Forum - View topicNEWS: Crunchyroll Store to Become Exclusive to Mega/Ultimate Fan Tiers in August
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3867 Location: Finland |
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Sony IS a Japanese conglomerate, headquartered in Tokyo, they have a stake in a lot of productions and are the owner of several anime studio subsidiaries, notable examples A-1 Pictures and CloverWorks. There won't be anyone to point out anything unless they somehow manage to do it at themselves.. |
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BlueRex666
Posts: 252 Location: El Paso, TX |
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And from what I've heard the Japanese government is stepping in where Sony won't. |
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BlueRex666
Posts: 252 Location: El Paso, TX |
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They're also trying to make infinite profits in a finite world. I say we take the momentum of them trying to do the same to physical games and the backlash that they are currently receiving... |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 3029 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Honestly, Sony is the type of company that would likely spend the money to renew a license, just so that Crunchyroll still has control over it, than allow someone else to possibly make any money of it instead. It's similar to how Sony (by & large) doesn't allow sub-licensing of anime that's licensed by Crunchyroll so that other companies can release them on home video (see: Discotek admitting that they tried to license Ashita no Joe 1 & 2 TV for home video, but were told "someone else", i.e. Crunchyroll, had it), or how they'll simply kill something off than sell it to someone else (a la Right Stuf, after it became clear that they don't know how to operate an online anime storefront). Sony has clearly shown that they'd rather screw everyone else over out of spite than even try to share some financial success with someone else, let alone let someone else do something new with something they once had.
Quite frankly, I fully believe that the vast majority of anime licensors in Japan simply don't care about home video outside of Japan, at this point. Since anime is on such a fast-paced & seasonal schedule now there's really no incentive for them to continue focusing on a show once it's finished airing, as they have the next show for the following season to focus on. Since Crunchyroll is still getting the vast majority of new titles every season it's clear that the licensors in Japan are largely fine with their shows not getting physical releases outside of Japan, and those who go with a service like Hidive are probably just thinking "Neat, we'll get some bonus royalties later down the line", but it's not a major factor. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 5413 |
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Pay even more to get access to the ability to buy from them? WTF? The main thing I bought and cared about was home video, and they've been awful at providing that for years with simply not producing discs for most shows. Why would I ever pay more just to access a store that does not sell what I want?
Of course they strip away discounts. Why should that ongoing fee get you anything there? And of course no more free shipping. They can't possibly swallow a few bucks even though we all know that "free shipping" means that they made enough off the sale to cover it. We're at a point where companies all over are so desperate to make line go up that they will strip out the most inconsequential things to make it to the next quarterly report. No surprise at what they think they are selling. "Exclusive" merch was already very prominent on the site, and for months now, if I tried to browse pre-orders on the hope that something hit blu-ray, well, it wasn't even a category. I don't want a shirt with an anime title slapped on it. I want a copy of the anime. I have a space at home where I keep my anime collection. I was finally filling the last shelf. I was thinking of what I was going to do once it was filled, and then I noticed it was taking longer and longer to fill it. Even before this, it occurred to me that it would almost certainly be the last one I would need, and that assumes it won't end with a giant empty space. It's incredibly depressing to see that one of my main ways of enjoying the hobby is not just dying, but being strangled in front of me. I'll keep supporting Sentai, MediaOCD, etc. where I can, but there is only so much they can do when the vast, vast majority all ends up in the hands of the culprit. A company that was apparently happy to not take money from willing customers now thinks they'll pay even more to still not be able to buy what they want, all because they convinced themselves that it hurt the streaming subscriptions when the effect was the opposite. Being able to stream gave people a relatively cheap way to know if they wanted to buy something and pay them even more money. But, we are in a world where it makes sense to spend however much money to buy up businesses with the intent to kill them. Why should obvious things like selling to willing customers stop them? I took a look at that sale page. And naturally, it is sorted by "recommended" with the top of that order being Aniplex stuff that is still overpriced. Is that what we should expect for what will be left of the home video after this? Just some stuff from Aniplex that was already too pricey, and now you'll pay just to be able to get it? And no surprise, if you look at just home video for the sale, it has a total of 34 items. Just close the store, CR. That would be more honest than pretending like you even want to have one. I also agree with what Lord Geo said. Considering how TRSI was dismantled piece by piece after the purchase, and how Funimation was reduced to nothing but its (cheaper) dubbing studio, I think it is safe to say that Sony will buy things specifically so others do not have them. While there are stories about Japanese companies being very assertive with the licenses and requiring certain things be done with them, they generally have taken the stance that as long as they get paid, what happens after that isn't their problem. I imagine that with how big CR was allowed to get, and with Sony's efforts to get in on the ground floor with the IP, production committees that might care about any of this aren't in much of a position to do anything about it. We're now at a point where the best thing that can happen is that they allow licenses to expire, and the remaining companies out there doing home video are in positions to be able to get them. But, there is always the chance CR/Sony will decide those cheap renewals are worth it just to play keep away. |
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Kamijou Touma
 Posts: 174 Location: Gakuen Toshi |
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I used to buy many Light Novels from Rightstuf cheap. I bought from Crunchy a few times but the prices were never as good. Now many series i read are not even carried there. They want me to pay to buy book they do not have, Are they crazy. I makes me regret even more never learning to read Japanese. Could have saved myself a ton of trouble.
