Otakon 2014

Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll's Manga Brand Manager Danika Harrod and software developer Evan Minto opened Friday's Crunchyroll industry panel by playing a short anime clip (voice only), then challenging the audience to correctly identify it. The winner got a three-month anime membership for recognizing that the scene came from Haikyu!!.

Harrod and Minto then spent the first part of the panel going over their current favorite anime and encouraging the audience to watch them. Blue Spring Ride, adapted from the manga by Io Sakisaka, is a shoujo romance about a cute but clumsy girl. Akame ga KILL! is adapted from a manga by Takahiro and Tetsuya Tashiro and concerns a fearsome, determined female assassin. Aldnoah.Zero, the latest from Gen Urobuchi (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero), is a gritty, realistic mecha series thick with political and military themes. Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, an adaptation from the manga by Izumi Tsubaki, lightheartedly depicts a young girl madly in love with a shoujo manga artist.

The Crunchyroll panelists also spotlighted on Free! Eternal Summer, the second series of the hit swimming anime Free! – Iwatobi Swim Club; Love Stage!!, a boys' love romance comedy adapted from the manga by Eiki Eiki; Haikyu!!, the aforementioned volleyball anime descended from the Haruichi Furudate manga; and Yowamushi Pedal, a bicycling anime based on a manga by Wataru Watanabe. All of them have an attractive male cast in common, which Harrod hypothesized as the reason why girls have been watching more sports anime lately. Fate/Zero, the Gen Urobuchi series with a complex tale of resurrected legendary warriors; Rurouni Kenshin, a classic samurai anime adapted from the shounen manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki; Space Pirate Captain Harlock, an iconic space pirate anime from the 1970s adapted from a manga by Leiji Matsumoto; Rose of Versailles, a much-admired historical drama adapted from the manga by Riyoko Ikeda and also from the 1970s; Kill la Kill, a popular original action series from Studio Trigger; and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, another action series based on a 1980s manga by Hirohiko Araki, rounded out Harrod and Minto's list of recommended series currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Crunchyroll's big announcement was its acquisition of the seminal magical girl series Cardcaptor Sakura, which will stream in its entirety, both subbed and dubbed, starting this Tuesday. It will also stream Toradora! In HD. After spotlighting several Japanese dramas, the panelists moved on to announce updates to Crunchyroll's digital manga service. The service will now include push notifications, progress tracking similar to that seen on its video service, a favorites queue, page selection, sorting and filtering, and an upgraded search feature. They then advertised Crunchyroll's presence on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram) before winding up the panel with a call for job applications and shared photos of the startup culture at the Crunchyroll headquarters in San Francisco.

Crunchyroll will hold another panel at Anime Revolution in Vancouver on August 20-22 and at Otakuthon in Montreal on August 22-24.