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Episode 4 – Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals

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Episode 4 - Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals
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In this episode, we will discuss the decline of Crunchyroll as it’s catalog shrinks and the failure of Crunchyroll Originals. We also discuss the implications of Sony possibly buying Crunchyroll.

This is an audio version of our post, originally titled Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals, published on November 17, 2020. If you have any comments, leave a reply in the original post.

This podcast uses the following songs:

Night In Venice by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5763-night-in-venice
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5010-ultralounge
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license 

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What Is on My Mind – April 2021 – Sony’s Purchase of Crunchyroll in Jeopardy, Uma Musume Mobile Game First Impressions, Importance of Backups, and More

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Artist: りの@キャラット6月号掲載中！

Now that we at the start of spring, it’s time to share some interesting posts I found interesting from the past month.

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Decline of Crunchyroll and Failure of Originals

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Artist: 千羽

For a while now, Crunchyroll is facing a big decline. In recent seasons, Funimation has been getting a lot of high profile shows in the past. To make matters worse, the service has been losing a lot of shows in its catalog while increasing the subscription fees.

Now, WarnerMedia, who owns Crunchyroll wants to sell it to Sony. Not only this will cause the problem of Sony almost controlling the western anime market, Crunchyroll will most likely cease to exist as they will most likely merge it with Funimation.

With the lack of shows that appeal to my tastes, I kind of let my Crunchyroll Premium lapse and I have yet to renew it. This is mostly because the titles I want to watch is now on Funimation or Hidive.

The question remains, what led to this situation? Is it because of Crunchyroll’s ambitious plans to work on creating their originals with the long-term plan of controlling anime? Or is it bad luck caused by the Covid19 induced recession.

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What Is on My Mind – September 2020 – The Things You Like Turn to Crap Because 2020, Machikado Mazoku 2nd Season, and More

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Artist: nn 2b

Now that Summer is coming to an end soon, it’s time to share my thoughts during the month. As expected, it’s not pretty because it’s 2020 after all.
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What Is on My Mind – August 2020 – Crunchyroll and Poor Translator Pay, Blog’s Domain Turns 10, In Defense of CGDCT Genre, and More

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Artist: merukyara

With July ending very soon, it’s time to share some interesting posts and some thoughts during the month.
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Reviewing the Anime Streaming Platforms – Which One Is the Best?

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Artist: 反町豆腐

A while ago, I shared some thoughts about anime streaming services. Believe it or not, in 2017, I realized that streaming anime is a lot more convenient than messing with torrents. While I dabbed into streaming sometime in 2016 by subscribing to three months of Funimation Now, I never shared my experience using it. Eventually, I cancelled it. A year later, I finally subscribed to Crunchyroll after being a holdout for years. It’s mostly because I couldn’t afford a subscription since was in college at the time.

While I was going to share my experiences with Crunchyroll and my three months using Funimation Now a while back, well it didn’t quite happen. Between the period when I lost my job, focusing my time finding another job, finally getting one and moving, this idea went by the wayside.

Since then, a lot has changed in the legal anime streaming landscape. Some players such as Daisuki and a few others have gone under. Of course, there are some new players as well such as Hidive, and the revamped Funimation streaming service.

What really inspire me to finally share my thoughts is Irina sharing her thoughts on streaming platforms. While her review focuses on the state of streaming in Canada, since most of our readers are from the United States, it’s time to focus on the state of streaming here.  Of course, I subscribed to all three services. With that, I will share my overall impressions on after using them for a while.
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Impact of Covid-19 on Japanese Animation Studios and the Need to Embrace Digital and Telework

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Artist:stick jitb

Believe it or not, I have covered the impacts of the Anime Industry due to Covid-19. However, we still didn’t know the full impact back then, until now. This just didn’t happen overnight. Animation studios faced problems such as poor working conditions, a packed production schedule and noticeable delays in 2019.

