Forum - View topicNEWS: Crunchyroll Purchases Anime Retailer Right Stuf
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 607 |
|
|||
And what exactly was it you wanted? Because I cannot see a single benefit to the consumers coming out of this. Suffice it to say, I'm devastated by the news. I've been buying anime and manga pretty much exclusively from the Right Stuff for years and endorsing them to pretty much everyone who would listen. They had good prices and stellar customer service, treated their employees ethically instead of working them to death, and were run by people with a genuine love and investment in the medium. This isn't the case at Crunchyroll; there certainly are employees who love anime, but most of the suits see the industry only in terms of dollar signs. The removal of erotica is a poor sign of things to come - a lot of companies choose not to deal with adult material because it's a pain in the ass to deal with, and it sounds like Sony feels that way as well. I'm deeply, deeply opposed to removing sex from all outlets except for sketchy underground sources, even if all the smutty manga I had purchased appear to still be on the site for some reason, so I'm not materially affected by it. All I can see coming up in the future is measures meant to cut costs and eliminate any inconvenience to the parent company. This is, and I say this without a single trace of irony, a true top ten anime betrayal. |
||||
|
||||
Covnam
 Posts: 3686 |
|
|||
|
As a customer since the early 2000s, this is definitely worrying to see.
I'm glad to see the 18+ non-H titles are still there (like Ghost Ship's titles), so hopefully that won't change as that was my first concern when I heard the news that mature titles were leaving. I wonder how this will affect their frequent weekly sales? If they end up not offering the same level of sales, it won't really be worth it to shop there any more. Next is what is going to happen with Nozomi. Luckily most of the older Gundam stuff is already out, but there's still more to come. Not to mention Macross. Would have loved an Ultra Edition for Delta and Frontier... Still waiting on the rest of Zetsubou sensei too -_- I believe Sentai uses RightStuf, so I wonder how this will affect them too... Guess I should have picked up some things during their sale last month :/
Same! I always enjoyed the interviews he did on the old podcasts giving industry status updates, but now we really need one!
Is that sarcasm because to me the Funi merger seemed like a complete mess? 
|
||||
|
||||
Meowtain Duwu
 Posts: 152 Location: United States |
|
|||
|
Any more major anime and/or licensing company buyouts by Crunchyroll/Sony at this rate and the FTC’s gonna have to get involved…
|
||||
|
||||
|
MangaNeko
Posts: 137 |
|
|||
|
Worrisome news, I’m sure several changes will occur. My biggest hope is that TRSI continues to offer the best discounts, especially for all the various companies, ie Seven Seas, Discotek, Denpa and Noizumi. The larger anime/manga companies have sales through other retailers, but TRSI spreads the love around.
I never picked up FUNIMATION streaming, so I have been happily enjoying the move of their shows to CR. Unfortunately in the last few years I’ve slowly come to terms that I can’t watch or read everything, but I do want to own what I DO like and Netflix/CR not distributing physical media for many of their shows annoys me to no end. |
||||
|
||||
|
Lord Geo
Posts: 2564 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
|
|||
Sentai just had a massive firesale on its site last month, with a ton of DVD boxsets being sold for literally $1, and with this news it absolutely looks like that sale was a "Sell off as much of our back stock as possible, so that there's less for us to take back when RS sends back our stuff, since we can't use them as a warehouse anymore". It's the inverse of when ADV originally moved its warehouse to RS a back in the late-00s, as they also did a massive firesale, but that was a "Sell off as much of our back stock as possible, so that there's less for us to send to RS, as we'll be using them as our warehouse" situation.
As much as people complained about the FUNi merger, it was still done in a way that didn't have an entire category of product being made completely unavailable to purchase before the planned replacement service was ready, and the purchase had been announced long enough in advance that we all saw it coming a mile away. It's obvious that plans were being made in advance for the Right Stuf sale, but not everyone (i.e. the other anime companies) was apparently informed in advance in any way, & it really does look like Crunchyroll screwed a bunch of people over by deciding to announce it ASAP. The head of FAKKU in particular was not pleased with what happened, for example. Crunchyroll effectively told the hentai industry "We don't want you around us anymore" & removed an entire (& major) business partner from them, without Right Stuf being able to properly give those companies a heads up that something was going to happen to their ability to sell hentai, at the very least. So, yes, I'd argue that this announcement was handled more poorly than the FUNimation one. |
||||
|
||||
|
Akcoll99
Posts: 235 |
|
|||
Um...I don't know if you've checked, but the American comic industry has been in a slow downward spiral for years now. It's utterly reliant on superhero sales from DC and Marvel, with a shrinking, older audience and no clear plan on how to bring in new readers other than to try and ape the more popular manga and YA fiction models...all problems exacerbated by Diamond's stranglehold on the distribution side that is so complete that publishers have gone under after being dropped by them. So this may not be the best example... |
||||
|
||||
|
Sorraffy
Posts: 160 |
|
|||
|
buys RS, raises prices, sees fall in customers .. decides to use this as excuse to say physical media is dead
|
||||
|
||||
Top Gun
 Posts: 4603 |
|
|||
This would track, except for the fact that Sentai has equally-absurd sales multiple times per year, seemingly on a whim. It's not much of an exaggeration to say that they can't go a full month without popping one. |
||||
