Andre Simon
9 Aug 2022
The anime giant gets bigger and bigger
It was announced last week that the anime giant Crunchyroll has secured themselves another piece of the anime world pie. Earlier in the year on March 1st, Sony's Funimation Global Group acquired Crunchyroll from AT&T for US$1.175 billion. With the two streaming platforms merged, their anime library has grown tremendously and has added a lot more value to subscription holders now that they do not have to hold two subscriptions to watch exclusive shows specific to each platform.
For example, one of my favourite 'war/history' genre anime KINGDOM. This was only available on Funimation but is now available to stream on Crunchyroll. Make sure you give it a watch if you want a visual taste of the book "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu.
That said, this makes Crunchyroll/Funimation the biggest anime publisher and streaming service in North America.
In addition to this announcement, last week Thursday, Crunchyroll only went and purchased the anime retailer known as Right Stuf.
Right Stuf is known for its huge anime merchandise platform in North America and I would say it is safe to say it is the leading provider in that neck of the woods. All I know for now is that Right Stuf will continue to sell goods but they will stop selling "Erotica products". This is likely due to 18+ content not fitting Sony's brand.
Currently, Right Stuf and the Crunchyroll store will operate separately but we will see what the future holds. Who knows, they may merge just as they did with Crunchyroll and Funimation.
Right Stuf CEO Shawne Kleckner and the Right Stuf team are joining Crunchyroll's growing businesses organisation, which will be led by Terry Li.
I don't know if it is just me but it sounds like Crunchyroll/Sony are on a mission to monopolise the anime industry in North America.