Author: Gabriel Persechino-Forest Published: October 18th, 2018
Earlier this year, shortly after Sony acquired Funimation, I made an article highlighting the different possibilities as to how it would ultimately play out. I said we would have to wait and see, that these changes weren’t going to be immediate. Well we waited, and it seems the first of the changes is now becoming apparent: Funimation has ended its partnership with Crunchyroll. As much as all of us had hoped that Sony would be smart and handle this in the best business/consumer-friendly way possible, it seems they have decided to go for one of the lesser options available and we will likely see the true depths they are willing to sink to as time moves forward. A little bleak an assessment? Keep reading.
The agreement will end on November 9 of this year and following its conclusion, several hundred titles will see subtitled versions appear on Funimation Now; this will result in the loss of a few dubbed series, however. Crunchyroll has also alluded to losing a few titles as a result of this development. Home video releases are still planned to be released as scheduled and titles licensed during the partnership will continue to be shared by both companies. Funimaiton will begin offering subtitled simulcast once again as early as winter 2019 but has no intention of relaunching its subtitled-only subscription tier.
Also to note, Funimation Now will no longer be part of the VRV streaming bundle service. And in another bit of development, it seems HIDIVE will replace Funimation Now and join the VRV service.
Funimation did mention that they plan to continue both “Quantity and quality” in future seasons in regards to licensing of series but whether or not they follow through on that is another matter entirely.
This is the memo that was supposedly circulated by Fukunaga to the Funimation staff:
All,
I am writing to share some important news. Effective immediately, Funimation will once again independently acquire, market and distribute anime to the entire community – to both sub and dub fans. This new future is a result of our acquisition by Sony Pictures Television and additional investments Sony is making in our business to make Funimation a global sub and dub anime brand. As such, we’ve made the decision not to renew our collaboration with Crunchyroll, a relationship that ended amicably this month.
Our goal has always been to improve the fan experience and expand the reach of anime. We exceeded our goals in the past couple of years and have established ourselves as the anime industry’s most advanced streaming platform, expanded our global footprint, and accelerated our dub speed to market for new episodes coming out of Japan. While our partnership with Crunchyroll is ending, we are excited about the future, the support of Sony Pictures Television and their commitment, alongside ours, to build the best experience for anime fans globally.
We have enormous respect for the relationship we forged with Crunchyroll and will be working with them closely over the next several months to ensure a seamless transition in terms of our respective catalogs and offerings. That said, there will be some immediate changes ahead as we unwind the partnership. On November 9, 2018, our subscribers will have access to several hundred subbed titles when our catalog reverts to Funimation, while a handful of dubbed titles will no longer be available on FunimationNow. All the titles licensed during the partnership will continue to be shared with Crunchyroll and available to FunimationNow subscribers.
Thank you for your tireless work and dedication as well as your unwavering commitment to bring the best anime to the most people possible.
Please join me and the senior management team for an all-hands meeting. We will be able to address any questions you may have then. In the meantime, I would direct you to the special FAQs created for fans and subscribers that are now live on the Funimation blog.
Gen
Crunchyroll made it clear that it was indeed Funimation that made the decision to end the partnership and Funimation specifically highlighted that the decision was a direct result of Sony’s acquisition. Sony apparently desires to make Funimation a global sub and dub anime brand; an ambition which carries some rather disturbing mainstream implications.
To be fair, since Sony took over Funimation we have seen the average price of certain series go down a bit and other than this, it doesn’t seem Sony has drastically acted to undermine Funimation’s business model, yet. Considering what’s coming in the next two years, we’ll need to stay alert and be ready to defend our hobby with everything we have, Japanese and Western fans.
But on the side of warning as to what Sony’s next move might entail, remember that they are currently running an initiative to release censored versions of their own catalogue to remove “Graphic violence, offensive language, sexual innuendo and other adult content”. All of this is a result of big companies seeing online streaming increasingly as the “Next TV”; meaning: They want to censor it and put ratings and paywall and endless ads until it can truly be “For everyone” and shared with “A wider audience”. I’m not saying they’re going to ravage their anime titles going forward, I’m just highlighting what initiative they are looking at for their other divisions and pointing out that if successful, they could decide to implement the same tactics to other divisions. Remember that we live in the era of political correctness and #MeToo, which seems to mean a return to old fashioned puritanism and conservative-style media censorship, now ironically shepherded by the liberals.
It is also worth noting that Sony has been implementing censorship on its Playstation 4 console, which has already resulted in a toned down version of Senran Kagura and Omega Labyrinth Z as well as Super Seducer being banned from the console. So yeah, they’re handling our anime now.