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Sinxi and heylog
Posts: 220 |
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1. Im confused with this one cause sony (they also have aniplex) license smaller shows in japan and in the west, and have been doing that for years and are also, so idk what you mean, unless your talking about something else? 2. You do know that sony is one of the biggest companies in the anime industry right? 2 of the most well known studios are under them, and some of the biggest companies in the anime industry work with them, and they have also produced some of the biggest anime in japan, so like another comment said, the only way someone calls them out is themselves. And even with that, physical distribution does not always go through aniplex, so it does not change a thing 3. I dont know what you mean by selling directly to the western customer, like huh? That wont happen, if they dont go cunchryroll, they will go to Amazon, netflix, hidive, or youtube, or all together. And also, this point is so wierd to say in a time where anime studios are actually looking at cunchryroll and seeing them as a company that pushes anime to any market, so..... what are you talking about 4. This is the only point that makes a bit of sense, but at the same time eh, in terms of the anime or manga Industry, they are asking questions about what they can do about piracy, interms of anime its licensing things to cunchryroll or buying companies in the west to do things in the west while also collaborating with cunchryroll, iirc this is the highest amount of anime that cunchryroll has licensed this season (dont quote me on that, i may be wrong) To me, your coming across as being cynical, trying to predict what sony will do in the anime industry and saying things like "its inevitable" and then listing those pretty rough points is a bad move. |
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Greed1914
Posts: 5413 |
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Exactly. We know that they already don't carry what many customers want, and paying just to see if they happened to have added something makes no sense. It's paying for a perk that you're not using. I doubt any of that "exclusive merchandise" is worth it, especially when you're paying the added cost constantly. They describe it like recreating the convention experience buying from vendors, but all they seem to mean is the part where you buy your convention ticket and just happen to be able to peruse the wares once you're in. Personally, I went to many conventions where I didn't see anything I wanted, but didn't mind because they sure didn't upsell me on a badge just to look. A year or so ago, I was running into an issue where the store would not process my orders. It kept getting stuck on Review Order and did nothing. The only thing that seemed to get a response from them was when I contacted customer service and said that since I couldn't use my subscriber discount, I would cancel it since I couldn't use what I paid for. Now, they're expecting you to pay more and you don't even get that much. I don't know why they are bothering to have the store at all if they are doing everything they can to turn people away. That leads to the questions people were asking which are: will they continue selling any physical media, and if so, will those still be in other stores? I'm not going to be surprised if they put what little they produce behind this paywall and then cite it as proof that the market supposedly wants digital. We've already seen Sony try to get clever with that on games. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2599 |
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As in, I canceled my Crunchy account, I won't buy from them, and I'm no longer buying my games digitally. Sony is pushing toward a digital-exclusive future I want no part of. Digital isn't the problem, of course. Lack of choice and lack of competition is. So I'm not going to support digital streaming or games from here on. |
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Denzil
 Posts: 3 Location: England |
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Hi All
To be honest their UK shop had was usually more expensive than most other UK based Anime / Manga stores anyway! So it is no loss for me and it definitely won't encourage me to buy a higher tier! I have been around since Crunchyroll was a bit more of a Umm! 'Pioneering site' and I did use Rightstuf alot until the UK gained more stores. To be honest the fact that other streaming sites have now set their sights on Anime, means I have yet to see Delicious in Dungeon, the 2026 Ghost in the Shell and Tengoku Daimakyo/Heavenly Delusion, as far as I am concerned that is more of a threat as I just cannot afford multiple channels. The inevitable march of not being allowed 'to own' a download or buy a physical copy only makes it worse. So as I said it is a loss but not one I am willing to pay extra for! |
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EB01
Posts: 34 |
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No, we are not overreacting. 1. What you said just work against your "You are all overreacting" take. You are claiming that Sony is going to leave table scraps for the rest of the industry. 2. Already been happening for years. When Sony bought Funimation in 2018, the Japanese anime industry expressed concerns. Same when Sony bought CR in 2021. Sony owns animation studios, and a lot of the other studios' concerns was (and validated concern as it did come to pass) that Sony's control over the American anime streaming /retail markets would negatively affect non-Sony owned studios. Sony's 2022 purchase of The Rightstuf caused a lot of concern with companies localising anime, and their concerns were founded as Sony/CR dropped stocking non-Crunchyroll titles as they dismantled TRS bit-by-bit over the last 5 years or so. Sony buying Manga Entertainment (UK) and Madman (AU and NZ) in 2019 has thinned out non-Sony options significantly. In the case of Australia and New Zealand, they own the physical retail supply. The lack of retail store purchase options in NZ is due to Crunchyroll NZ operating their own online store and killed the market. There were once a few other (very small) companies handling anime, but Madman (Formerly known as Manga Entertainment NZ) was effectively the whole industry for entire history of retail anime video sales in NZ. There is no "follow the smaller distributors and bide your time" for NZ anime fans. The market for independent physical anime releases in NZ has been dead for years. Sony killed it. If I want to buy anime on Blu-Ray I have to import from other markets via.... well not the Crunchyroll store. The only time I tried to do that for Macross Zero BR release their storefront error'ed out with "an invalid phone number". That issue has been a known issue for years (multiple years). I gave up and just bought the Japanese release of it. I used to buy some anime from The Rightuf, but that stopped due to Sony buying it and enshittifying it into oblivion. 