In what comes as a shock to most anime fans, Crunchyroll and Funimation, former adversaries, have today announced a new partnership between the two. This partnership isn’t just limited to one facet of their operations, but everything they do.
Funimation and Crunchyroll, going forward, will be sharing in the acquisition, production, and release of content, dubbed or subbed, streamed or physical release. Under this partnership, Crunchyroll will be the home of simulcasts and subtitled streaming content, while Funimation will expand upon their broadcast dub concept, bringing more series out with an English dub while they’re still on the air in Japan, and continuing to release blu-rays and DVDs for those that buy physical media—this will extend to titles Crunchyroll have home media rights to.
Crunchyroll’s Announcement
When we started Crunchyroll, we wanted to bring more anime to fans around the world. With the ongoing support of fans (like you) and creators, we have been fortunate to, slowly but surely, increase access to anime for a growing and dedicated fanbase. Now, we take another big step towards realizing our founding goal.
Today, Funimation joins Crunchyroll in our common mission of bringing more anime to fans and more fans to anime. We are announcing a partnership that will expand the anime lineup on both services as well as provide more ways for anime fans to stream, purchase, download, and access more of the shows they love.
Crunchyroll viewers now have access to subtitled Funimation simulcasts, starting with summer titles D.Gray-man HALLOW, Puzzle & Dragons X, and FIRST LOVE MONSTER. Going forward, Funimation will be distributing even more of their simulcast titles on Crunchyroll.
With this partnership, Funimation will also be contributing their subtitled catalog to Crunchyroll. This includes some of the most critically acclaimed and popular titles of the past two decades. You can start watching PSYCHO-PASS,Cowboy Bebop (one of my favorite titles of all time!), and Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash today. We will continue to add more and more catalog titles over the coming weeks and months… there’s a lot of onboarding, encoding and processing taking place behind the scenes!
The partnership extends to Crunchyroll titles as well. Later this fall, you will be able to access several of our titles, such as 91 Days, Mob Psycho 100, and Orange, with English-language Broadcast Dubs on FunimationNow. We will be announcing more Broadcast Dub and dubbed catalog titles in the coming weeks which will be available on the FunimationNow service.
Finally, we will be working together to distribute Crunchyroll titles through Blu-ray, DVD, and Download-to-Own, both dubbed and subbed. Currently planned titles include Ace Attorney, Alderamin on the Sky, Bungo Stray Dogs,JOKER GAME, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress and ReLIFE, with more to be announced in the future, so stay tuned for announcements on availability and street dates.
Funimation’s Announcement
Since Gen Fukunaga started Funimation with the first ever English dub of Dragon Ball Z, our goal has been to make the best anime in the world accessible to most fans possible. Today, we’re announcing a new partnership with Crunchyroll that lets us both work together to bring anime to fans around the world.
What does this mean for you? Simpler, easier choices about where to watch anime. For subtitled viewing, you’ll be able to go to Crunchyroll – in fact, we’ve already started putting some of our subtitled shows up on their service today, and we will be adding more over the weeks to come. For English dubs, you’ll continue to get those from Funimation – we will have select shows from Crunchyroll’s catalog up on FunimationNow coming soon, and we will be creating new dubs for even more shows in the future!
Our partnership includes new shows, too. We will be working together with Crunchyroll to bring you new titles going forward, starting with the Fall 2016 season. Simulcasts of those shows with English subtitles will be up on Crunchyroll, and Funimation will be creating Broadcast Dubs for many of these titles, available on FunimationNow just 2-4 weeks after each episode airs in Japan!
All of this means no more hunting for who’s got your favorite shows each season, and it means each company can focus on what they do best. For Funimation, that means creating more dubs than ever before, and adding to the world’s largest library of English-dubbed anime on FunimationNow.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out going forward; the Fall simulcast schedule is going to be a joint announcement, it seems, so hopefully next season we’ll be able to watch all of our simulcasts through just Crunchyroll and Amazon Instant Video. The streaming aspects of this partnership will apply to us in the UK, aside from titles whose streaming rights belong to another party, such as Cowboy Bebop.
For home media, it’s unclear as to exactly how we’ll be able to get hold of physical releases that Crunchyroll hold the rights to, but based on Anime Limited’s announcements at MCM earlier this year, we assume they’ll have a hand in this whether it be through a distribution deal or licensing the titles from Crunchyroll.