Crunchyroll, Funimation Merge Under Crunchyroll Brand

by ImperfectBlue
Mar 1, 2022 10:30 PM | 28 Comments

Crunchyroll and Funimation announced on Tuesday that the two streaming platforms—along with Funimation subsidiary Wakanim and Crunchyroll's VRV service—have merged under the Crunchyroll brand. Funimation Global Group, LLC, which acquired Crunchyroll from AT&T in August 2021, is rebranding as Crunchyroll, LLC to complete the consolidation.

Many Funimation titles were made available on Crunchyroll at the time of the announcement. Series in progress on Funimation will be updated as new episodes premiere, but new titles will be released exclusively on Crunchyroll beginning with the Spring 2022 season.

The Crunchyroll brand began as a California-based video streaming service in 2006, and has expanded to include licensing, manga, mobile games, merchandise, and original animation production. Its streaming platform serves over 120 million registered users and 5 million paid subscriptions in over 200 countries, and currently offers over 40,000 episodes from 1,000 anime series.

Sony Pictures Television acquired a 95% stake in Texas-based entertainment company Funimation for US$143 million in July 2017. Founded by Gen Fukunaga in 1994, Funimation specialized in the licensing, distribution, and dubbing of East Asian media—primarily anime.

In September 2019, Sony merged Funimation with Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. subsidiary Aniplex's France-based Wakanim and Australia-based Madman Anime Group. This established the Funimation Global Group that announced its acquisition of Crunchyroll in December 2020—a move that led to Tuesday's unification of platforms under the Crunchyroll name.

Source: Press Release

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20 of 28 Comments Recent Comments

I'm sure the price would increase but there will be more anime

Jul 5, 2022 3:39 AM by Exiz79

It’s been a month and my Funimation membership still hasn’t transferred to Crunchyroll. This is absurd.

Mar 26, 2022 9:58 AM by stone616

It’s been a month and my Funimation membership still hasn’t transferred to Crunchyroll. This is absurd.

Mar 26, 2022 9:58 AM by stone616

When is all of the funimation content going to be on crunchyroll? Slow loop isnt on yet.

Mar 23, 2022 6:50 PM by Ryonyan

Well, that didn't take long: Everything that was on Funimation was to move to Crunchyroll, but it didn't. Example: I'd watched "Irina, the Vampire Cosmonaut" on Funimation. When the merger took place, Funimation said I should cancel my account and go to Crunchyroll instead. (I was already a subscriber to Crunchyroll, too.) I did what they said. No "Irina." Had to go back to Funimation and watch the last episode through a stream of ads for Progressive Insurance -- and for *Funimation*! They're advertising for subscriptions and talking about new series that are coming.

Second example: Meanwhile, I thought I'd re-watch "Your Name." so I fired up Crunchyroll and looked. Not there. It had been on Funimation since forever.

And that's on top of Crunchyroll's crap search function, its deciding that next up is S1 E1 in Spanish even though you last watched S1 E8 in English-- on *Crunchyroll* -- its inferior interface in general, much better at Funimation, and all the rest of it. And they wonder why people choose dangerous sites with popups and malware instead of them.

Mar 22, 2022 7:30 PM by Startled-Normie

Since All animes from Funimation is moving to Crunchyroll, we’ll I guess from now on, I’ll pay subscriptions and premiums on crunchyroll since Funimation will no longer be a streaming service anymore.

Mar 8, 2022 8:27 PM by Theanimekid_2003

takkun_ said:
It's really hard to believe that the Funimation brand has more or less dissolved. They have such a long history and has been the biggest player for years.

Although, I can understand Sony's decision here. First is to make it as simple as possible for newcomers to get into anime. Having a singular brand under a single name makes its way easier to understand and get into. Having too many names just muddles things.

The second is changing the name to Crunchyroll, rather than Funimation, despite Funi being around a lot longer. Funimation just fostered too much animosity with the anime community. Their questionable and often inappropriate translations, their voice actors disrespecting the community as a whole, and even the Vic situation (despite Funi not really being at fault for what happened), was just too much baggage that came with the name. Sony made the smart decision to go with Crunchy who has its own convention, awards show, and has its roots as a site made by anime fans as a fansub website.

At the end of the day, this is a seismic event for the anime community. What's going to happen from here is anyone's guess.

Well said, I agree 100% (Especially with the VA's and Vic parts)

Mar 7, 2022 5:38 AM by Tokoya

Funi's video player was terrible anyway.

Mar 5, 2022 9:06 PM by malvarez1

It's really hard to believe that the Funimation brand has more or less dissolved. They have such a long history and has been the biggest player for years.

Although, I can understand Sony's decision here. First is to make it as simple as possible for newcomers to get into anime. Having a singular brand under a single name makes its way easier to understand and get into. Having too many names just muddles things.

The second is changing the name to Crunchyroll, rather than Funimation, despite Funi being around a lot longer. Funimation just fostered too much animosity with the anime community. Their questionable and often inappropriate translations, their voice actors disrespecting the community as a whole, and even the Vic situation (despite Funi not really being at fault for what happened), was just too much baggage that came with the name. Sony made the smart decision to go with Crunchy who has its own convention, awards show, and has its roots as a site made by anime fans as a fansub website.

At the end of the day, this is a seismic event for the anime community. What's going to happen from here is anyone's guess.

Mar 5, 2022 8:04 PM by takkun_

This is great. I always hated subscribing to Wakanim to get maybe one or two seasonal anime. Or renting a movie on anime-on-demand (which was merged into CR earlier).

I hope they'll update their player to chose the audio language though. Some entries have about ten "seasons" for the different languages - and at least in Germany you can't access most of them anyway - so it's really messy and needs a redesign.

Mar 3, 2022 1:08 AM by Simar

Well hopefully this means that when I set sail the episodes will not have that cringe funimation intro anymore.

Mar 2, 2022 7:57 PM by FullyCharged

I have a bad feeling about this like a really really big fucking yikes about this.

Mar 2, 2022 7:53 PM by Disapeared_Ghost

I'm happy that they're choosing to leave Crunchyroll because the website is more user-friendly, but they also have the worst servers EVER. For 5 weeks, the AoT episode wouldn't drop on time. The first one alone was delayed by like 3 hours. If they can fix their servers, then I'll be OK. I also hope this won't pose the region restriction issues because so many anime I can't watch on CR I can watch watch on Funimation. I hope they can find a way around that, otherwise it's going to suck.

Mar 2, 2022 7:53 PM by samashi20

So Crunchyroll will be the Disney of Animes?

Mar 2, 2022 2:56 PM by TRMH

VivavideoUser2x said:
Who knows,maybe two mediocre websites can make one good website.

Their websites have been working perfectly fine for me, way better than any pirate site I ever used at least.

Mar 2, 2022 11:48 AM by MadanielFL

It’s a bold strategy cotton, let’s see if it pays off for em’

Mar 2, 2022 10:28 AM by DBX

I couldn't be happier! Thanks sony

Mar 2, 2022 9:39 AM by Luk7sz

This is the biggest news for Anime Fans , especially in our era , now we're getting a lot of series being subbed . All hail Sony lol

Mar 2, 2022 9:02 AM by Rimuru0001