So to recap the North American anime industry: Amazon has bought two whole blocks and does not dub nor put out any of its titles on home video, Netflix is producing series which they only release in bulk and never puts out home video releases themselves, Funimation is now owned by Sony and adopting some of its wonderful business practices and Crunchyroll is now owned by AT&T and has already censored a game and is investing into SJW, Western cartoons. But hey, that’s the West; Japan’s okay, right! No, not really. Political pressure is mounting up in Japan from activists groups inside their own country and outside (Feminists, conservatives and others seem to have renewed interest in attacking anime lately), Netflix is now producing and helping to dictate the content of anime series and is working hard to establish new western-friendly trends and streaming, which is more important to Japanese companies than it ever was, is being monopolized by American super corporations. If you think anime can remain isolated and independent forever, then it’s just because you really don’t want to see this coming.
Update: HIDIVE’s VRV Availability Confirmed
I found your site from a comment. Glad I’m not the only one that’s been seeing the transformation of the Japanese society into liberalism. I’m glad someone like you actually addressing this and make a point on written article since the mainstream media deny anything about it and ignoring the facts.
(This is my personal view)
The change especially true after Japan won the bid to host Tokyo Olympic 2020. Liberal opportunist saw this as the opportunity to re-brand Japan. No longer a nationalist and traditionalist country but a liberal haven, part of the global community. Japan no more able to hide themselves, now they’re in the spotlight forced to change or face backlash. Twitter, Netflix, and all the big news channel focuses on every single things that made Japan unique – that include anime- and turn it into sin. Sin that must be wash properly or they won’t be able to properly assimilate to “the global community”. Japanese are honorable people, so they follow along. Suddenly, Obama and friends no longer in power, the smoke and mirrors are no more. The reek of liberalism started to come in contact with society. Panic, the globalists doubled down on their agenda to rapidly change the Japanese society.
It is so easy to see how much have changed in Japanese entertainment. From the ever increasing female lead and female oriented J-drama, the introduction of power harassment, age harassment and many more stupid rules, acceptance of LGBTBBQ community, the removal of black face jokes and all kind of stereotypes suggest that the liberal had succeeded in less than a decade. It saddens me, since all those restrictions only will stop Japanese unique ability to create better art and entertainment for everybody around the world. Let’s hope Tokyo Olympic won’t bring bankruptcy to the nation.
Take care.
“From the ever increasing female lead and female oriented J-drama” Uh, dude? This sounds like paranoia on your part. Next you’re gonna say CLAMP is a Leftist agenda-pushing initiative even though they’ve been around since the early-mid 1990s? Also dramas have naturally had a large female audience traditionally, and that’s globally for any market. You should’ve done more research.
“acceptance of LGBTBBQ community” Anime has always been pretty LGBT friendly, so I honestly don’t know what you’re on about here. Even currently, I don’t see any anime that are outright “pushing” LGBT stuff the way we’ve been seeing it in most Western live-action media or Western cartoons like Steven Universe do it (thank goodness). With anime, LGBT are just treated like any other character, their sexuality isn’t usually harped on as a defining character trait and hopefully it remains that way.
“he removal of black face jokes ” Firstly, I haven’t seen many (if any) anime or manga have literal blackface jokes…and I’ve seen a LOT of anime and read a LOT of manga. If you’re referring to stuff like Mr.Popo, well I agree the censoring they did with them in DBZ was stupid, but that’s b/c Westerners were projecting their *own* stereotypes on the character; Mr.Popo has always been a representation of the djinn or even the Hindu goddess deity Krishna. I know some older anime tended to draw black characters a certain way that could be *interpreted* as offensive but most of those weren’t really offensive and even black anime fans aren’t concerned with those. And it’s practically a non-existent issue in modern anime.
If you mean something more like literal blackface depictions and jokes in more anime, well,…in and of themselves it could work if there’s some condemnation of the depiction at some level, but I guess another way to ask it is if it’d be okay with an anime doing “whiteface” jokes or yellowface jokes etc. It’s gotta have some really smart writing to pull it off; there can be humor obviously but the end-goal can’t simply be “for the lulz”, not with that kind of subject matter. That’s just something most responsible people are gonna know at heart.
I don’t know how the Olympics will do for Tokyo or Japan at large, and I’m definitely against the bullocks that’s forming up an “animegate”, but like the writer’s said in the other articles, this isn’t simply a political Left thing. BOTH the left AND the right are in this together, so don’t get lured into simply going after the leftist agendas when it comes to potential censorship of anime; there’s stuff going on with the right currently threatening freedom of expression for the medium all the same. And in truth, we need to be as *apolitical* as possible in challenging this stuff; taking either side in actuality might just give them ammunition to push against us. The Left and the Right are always involve in cooperation behind-the-scenes; that even includes the current SJW Left and Alt-Right.
We have to be above all of that and let all potential leeches and infiltrators know that they won’t manipulate us politically, or try getting us to fight against each other on gender, racial, or sexuality lines. That’s the only way we’ll weather the storm and beat the odds.