, so having those in there, even if sub only, sounds amazing, and for CR streaming shows to be getting broadcast dubs is also great for those who like them.
My concern is that the existing region locks on many Funimation shows will remain in place. The news articles do not seem to address this, perhaps deliberately.
 
My concern is that the existing region locks on many Funimation shows will remain in place. The news articles do not seem to address this, perhaps deliberately.
I don't think it's too likely they'd change, since that'd probably have more to do with Funimation not having UK rights in the first place. Cowboy Bebop was one of the shows being added to Crunchyroll and it's still not available to the UK (I'm not sure if Anime Limited have the UK streaming rights for that but presumably Funimation don't either way).
 
Jerome has placed his thoughts on the matter on Twitter:

Jerome:
Crunchyroll, Funimation Announce Partnership to Share Content Via Streaming, Home Video, EST http://po.st/Kurq0I via @po_st #Funiblinked

User #1:
Whats your thoughts? i wanna talk about it, but something bugs me

Jerome:
It's called a virtual monopoly. It'll **** up a bunch of studios and will speed up the demise of boxed product.

User #2:
Do you think the demise of the boxed product is inevitable? Is it a monopoly or a consolidation of power? Or both?

Jerome:
It's the insatiable demand, the impatience and the disruption of new technology. You can hardly argue that CR has carefully curated it's offering when it's trying o simulcast 45 series a season? It's overwhelming for fans. It makes them much more selective about ownership, but anime licensing is/was powered by box product sales. And those sales used to have long tail. SVOD does not generate the same revenue. Well! It has for the past several years as CR and Funi paid stupid money for licenses. Now the entire industry is dancing to one global platform's tune, but MGs will tumble.

User #3:
Around half of the ~40 simulcasts I watch per season I'd like to own, but most don't warrant expensive CEs.

Jerome:
I'm just bitter because CR don't reply to my emails. It's a great move by fans. It'll shake up the Japanese a bit.

User #4:
May I ask what MG means?

Jerome:
Minimum Guarantee. The advance. It's what you pay up font for tension. Japanese licensors only really expect to ever see one payment, especially with SVOD. Overages are when you recoup the advance and start paying percentages on top make a new anime series for $200K per episode and sell it to Funi or CR for global at same price. Then all the money you make in Asian territories is pure profit after marketing and other costs is deducted. This is what's been happening since 2013. Now that CR and Funi have united it means MGs can start coming down as they have no real competition. You think Netflix want to carry more than half a dozen series a season? Amazon only really cares about having anime exclusives in Japan. It's only a matter of time until they start gunning 4 Asian territories too. Piracy and the greed of the industry has birthed a monster.

Don't expect @funimationnow to last. I reckon it'll fold by this time next year. They entered the market too late. This JV shows they lost.

We've paid over seven figures in overages on half a dozen license. Manga has been a great license partner and yet we get treated pretty shabbily by a number of Licensors. I think we are a nuisance because we keep proving there is still a lot of value and volume of sales in DVD and Blu-Ray. SVOD Is great for poor quality anime and with over 200 seasons a year, there's an awful lot of poor anime out there.
 
Absolutely fantastic news for fans. More access to anime with fewer hoops to jump through and both companies taking advantage of the brand recognition of the other. This feels like a very important step in fighting back against the plague of illicit streaming sites with more name recognition (tsk) and a lot of the annoying contradictions inherent in how both companies license streaming titles in a weird patchwork of regions at the moment. It also means being able to watch next season's shows on my preferred player and presumably getting more anime for the pittance I pay each month. Not seeing a downside at all other than the lack of competition, which frankly is something I actively want with simulcasting since you're screwed when a bad company gets exclusivity to a good series and locks it away on a terrible platform. If competition means I get less access to simulcasts then by all means, merge together to provide me a better service.