|
||||
|
lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1401 |
|
|||
Justin Sevakas at Discotek actually posited it's the other way around - because of the big dropoff in Netflix stock, a lot of shareholders and investors are losing some of the runaway confidence that fueled the streaming bubble, so Sony - through Crunchyroll - may be looking to lock down a physical release infrastructure for their anime and anime-related media. |
||||
|
||||
CelestialEmpress
 Posts: 113 |
|
|||
It's an entire genre of products they sold, that they up and decided to remove with zero warning, and the replacement site that's supposed to be handling the open orders (y'know, their customer's actual money) is not running yet, leaving those orders in limbo with no ETA how long that will take. I think folks are entirely justified in being frustrated and annoyed in how this switchover is being handled. At the end of the day, we're all just nerds complaining about the cartoons we watch. Get off your damn high horse. |
||||
|
||||
|
Walpurgiz
Posts: 14 |
|
|||
It's not even relate at all. Sony is a group company that do lot of business Sony censor Anime-game Yet Sony in japan also produce anime some of them is Ecchi/Lewd anime. Why would "other" sony care about what happend to Game segment? |
||||
|
||||
|
Lord Geo
Posts: 2564 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
|
|||
Yeah, but Sentai never went as low as a literal dollar with those other sales; this was a true firesale, just like that old ADV firesale. Also, Sentai continuing to use Right Stuf as their warehouse & fulfillment center after the Crunchyroll purchase would be like Microsoft deciding to store their unsold Xbox consoles at one of Sony's warehouses, and if you bought one from Microsoft you'd get a package with Sony's address on it. And if anyone wants to argue that Sentai & Crunchyroll (technically Sony) can peacefully coexist, then just look at what happened with VRV after Sony bought it in 2021; Hidive was gone a month later. Right Stuf offered fulfillment & warehouse services because it was a neutral third party storefront (Media Blasters also utilized RS like this at one point), and it rarely acted as direct competition to the major players in the anime industry, but the moment it became owned by a major competitor like Crunchyroll then that service no longer makes sense. Also, with Sentai now owned by AMC there are more than likely other services that it can utilize from its new owner to do the same thing, especially now that Right Stuf is no longer a neutral party. I wouldn't be shocked if, by the end of this year, orders made through Sentai's website will be shipped from a place other than Grimes, Iowa. |
||||
|
||||
njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1168 Location: A River Named Toms |
|
|||
|
So I got an e-mail from RS that was headed: Update on Your Mature Item Order. I started scratching my chin trying to remember what I ordered that would fall into that basket, MATURE ITEM. I have multiple open orders because of the amount of manga I ordered that are OOS or pre-ordered. So I went over them all when AH!, there it was: Ladies Vs. Butlers: Undressed Edition. I typed it into RS's search and it's no longer there. I was kinda taken aback. Is it THAT bad? I see the other versions of the anime are still available on the site. Are the OVA's that raunchy? I checked Amazon for the heck of it and it states 'Temporarily Out of Stock". Now I thought Amazon stayed away from the likes of 'Raunchy'. In fact, how is it that they state, 'Out of Stock' when it hasn't shipped yet, (or if it has, those OOS, pre-ordered manga are once again holding up stuff). In the e-mail from RS, it states my order for said 'Raunch' will be handled by the new offshoot of all discs Erotica separately from my order, which of course, had a smattering of manga. UGH! My heart goes out to all the niche companies for 18+ anime or even ones that dabble in that demographic, like Media Blasters, etc. It sucks when the small guys are forced into a corner.
I'm sure over time when all the bluster calms down things will relatively stay the same with RS/CR or whatever it'll be called, (all things Hentai notwithstanding). My one concern is what will be licensed and what will be created physically for consumption. Will censorship rear it's ugly head? Heck, Crunchyroll is currently showing Harem in the Labyrinth, will they put it out on disc if the show has good numbers? The last two episodes were eye opening. What's to prevent them from dropping it like Interspecies was dropped not too long in it's run? It doesn't bode well when a giant corporation gets their mitts on something and decides to squeeze it and see what oozes out. Again, I think RS will be fine. It's all the other stuff that give me pause. |
||||
|
||||
|
BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5997 |
|
|||
Maybe I’ve been out of the loop but I don’t recall them ever doing this in the time since that news broke of the Activision-Blizzard buyout happening. Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Thu Aug 04, 2022 10:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
||||
|
||||
|
Akcoll99
Posts: 235 |
|
|||
Jeez, that sucks. I just got my email from Right Stuf today stating my copy of Ladies Versus Butlers; Undressed Edition had shipped. So, I guess a big sigh of relief from me? Maybe I just got in under the cut-off? Amazon is also weird in that you can buy plenty of porn there, but they have targeted particular ecchi niches, or stuff even perceived to be in that niche. For example, you can buy FAKKU books through Amazon, but they've dropped J-Novel Club titles because of some loli or loli-esque artwork in the color pages provided in the online previews. Heck, I remember back in the mid-2000's when they de-listed A Very Private Lesson from Anime Works because they thought Media Blasters was trying to slip a porn title in on them without realizing it was just soft ecchi. Amazon's also de-listed the first five volumes of Pleasure & Corruption from Denpa but so far my pre-order for volume 6 has stayed. Fingers crossed it remains. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group