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NEWS: Nikkei: Sony 'Nears Acquisition' of Crunchyroll

kamen_otaku81 wrote:

Great. Just what we need. MORE censored and Shonen Jump Weekly friendly anime. I really need that. I don't see any good coming from this.

It's a different Sony subsidiary who bought Crunchyroll, it's not Sony Entertainment.

So here comes an Australian perspective now, without speculation:
AnimeLab had far better streaming clients than both Funi and Crunchy, tho Crunchy started picking up their game this year but is still behind. I guess that's because the other companies had legacy systems and AnimeLab was newer?
Funi/Sony bought AnimeLab and it has been the best thing ever for Australians. They discontinued Funi here because AnimeLab was much better and had more recognition. The awesome bit being they added most of Funi's titles into AnimeLab, no cost increase since.
Nothing bad has happened yet...

Extra: Tho I do prefer subs, in Australia Crunchy has basically zero movies and AnimeLab has lots. Despite marketing, doesn't mean Crunchy are the only ones with subs. The agreement where Crunchy has subs and Funi has the dubs stopped a while back, no rules from here.

To my knowledge, the Tsugumomo sets. But aside from that, literally nothing comes to mind.

This is amazingly bad. I wonder if Sony will go after RightStuf next, just to control home video distribution in the market?

This is amazingly bad. I wonder if Sony will go after RightStuf next, just to control home video distribution in the market?

This is amazingly bad. I wonder if Sony will go after RightStuf next, just to control home video distribution in the market?

Normally I'd be very against this because monopoly but in the case of streaming services it honestly makes no difference.

As it is, if you wanted to watch 50% of anime in the US you'd need every single anime streaming service. To do that, you'd have to spend $671.28 a year on the streaming services. It's unsustainable and insane. This would barely help fix that, since it only removes Funimation from the equation but it would actually HELP consumers, unlike most monopolies.

Streaming services as they are now, are already pretty much each a monopoly. They don't compete with actual services/quality/features. They "compete" with exclusive shows - except that modern TV shows don't really compete against each other. There's no real competition. A small % of people will get just CR because they have the MOST shows. And a small % will get a service because of one big show, but the reality is that the majority of anime fans want to watch as much anime as they can and so they have no choice but to subscribe to as many of the services as they can afford. So again, there's no true competition - people have to subscribe either way.

The real solution to this is like in Japan where most shows are on 4+ streaming services, giving people REAL choice. But on this specific issue, it makes no real difference if Sony buys CR or not.

The only way we'll actually fix the issue with streaming services is if more Japanese companies act like Aniplex* USA (sometimes) - they get a US branch and then license their shows out to MULTIPLE services at the same time.

*A bit ironic since Aniplex is owned by Sony but they have sometimes put their shows on CR as of recently.

Kougeru wrote:

Even in the US where we have a lot of options* it's getting crazy because if you want to watch everything it would cost you over $600 a year in subscription fees. This is a problem outside of streaming, too, and I won't waste time going into too much detail but basically it's "Subscription fatigue" * "options" is misleading since each service is built upon exclusives so in reality you have to subscribe to them all to watch even 50% of the new anime that come out each season

That is very misleading. It is also not the first time you've posted ridiculous claims and numbers that are misleading.

For VRV (which gets you Sentai and Crunchy) it's $9.99 a month with tax for premium. Which also gets you all the other channels. That's roughly $120 a year. Let's round up generously for taxes to say $150 a year. Funimation is $5.99 a month for regular Premium which gets you subs and dubs, the entire library, and 2 concurent streams at the same time. The only real advantage of the premium plus is some extra member benefits that don't do much, and streaming to 5 devices concurrently. So at regular premium for $5.99 a month that's $72 bucks. Let's again round up for some taxes. Let's say $85 as a highball with taxes. Now you're at $235 a year for the vast majority of everything that streams. That gets you HiDive, Funi, & Crunchy plus all the extra channels on VRV. Let's add Netflix for good measure. You can save money and do the Basic. That's $8.99 a month. Let's be realistic though, you want HD. So for the HD plan that's $12.99 and you can stream to 2 devices at a time. That's $155.88 before taxes. Let's round up again to say $170. It's the most expensive service with the least amount of pure anime, but you get everything else on Netflix. Now you're at just over $400 a year, high balling the taxes mind you, for Netflix, Hi-Dive, Crunchy, and Funimation. Plus all the bonus content on Netflix and VRV outside of anime.

