Crunchyroll and Sumitomo Corporation Establish Anime Investment Joint Venture

Streaming video distributor Crunchyroll and Japanese trading company Sumitomo Corporation announced on Thursday that the two companies are establishing a joint venture which will invest in the production of anime for the international market.

That joint venture, whose entity name and size of investment have not been revealed, will take part in the production committees of anime titles which will then be distributed by Crunchyroll.

Sumitomo Corporation is one of Japan's largest general trading companies (sougou shousha). Its media division distributes content for cable television, terrestrial broadcasters, and cinemas. In recent years, it has increased investments in the business of creative content.

In February, Sumitomo partnered with Japanese media company Imagica Robot Holdings and the public-private Cool Japan Fund to acquire SDI Media, a U.S.-based provider of subtitling, translation, and language dubbing services.

According to the press release, Crunchyroll boasts 700,000 paying subscribers and more than 10 million monthly viewers. Anime! Anime Biz reports that international distributors such as Daisuki and Crunchyroll, as well as a number of Chinese companies, are increasingly taking part in production committees.

With the rising cost of licensing content for overseas distribution, content providers can ensure that they win distribution rights by investing in production instead of competing and paying high license fees. However, Anime! Anime! Biz also notes that Crunchyroll's aim is not merely rights acquisition.

Crunchyroll co-founder and CEO Kun Gao cites the increasing importance of overseas markets in the anime industry. In establishing the joint venture, the company aims to connect fans to the production of anime from the time of its inception. With the joint venture, Crunchyroll, which is traditionally strong in North America and Europe, can also expand its distribution network with Sumitomo, which is traditionally strong in Asia.

Source: Anime! Anime! Biz

Hopefully, this is a very good thing for the anime industry.

Sounds like a very good thing, accessibility is important and this will hopefully boost the market/audience.

Western companies being able to produce (and therefore influence) the production and content of anime? There's no way this is going to end well.

Makes Aniplex look like angels.

Sounds good to me. Hope it works out well for both the industry and fans.

ANIME MIGHT NOT SURVIVE THIS.

Sounds like a good plan, hope this will be successful to reach a much larger audience.

Anime or cartoon?

Judgement Day is approaching

probably a good thing . there will still be the generic moe shit but also some western influenced stuff. maybe we see anime about the holy roman empire or the crusades. 0% problem.



japanese companies are usually worse than western ones (e.g. sony and handling its problems)

sony pictrures in purlt run from the us sony os hardly in the movie industry here
ans plus psn was not taken down in japan either yo my knowing

sony is more know fir music [ miany its sub lables]here and the os brand mastushita bater sony in japan there only 4th in tv unit sales in Japan for exmaple

sony hven been in downturn for ages in every aera [ in Japan] minus video games]

Toei are bigger tha sony in cinima in japan aorun 5 times market share in japan

overall sony japan is the dog that let the tail wag it

>Crunchyroll and.........................
>Shitstorm XD

I think it can't be a bad thing if it means that more companies will fund the anime industry

Not sure what I think about this.

It's a really good thing that they are trying to expand the market and hopefully make it easier to buy/access anime some day.

Then again, I don't know if I'm happy about western-influenced anime. I guess it's ok if it means a little more variety and maybe then they will stop adapting every single fantasy battle trash LN.
But I will not be happy if my moe/slice-of-life and romcom/ecchi-harems will be replaced by guns,action,dark,gritty shows. Like not every single western fan likes those.

I'm happy that japenese are expanding anime to reah new heights. But i hope so that it does not get ruined along the way. And i hope so that no western law affects it. (EG, this stuff is not for kids-tone it down etc.)

I hope it works out. Sounds like a nice idea but there's no way to know if it'll work or not yet.

this is why the era of modern anime from 2016 and beyond will get worse.

They can unironically save anime since it's like one or two proper things a year. We have nothing to lose.

The shows guaranteed to get high views at crunchyroll are shounen and ecchi/harems :P
I look forward to it <3

Underage girls' bare tits brought to you by Americans... not in this Universe.

Good thing that most of the people who watch those are americans :P

I'll put it straight. An American company participating in a child porn industry won't do any good. It will lead to some Animegate sooner or later.

wondering whether it would be original project or just funding an existing project(like Funimation joint producing Dimension W)

lolicon
child porn industry
....

Games aren't real either. I see no reason to make any difference.

Good news!

I do not like streaming service exclusive content unless it's a game or something but it may not be free.

