Interest

BBC Report on Anime Features Crunchyroll and Solo Leveling

The BBC News channel has released a four-and-a-half minute report on current anime, entitled "How Crunchyroll became a global anime streaming empire."

It includes an interview with Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini, who talks about the company's operation. He claims there are "1.5 billion anime viewers or 'anime curious' fans around the world outside China and Japan, so it's a pretty big market."

The popularity of Solo Leveling is highlighted, with Purini describing it as a "number one show" on Crunchyroll "in most of the regions we (Crunchyroll) were in."

The story also acknowledges other companies streaming anime. Richard Handjaja, the editor of the anime business substack Animenomics. points out that according to the Association of Japanese Animation, the overseas anime market has now overtaken the domestic one.

He also says that Crunchyroll controls "probably about 75% of all the anime titles that are aired in Japan today," leaving the other quarter of titles available to other streaming platforms.

The BBC reporter Tom Gerken brings up the series Delicious in Dungeon, which streams on Netflix. He asks Purini if Crunchyroll was trying to acquire that title. Purini doesn't answer directly, but he agrees that Crunchyroll is trying to acquire as many of the new anime series exclusively for the platform as it can.

Explaining the situation to non-anime fans, Gerken makes an analogy with a football club endeavoring to sign up foreign players. Purini agrees with the analogy.

Gerken also highlights how Crunchyroll is behind many of the top anime cinema films. Lynzee Loveridge of Anime News Network comments on how Demon Slayer – Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train unseated Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away as the most successful anime film ever.