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This Week in Anime
Crunch(y) Time
by Lucas DeRuyter & Steve Jones,
Lucas and Steve reminisce about Crunchyroll Originals and ponder what the future holds for them under their shiny new name.
Disclaimer:The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network. All shows are available streaming on Crunchyroll...or will be.
Lucas
Steve! Do you know that social media post format that goes, "me 5 years ago vs me now" that people usually do to show off how hot they've become and/or their transition? Weeeeeeeell~
Crunchyroll Originals is back with the announcement that Crunchyroll and Aniplex (both owned by Sony) have started a new production adventure together! The announcement has created plenty of discourse around what it means for the anime industry and ruminations on the old Crunchyroll Originals effort. If you're open to it, I'd love for us to share two cents on this announcement!
Steve
Of course! And if you want the short version, my two cents is one raised eyebrow. The "Crunchyroll Originals" label has been fraught and confusing since its inception. I'm skeptical that throwing a new coat of paint and some fancy calligraphy will fix the fundamental managerial problems we've already seen.
I very much agree (so I guess we end the column here???). It'd probably be useful to walk our readers through why Hayate's similarities have a lot of anime critics skeptical.
If you'll allow me to give a short answer as well, it's because pretty much everything that aired under the Crunchyroll Originals branding was mid-to-bad, which is as weird and surprising to type out today as it was after the first slate of CR Originals rolled out a few years ago!
And for better or worse, High Guardian Spice is probably the best example of the skepticism we're talking about. Also the first example. All you need to see is the timeline. It was announced in 2018, with a premiere date of 2019. It didn't come out. It was then part of the "official" Crunchyroll Originals rollout announced in early 2020. It still didn't come out. Finally, in late 2021, it was unceremoniously dropped all at once. I'd be surprised if Crunchyroll ever spoke about it again. Even before digging into the specifics, this is evidently not how normal animation production works, especially not for what was originally your flagship series.
Steve, that is a super succinct summary of all the actual weirdness that happened with High Guardian Spice, and I deeply appreciate it, as Gamergate-style chuds have made it difficult to talk about the actual controversies surrounding the IP and CR Originals brand. The only thing I can add is that some flavor of disappointment or weirdness would be associated with just about every CR Originals release.
Tower of God is probably the most enduring and successful release to come from this initiative and, beyond me thinking it's a less inspired take on Hunter x Hunter, CR kind of poisoned that well. Thanks to them not letting the original English voice actors who worked on the anime contribute to the dub of a tie-in video game, likely because it's more common for voice acting in games to be union work, every time I hear about that series my mind immediately goes to CR's myriad of contract work controversies.
I also have to note that the only reason we're talking about Tower of God and High Guardian Spice in the same breath is because of the Crunchyroll Originals branding. Otherwise, there's zero connection between their production pipelines. High Guardian Spice was done in-house at the now-defunct Crunchyroll Studios (alongside Onyx Equinox and a couple of others), while Tower of God was done externally, with Crunchyroll listed as a producer. The arbitrariness of the Originals label makes it difficult to speak about these projects coherently and cohesively.
I bounced off Tower of God but thought both Onyx Equinox and High Guardian Spice had their charms. Although I may be inclined to be kinder to the in-house stuff due to the frustrations expressed by their creators.
On its surface, the Crunchyroll Originals branding applied to anime that were either produced, or co-produced, by Crunchyroll. However, not all anime they co-produced fell under the label, which makes the distinction feel arbitrary. I'd love to do some investigative reporting into the methodology behind the effort, but considering Sony shuttered both the branding and the related Crunchyroll Studios a while after they took over, it'd probably be difficult to track down enough folks to piece together the full picture.
I completely forgot that In/Spectre, a co-production, counted as an Original before looking it up for this column. And I enjoyed that show quite a bit! But nothing about it, nor any branding/advertising, cemented it in my mind as quintessentially "Crunchyroll." Which begs the question: why bother?
If I recall correctly, Fena: Pirate Princess had its English dub air on Toonami. This makes sense as Adult Swim co-produced the show, but it works against the core idea of getting more people to get Crunchyroll subscriptions via original programming.
Someone good at the anime economy, make this make sense!
If I put myself in the shoes of a marketing executive (and that's gonna be difficult for a guy like me), I can see the vision. If you want brand recognition, it helps to put your brand on more stuff. Crunchyroll follows the example of leaders in the streaming industry. Netflix proved original branded content could work with Stranger Things. It's all been arguably downhill from there, but you can see where the genesis of the idea was.
But surprise! I brought up that point so I could immediately undermine it! Here's an article from last week with data showing that normal people are bad at identifying which streaming services provide which shows.
I wonder then if Crunchyroll's more overt efforts to label itself as "the anime streaming company" were the deciding factor in Sony choosing to keep the Crunchyroll brand over their older and already owned Funimation branding in that acquisition? Regardless, I think most streaming services have found that their viewership is mostly driven by middling shows that most people watch as background noise, which tracks with Miles' isekai data reporting from the top of the year, making any prestige streaming originals a bit of a misplaced endeavor.
Crunchyroll might be in a better position because of its environment, though. There's less competition in the anime streaming space compared to the general one, so Crunchyroll's name has more space to stick out. Still, I suspect the original intent of the Originals branding was to expand its audience beyond anime diehards, and I can't imagine that angle of attack was too successful. Its most lasting impact was probably giving the cadre of reactionary chud grifters a new bugbear to chew on in their perpetual culture war (poor High Guardian Spice).