As expected, the coronavirus situation made the whole thing worse. Sure, a handful of titles suffered minor delays. Eventually, the coronavirus situation worsened with more than forty titles facing delays.  As a result, studios had no choice but to delay productions. Eventually Japan declared a state of emergency on April 16, weeks after delaying the Olympics. This does not come at a surprise since the workplace at these studios clamped. As a result, this makes social distancing efforts nearly impossible. With that, I want to focus on some thoughts on the whole situation.
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The SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak – The Impacts on the Anime Industry and Everyone’s Lives

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While Eripiyo doesn’t have Coronavirus, but the flu, this scene is relatable to this situation.

As expected, it seems that the Novel Coronavirus has started to affect everyone’s lives. For an anime fan, it definitely had an impact. Not only anime productions are getting delayed, but also events and even anime conventions. Even the Tokyo Olympics that is happening later this year is in jeopardy and will most likely see a delay.

Not only that, various anime productions faced delays as a result. Some are very noticeable with Koisuru Asteroid, Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T, A3, and others. It doesn’t end there. Some spring anime, most notably Re Zero Second Season along with a bunch of films pushed back until the summer. Moreover, Amazon is prioritizing shipping of certain goods to deal with the virus. This causes things like anime DVD/Blu-rays, merchandise, video games, etc to face shipping delays. With that, we are living with a new reality and life as we know it is changed forever.

You might be wondering, what is the Novel Coronavirus (aka Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2/SARS-CoV-2/nCov-19/Covid-19) and what affect it is happening on the anime industry. Most of you should have heard about this virus on the news and social media. As expected, it’s having a huge effect on people’s everyday lives. I will share some of my thoughts on how this situation is affecting me personally.
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Pitfalls of Anime Streaming, Competition and Subscription Fatigue – Is It Becoming Too Fragmented?

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Artist: stick_jitb</a?

It’s obvious that the Novel Coronavirus has caused a lot of public events to become cancelled along with schools. Aside from people who have a job, but can’t telework, most will be at home. In other words, some or most of you would binge watch on anime while being stuck at home.

This of course brings the topic of anime streaming. In recent years, anime has become more accessible legally through legal streaming services like Crunchyroll, Funimation, and others. Not only that, you don’t have to spend $50-250 to buy the whole series on DVD or Blu-ray to watch it. Of course, we started to see Crunchyroll losing the lion share of the anime streaming as competition heated up.

If you recall, Amazon tried to jump in the fray with Anime Strike and Netflix doing its own thing. While competition is good as it doesn’t cause a service to become complacent. During that time, Crunchyroll became a bit lazy by not updating their video player and with poor video quality.

Once competition took hold, they eventually added an HTML5 player. It’s not without consequence. They lost a good amount of their catalog once Funnimation pulled out of the deal.

As expected, exclusive simulcasting is becoming an issue as people have to subscribe to the multiple services to watch the content they enjoy. Otherwise, he or she will miss out unless they subscribe. As they say, each subscription adds up in the end. This phenomenon is called subscription fatigue. While some bloggers have covered this concern, it’s time to go more in depth in it.
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The Reasons Why You Should (Probably) Not Pirate Anime

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Artist: キュードリ

Since 2017, I started the shift towards streaming mostly because it’s convenient and it’s probably the cheapest way to support the industry. From the monthly subscription fees, royalties are paid from the shows you watch, which eventually goes back to the studios and the industry.

Given the problem that studios are facing with low pay and poor working conditions, if more switched to legal alternatives, it would help the industry. After all, revenue generated overseas will become more important given the change in demographics in Japan.

While streaming is not the ideal solution mostly because of region restrictions, it’s not a problem if you live in North America. Of course, exclusivity of titles and fragmentation is another issue. Certain titles will only be available on Crunchyroll, HIDIVE, Amazon, Netflix or Funimation. In other words, this will require subscribing to multiple services.

If you take these drawbacks from the picture, it’s a better way to watch anime as it’s convenient. One doesn’t have to mess around with Bittorrent, worry about what video players to use, and having enough disk space. You just watch whatever you want.

However, people who live in regions where legal options are readily available and can afford it still choose to pirate. People have to realize that not only this is selfish and immoral given the poor state of the animation industry, you are also putting your information security at risk. Not to mention, piracy or rather the correct term, copyright infringement is illegal. I will explain why you should probably stop pirating anime and consider legal options if available.

(Note: Pardon the lack of images, they are coming in a few days)
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