The only way you're going to get up to over $600 a year is if you also add in Hulu Plus Streaming and Amazon Prime as well. The anime content on those services though, especially limited to just those services, is negligible at best. If you're subscribing to Hulu it's probably to replace cable. At which point the price for streaming live Hulu tv is already less than cable or dish right out the gate. So you're already saving money for that switch. Almost nobody gets Prime just for anime. You get Prime for either Prime video, perhaps Unlimited if you're a book reader, or more than likely for the shipping bonuses. They don't even license anime anymore. So while yes you might have to spend over $600 for ALL THE ANIME RELEASED in the west the fact is for roughly $235 you can get the VAST majority of anime released between Crunchy, Hi-Dive, and Funi. You also get those back catalogs as well. Which as someone who bought dvd singles....good god I could've saved a lot of money if I could've seen the future. Even if you get Netflix to bump up that percentage of anime it's basically $400 a year. That's $200 under your $600 plus figure for 90-95% of new anime released in a year, plus you get back catalogs.

The statement that you made about having to subscribe to them all for just 50% of new anime is complete and utter bs. That's just simply wildly untrue. You could subscribe to just VRV (Crunchy and Hi-Dive) and Funi for roughly $235 and get the vast majority of new streaming anime each season. Netflix only gets a handful in a year.

Was Tsugumomo just the case of Funimation being given the broadcast edits or were there additional edits that weren't on Japanese TV?

AT&T a crappy phone service deeply in debt owns a Crunchyroll this is a bad thing! When the parent company is so deep in debt new licenses for a subsidiary is less likely! True Sony owns Funimation a merge with Crunchyroll make sense and a offering with PS5 makes complete sense! Sony is NOT in major debt while AT&T a poor cell service I had for three years is dying!

Funimation's Tsugumomo release was a censored broadcast version, although the issue there was they marketed the disks as the original uncut version and later claimed they had to use the censored broadcast version due to licensing issues without telling anyone beforehand.

But Crunchyroll already airs broadcast censored streams for most of their shows so that wouldn't really be a change Sony would make. People have already been watching censored versions on Crunchyroll (remember that Sword Art Online hubub where Crunchyroll didn't air the Japanese stream version with the extended sexual assault scene?) Censored streams and disks here aren't exactly uncommon due to Japanese companies either not giving companies the uncut masters or companies just not knowing/bothering to ask for them.

DavetheUsher wrote:

Funimation's Tsugumomo release was a censored broadcast version, although the issue there was they marketed the disks as the original uncut version and later claimed they had to use the censored broadcast version due to licensing issues without telling anyone beforehand.

This is what I assumed was the case but people always keep bringing up Tsugumomo in these debates as if Funimation was the one responsible for the edits and not Japan and it's telling this is the only show in recent memory can ever point to. Probably they tried to acquire the uncut broadcast rights but the Japanese licensor wouldn't let them have it for some reason like reverse importation fears or whatever.

Quote:

But Crunchyroll already airs broadcast censored streams for most of their shows so that wouldn't really be a change Sony would make. People have already been watching censored versions on Crunchyroll (remember that Sword Art Online hubub where Crunchyroll didn't air the Japanese stream version with the extended sexual assault scene?) Censored streams and disks here aren't exactly uncommon due to Japanese companies either not giving companies the uncut masters or companies just not knowing/bothering to ask for them.

In the case of SAO as I recall there were multiple censored versions of that episode that were given to various networks in Japan and global streaming sites and the uncensored version only aired on one limited premium network.