Also an animegate won't happen, Gamergate happened because there's far more than enough people (1.2 billion people play video games) and definitely enough that were angry at the social justice tyranny for a movement like this, an animegate requires support from the Japanese which in this current climate is extremely scarce also unlike the SJTs which are minimal, the people against anime are much larger and consists of true political tyrants.

this is a good thing

the more anime goes to CR the better than fansubbers can rip them accordingly

u guys are lucky its CR and not funi to make big moves

About time that Crunchyroll gives us more of a reason to subscribe to them.

Now I'm concerned about some of the comments here.

Some members seem to think that this venture will somehow produce "cartoons." Or that this will somehow ruin the anime market in the future.

Why would that be the case? Japanese companies pump out tons of shitty Anime every season. Many are bad, rarely any are good. considering Crunchyroll's entire business is providing fans of the shows they like to stream, they should be far more in tune with what is good for Western fans than Japan is.

I hoped for this day to come for a while now. The day Crunchyroll becomes the Netflix for Anime and produces its own shows.

Lol

This ain't going to end well

RIP in peace in advance, anime industry

This could definitely breath some fresh air into anime industry allowing more western influences, which is not a bad thing.

ìf this means we get more shows like Dandy or BIG O

This kind of initiative isn't new. For instance, ADV Films and Pioneer USA were joining production committees during the height of the DVD bubble.

What this means is that licensing costs have been pushed so high (competition for online streamimg rights) that the companies might as well invest directly in the production.

The whole America vs few pedo viewers. AG won't happen, they will make ecchi illegal. Lol.



80s were influenced by US pop culture like nothing before or after and they're known as the golden age of the industry. Every second sci-fi anime of that time was inspired by Star Wars. They even gave anglo names like Bobby to heroes. Etc, etc. Anime didn't die a little then.

It can or can not end well. I only hope the western influence doesn't get too high so the current genre structure for the seasons will remain. Even if many people are angry about it, myself, I do enjoy my seasonly rom-coms and moeshows :)

Getting influenced by Western pop culture ≠ Working with Crunshitroll

I started off pretty indifferent to this, but reading the responses in this thread has made me feel rather down about it. I've never come across an anime targetted mainly at a Western audience that I've felt particularly eager to watch, and on the few occasions when I have tried such things they've invariably been drop-worthy.

Oh well, if these things end up not worth watching I can always just ignore them. No harm done. Back to indifference, albeit of a different variety, I guess.

But for the real question...... Can this be used to get me more BL series?

Anyway, it doesn't seem that bad of an idea though it has failed in the past. I just hope CR won't be dumb enough to choose to help out adaptions that are obviously doomed to flop in Japan because I imagine what you make from streaming won't be able to match what Japan can make domestically through BD/DVD/Manga etc. (I ain't no expert on that though.) May they be able to make decisions wisely.

I just want Bandai to get under a new licensor so its shows can be on CR again

lol at all the immediate anti-western anime fans

"Child porn industry", Hahahahaha..... For one side, I'm laughing. For another side, I'm surprised I didn't saw people like that on this site sooner.

noice, go go go HorribleSubs get all those webrips from CrunchyRoll

Damn so they doing big things now.

Not going to happen so long as Bandai is a part of Daisuki.

I'll take this as a good thing.

There's a hint of worry.

But To be Honest, Maybe they can push edgier content titles that interest more international fans. Instead of relying on Japanese anime producers to continue catering on the niche Japanese fans who are sucking the shit out of the industry with their love moe-blob 2-d waifu cliche animes.

Kinda freaky. Crunchyroll is so persistent in getting into anime industry... like a bunch of russian spies.

True. But I see nothing bad in working wich them. Sure thing some streaming services are hated for whatever reason but what does it have to do with possible quality of the product they will create?

The question here is WHY crunchyroll wants to make animation (so sudden)? I mean, it's cool and everything but WHY? What for?..

I'll just wait and see what they will produce before completely judging it.

None of Bandai's backlog of lost titles are on there though, Nichijou, Code Geass (although Funi claims rights to it, nothing has been released for years now), too many Gundam series to count, and Lucky Star are all absent from streaming sites or DVD productions.

Many of these were previously streamed on Crunchyroll but have now since expired since Bandai's US shutdown.

Besides Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans is already on Crunchyroll, just a week later than on Daisuki. They clearly don't maintain sole rights to these series.

One Punch Man and I believe they exclusively had Idolm@ster: Cinderella Girls. (But that's been up on MAL now.)