That would also probably explain why so many of the anime under the Crunchyroll Originals banner come from sources other than manga, such as FreakAngels, the aforementioned Tower of God, God of High School, and the Shenmue anime! God, remember the Shenmue anime? A very specific kind of former Dreamcast owner lost their shit when it was announced, only for it to be as underwhelming as the rest of the video game series has become.
I only remember Shenmue as a better-than-average binge assignment back in the old TWIA format, which isn't exactly high praise.
What blows my mind is that one of these series came out last year and I heard not even a whisper of its existence. It was in the Preview Guide and everything! But it disappeared into the seasonal background radiation alongside so many other anime.
Incidentally, that was another show announced in 2020. So, you know, that's a four-year gap, but who's counting?
I'm counting all these ridiculous corporate shenanigans, and their collective tonnage has made me a bit cynical of this upcoming Hayate endeavor. Even with what seems to be the full weight of Sony behind it, corporate owner synergy between Crunchyroll and Aniplex, and the already announced and Sony in-house produced Ghosts of Tsushima: Legends anime as the likely first release under the Hayate label, I don't have a lot of confidence in this being the immediate industry game changer that Sony's setting it up to be.
I think, by nature, these things can't be game-changers. They're not going to be risky enough for that. However, maybe they can start by being competent. That would be an improvement. The initial Originals plan with Crunchyroll Studios struck me as pie-in-the-sky thinking brought on by an excess of money and a dearth of experience with how difficult it is to produce animation. Aniplex isn't going to have that problem.
There are some business efficiencies here that are the result of the vertical integration efforts Sony has pursued for roughly the past half-decade. Thanks to their PlayStation gaming division and increased share of Kadokawa, a lot of anime-friendly IP are either co-owned or completely owned by Sony. Since they also own some anime production companies and a global anime distribution platform, they've rapidly reduced revenue-sharing considerations on their anime.
I know this kind of business analysis isn't as fun as dunking on some needlessly bad anime from five years ago, but folks need to know that the reason Sony is about to make a lot of anime is because they've muscled out or absorbed a lot of other companies so that they can maximize their income and reduce functional costs at every step of the anime creation and release process.
Late capitalism! It ultimately all comes down to the almighty dollar (and/or yen). Sony's hands are extra grubby now thanks to all of those aforementioned acquisitions, and one need only read a history book to see why that degree of power consolidation is bad. More immediately/personally, I don't want Sony to have that much influence over what anime gets produced by whom. Even if the corporation doesn't exert direct creative control, the implicit effects are going to be felt. Tamer shows. Safer shows. Less interesting shows.
Not to mention the acceleration of this monopolization. It was bad enough when Sony bought Crunchyroll, and now we have to deal with vertical integration on the scale of a skyscraper. Watching a Sony anime made by a Sony production company based on a Sony game on a Sony TV played through a Sony streaming service on my Sony PlayStation. I don't like it.
What do you mean? It's great for everyone that in the next few years, Sony will almost certainly try to get more blood from the Uncharted stone with a tie-in anime that nobody asked for! This time, EVERY character should be played by Mark Wahlberg!
What I'm most worried about in the face of Sony changing the operation methods of several key sections of the anime industry for the sake of maximizing profits is: what if we don't make enough money? We know that companies can make a pretty reasonable amount of money through anime, but Sony wants a ridiculous return on investment (RoI) through their anime labels. If the expectations they are setting up here are untenable, Crunchyroll and other companies could be stripped for parts and global anime distribution will functionally be rolled back 20 to 30 years.
Not to mention the industry is already held together with a rough patchwork of overworked freelancers and cheap outsourcing. I don't know how much more blood you can squeeze from that stone in the best circumstances, let alone a gluttonous corporate one. And the world economy isn't stable at the moment either. It might look like Sony is playing it safe with this announcement, but that might be disastrous.
While it's encouraging for the health of the overall anime industry to see a growing number of high-profile series released on platforms beyond Crunchyroll, even a mid-sized reduction of staff or scope would have major ripples on the global anime community. For instance, following Sony's acquisition of Right Stuf a while back, Crunchyroll is now a major retailer of anime merchandise. If Sony ever decides to divest from anime, it'll get terrifically harder for global anime fans to buy merch of their favorite characters.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of that divestment is already manifesting. I'm not optimistic about how much longer Crunchyroll will continue putting their shows on disc. And we don't have to relitigate the Dirty Pair Kickstarter, but that, too, speaks to where the company's priorities currently lie.
I'm bracing for Hayate's track record to be similar to that of Crunchyroll Originals, but I'll welcome some Sony proprietary "prestige" anime if everything does come together! After all, if Sony won't give us another Ape Escape game, the least they can do is give us a proper Ape Escape anime!
It would also be funny if we got a Bloodborne anime before a Bloodborne PC port.
With Elden Ring Nightreign being a Fortnite-alike, anything is possible! (Also a Bloodborne anime sounds sick as hell. If I have to live in a Capitalist dystopia I deserve some badass media as a little treat!)
I said that as a joke, but now that I reflect on it, it's not a half-bad idea. The right director could make that work. Plus, there's plenty of worse slop in Sony's publishing library they could mine. Go ahead. Give us a Heavy Rain adaptation, and for maximum kino, animate the Shaun glitch. Do it, cowards.
Exactly! Sony has a chance to get WEIRD with some of this stuff, and I'm begging for a world where we get anime for Boku no Natsuyasumi, King's Field, and Knack, instead of just a handful of broadly marketable anime that lead into the release of a sequel game. What's even the point if they don't have at least a little fun in the projects they greenlit???
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