Didn't Andrew have trouble getting CR to reply to his emails back in the past? Keep working at it, Jerome. I quite like some of the 'poor' titles, so I have to support this great trend towards getting fans the anime they want to watch :s

R
 
Absolutely fantastic news for fans. More access to anime with fewer hoops to jump through and both companies taking advantage of the brand recognition of the other. This feels like a very important step in fighting back against the plague of illicit streaming sites with more name recognition (tsk) and a lot of the annoying contradictions inherent in how both companies license streaming titles in a weird patchwork of regions at the moment. It also means being able to watch next season's shows on my preferred player and presumably getting more anime for the pittance I pay each month. Not seeing a downside at all other than the lack of competition, which frankly is something I actively want with simulcasting since you're screwed when a bad company gets exclusivity to a good series and locks it away on a terrible platform. If competition means I get less access to simulcasts then by all means, merge together to provide me a better service.

Didn't Andrew have trouble getting CR to reply to his emails back in the past? Keep working at it, Jerome. I quite like some of the 'poor' titles, so I have to support this great trend towards getting fans the anime they want to watch :s

R
I thought it was Ponycan that Andrew had had trouble getting to respond to emails, rather than Crunchyroll?
 
I thought it was Ponycan that Andrew had had trouble getting to respond to emails, rather than Crunchyroll?

I seem to recall some time ago (quite a long time ago, now) that Andrew was trying to get some of his simulcasts on Crunchyroll but having a devil of a time getting their attention. A few of us sent them messages demanding that they listen (lol). While our messages were almost certainly ignored, things do seem to have improved behind the scenes at some stage.

R
 
It sounds like it's going to be a good thing , but I won't be surprised if Funimation still have a few exclusive subtitled series to the name every season . The three shows that have been added to Crunchyroll are ones that I'm not watching , hopefully that will change soon .
 
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Well, I gave up on the FUNi service, so several of their titles ending up on Crunchyroll is great news. I hope a few more of the older shows will also be taken across, then maybe I could continue watching YuYu Hakusho, and on my TV no less!
 
It's a bit of a shame that the titles CR has led with getting from Funi this season are not the two I've been watching (Servamp and Tales of Zestiria). Hopefully those two come across later.

Overall I'm pretty happy. I've never been fond of having to watch anime anywhere other than CR (either because I don't like the player, episodes are not up on time, title is held back because Netflix) so this is definitely good news to me! I think we've reached the point where competition definitely wasn't working in Funimation's favour, especially the season they had My Hero Academia and little else, so a joint venture focusing on something they can do quite well (dubs) will only work out pretty well.

I can definitely see it leading to a monopoly of titles hitting Anime Limited now rather than any other distributor which potentially isn't a great thing, but let's be fair, that's not really the fault of Funi/CR, it's just a result of the move and I'm still happiest knowing all my anime will hopefully be on a single platform.

I just hope this works in the UK's favour. It does look to be so far but we haven't got the full picture, so it's a bit of a wait and see situation...
 
Jerome is a bit of a glass half empty kind of a guy...

This is brilliant news. If there's one thing that anime streaming needs, it's a 'monopoly' and getting Funimation's shows on CR means one less subscription, while Funimation retain the dubs for their own portal, assuming, probably quite rightly that dub and sub fans are mutually exclusive.

As for the physical distribution agreement with CR, the way I read it, it's only for those shows for which CR have home distribution rights, and nothing is going to change for Sental, MVM and Manganimatsu in terms of the shows that they release. The ones probably feeling dicked by this move are Diskotek, who have released CR titles in the past. But hopefully this means that Season 1 of Free will get its Blu-ray release.
 
Jerome is a bit of a glass half empty kind of a guy...

This is brilliant news. If there's one thing that anime streaming needs, it's a 'monopoly' and getting Funimation's shows on CR means one less subscription, while Funimation retain the dubs for their own portal, assuming, probably quite rightly that dub and sub fans are mutually exclusive.

As for the physical distribution agreement with CR, the way I read it, it's only for those shows for which CR have home distribution rights, and nothing is going to change for Sental, MVM and Manganimatsu in terms of the shows that they release. The ones probably feeling dicked by this move are Diskotek, who have released CR titles in the past. But hopefully this means that Season 1 of Free will get its Blu-ray release.
Free! was one of the first batch of shows CR were confirmed to be releasing on BD & DVD. Alongside Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Gintama, Myriad Colours Phantom World, Twin Star Exorcists and something else I have now forgotten.
 
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