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Crunchyroll to Stream ADV's Welcome to the NHK

The North American anime distributor ADV Films has announced that the Crunchyroll video-sharing website has started streaming the Welcome to the NHK comedy anime series online. Two dubbed episodes are now online, with two more episodes added every Thursday for the next five weeks. Select retailers are offering ADV Films' DVD release at 50% off the retail price.

An ADV spokesperson talked with ANN about its Welcome to the NHK campaign.

ANN: How did this come about?

ADV Films: We've been talking with Crunchyroll for a number of months now, looking for ways that we might work together.  Crunchyroll has a huge online community, and these are people we want to reach. Internally we'd been kicking around the idea of promoting an ongoing series that is high quality and well-regarded but perhaps hasn't reached its full potential.  At the end of the promotion there should be something to measure. WELCOME TO THE NHK was the obvious choice, because it's a great show that really deserves a wider audience. It's performed well, but we believe it can do even better if more people could see it for themselves.  In the end we chose Crunchyroll as our broadcast anchor.

We believe WELCOME TO THE NHK is a good fit for the Crunchyroll community.  Plus the Crunchyroll team had some stong ideas about things they could do with it in terms of clubs, contests, etc. They wanted to engage WELCOME TO THE NHK in a lot more ways than just slapping it online, and we found that exciting.

ANN: Knowing that Crunchyroll's userbase watches almost exclusively subtitled content, why are you offering the show dubbed only?

ADV Films: We believe our content can succeed in the Crunchyroll environment.  The English dub is ADV's signature contribution to WELCOME TO THE NHK, and we think Crunchyroll viewers will enjoy it.

The bottom line however is that Crunchyroll's internet broadcast is the anchor to a much broader WELCOME TO THE NHK campaign.  That campaign has a large retail component, and at retail English is a big selling point.  So when we chose Crunchyroll to host this promotion, we delivered the same version we would have chosen no matter who was broadcasting it.

In a separate development, Crunchyroll is planning to stream the next episodes of The Tower of Druaga: The Aegis of Uruk and Blassreiter in high-definition immediately after the Japanese airing, as opposed to a few hours later, to people who contribute US$5.00.