[Overseas] Anime News & Announcements

[Dai]

Beginning of 2026 is also when Crunchyroll completely ended their free-with-ads service. Maybe the timing is a coincidence but it's starting to really look like the only thing they're interested in is their paid streaming service.

It's a sorry state of affairs, but it's increasingly clear that any enthusiasm for anime as anything but content to keep subscriptions active has long since been wrung out of Crunchyroll and the companies they gobbled up. That they kept Funimation's physical release pipeline going this long feels more like a half-hearted experiment than a project with any passion behind it. Occasionally you'll see a release here or there that bucks the tedious power-fantasy trend and feels like it's been championed by someone who cares, but the last one I can think of is A Sign of Affection, which was about a year ago.