3. It was clear years ago, and effectively nothing was done outside of licensing anime to Not Crunchyroll. Still a "lose lose" situation either way they go. 4. Even if we pirate it, we are still stuck with CR subtitles 99% of the time. I cannot point at any particular moment in time, or a news article but AFAIK fansubbing is mostly gone. Most the pirate anime content are streaming re-encodes (with a Blu-Ray rop later). If/when Crunchyroll does a piss-poor job for the translations/localisation, it will usually never be corrected. |
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chrisc1978
 Posts: 386 |
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Thank god Sentai Filmworks, Discotek Media, and others is still around. I have also been buying a bunch of blu-rays from Ascendent Animation and Gkids recently.
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Greed1914
Posts: 5413 |
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Correct. This is not an overreaction. Sony has made moves to get into every aspect of the process. Ownership of companies creating IP, seats on production committees, streaming services, recording studios, retailers, even movie theaters that screen something for a single day. We know of examples where things are not even available to the little guys because "somebody" has the rights and is content to do nothing with them. They gobbled up everything they can fit in their mouths, and would rather things rot than any competitor get a bite. It's true that they do not care about the customers or industry. We can see that from making decisions that are the opposite of what we want. But, companies like that don't one day say "We're bored now. Everyone else have at it." They run things into the ground, extract every cent they can from it on the way, and then they close businesses and fire people while acting like it was a surprise that it died along the way. They don't care if the earth is salted from the fallout. That is what makes them not caring so dangerous. If it doesn't work out, they won't take the gracious path and give the chance for the industry to recover. They'll drag it right down with them. Take their handling of TRSI, for example. It went from THE place to get all sorts of things from all sorts of companies with a reputation for customer service to today, where it will be a paywalled store run by bots that can barely be asked to sell its own products. Selling it off to someone who might actually try would be the thing to do since they could get some money while exiting a market they clearly don't want to serve. Instead, they're going to make it a worthless "feature" to upcharge subscription fees. Another example: Black Lagoon. They removed it from streaming, but not because the license expired. They did it because that 20-year-old anime is now "confusing" customers with its oldness and getting in the way of new things (somehow). They see their own licenses as hindrances, and would rather disappear them than let someone sublicense them. The smaller companies have to be able to even survive long enough for that to happen for it to maybe one day change. The things Sony has done up to now are all designed to keep that from happening. The goal of any monopoly is always to make it so that your only choices are them or nothing. And even if this all blew up on them, and the smaller companies are still there, I'm not sure it would happen. I'm sure Amazon and Netflix would love the chance to fill such a vacuum, and they'd have the money to get anything they want out of it. Neither of them cares about anime as anything other than content to keep you paying each month. A scenario where a license rescue means it's locked behind a Prime subscription with zero chance of a physical release doesn't seem like an improvement. Last edited by Greed1914 on Thu Jul 16, 2026 4:14 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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GeorgH
Posts: 76 |
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The Crunchyroll EU store opened in July 2024 and the order numbers reached about 19 Million in Feb 2026, so likely around 25 Million as of today. I don't know if the last digit is a checksum-digit, so it might be actually 10x less. Until like October 2025 you were able to buy most of their German & French Manga there, this obviously stopped when they sold that branch. For German & French Europe + UK you could buy Blu-rays, but often at full SRP (-10% Mega Fan). Some of there sales however were quite nice... I placed around 10 orders in their store and actually ended up cancelling more that I'd like due to them taking ages to fulfill backorders, even if they were listed as available in their B2B branch. And by "ages" I mean 3 to 8 months, with some others cancelled by me or still waiting for shipping. Free shipping & not being Amazon however were reasons to shop at Crunchyroll store I never shopped for Merch there, so I can't tell anything about that. |
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tygerchickchibi
 Posts: 1496 |
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Concerts have been sponsored by Crunchyroll. We use this to gatekeep concert tickets from paying subscribers too?
I can see that happening |
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