Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll, Inc. is an American distributor, publisher, production and licensing company focused on streaming anime, manga, and dorama. Founded in 2006 by a group of University of California, Berkeley graduates, Crunchyroll's distribution channel and partnership program delivers content to 100million registered users worldwide. Crunchyroll is a subsidiary of Otter Media, which is a subsidiary of AT&T's WarnerMedia. Sony announced in December 2020 that its subsidiary Funimation will acquire Crunchyroll from AT&T for approximately . Crunchyroll has offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Lausanne, Paris, Berlin, and Chișinău, and is a member of the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA). "Crunchyroll Hime", also known as "Hime", is the official mascot of Crunchyroll.
Crunchyroll offers over 1,000 anime shows, more than 200 East Asian dramas to users, and around 80 manga titles as Crunchyroll Manga, although not all programming is available worldwide due to licensing restrictions. Crunchyroll passed one million paid subscribers in February 2017, and has over 3million paid subscribers . Crunchyroll also selects some anime titles for release on home video through its distribution partners (Funimation, Sentai Filmworks, Viz Media, & Discotek Media in North America, Anime Limited in the United Kingdom).
History.
Origins and illegal distribution.
Crunchyroll started in 2006 as a for-profit video upload and streaming site that specialized in hosting East Asian video content. Some of the content hosted on Crunchyroll included fansubbed versions of East Asian shows.
In 2008, Crunchyroll secured a capital investment of $4.05 million from the venture capital firm Venrock. The investment drew criticism from anime distributors and licensors Bandai Entertainment and Funimation as the site continued to allow users to upload illegal copies of licensed titles.
Move to legal distribution.
However, Crunchyroll eventually began securing legal distribution agreements with companies, including Gonzo, for an increasing number of titles. On January 8, 2009, after announcing a deal with TV Tokyo to host episodes of "Naruto Shippuden", Crunchyroll stated that it was committed to removing all copyright-infringing material from its site and to hosting only content to which it had legitimate distribution rights.
In 2010, Crunchyroll announced its acquisition of the North American DVD rights to "5 Centimeters Per Second". This was the first DVD release licensed by Crunchyroll.
On October 30, 2013, Crunchyroll began digitally distributing 12 different manga titles from Kodansha – series such as "Attack on Titan" and "Fairy Tail" were part of the manga that were available initially – through Crunchyroll Manga.
Chernin Group ownership.
On December 2, 2013, The Chernin Group, former News Corp. president Peter Chernin's holding company, announced that it acquired a controlling interest in Crunchyroll. A person with knowledge of the transaction said the price for the acquisition was close to $100 million. The Chernin Group said that Crunchyroll management and existing investor TV Tokyo would maintain a "significant" stake in the company.
On April 22, 2014, AT&T and The Chernin Group announced the formation of a joint venture to acquire, invest in and launch over-the-top (OTT) video services. Both companies committed over $500 million in funding to the venture. The new company was named Otter Media and became the majority owner of Crunchyroll. On August 3, 2015, "Variety" reported that Otter Media would unveil Ellation, a new umbrella company for its subscription-based video services including Crunchyroll. Ellation's services included VRV, which debuted in 2016, a video streaming platform described as targeting "geeks, gamers and lovers of comedy, fantasy and technology."
On October 22, 2015, Anime News Network reported that Crunchyroll had achieved 700,000 paying subscribers. In addition, the company announced that Crunchyroll and Sumitomo Corporation had created a joint venture to produce and invest in anime productions.
On April 11, 2016, Crunchyroll and Kadokawa Corporation announced the formation of a strategic alliance that gave Crunchyroll exclusive worldwide digital distribution rights (excluding Asia) for Kadokawa anime titles in the upcoming year. It also granted Crunchyroll the right to co-finance Kadokawa anime titles to be produced in the future.
Funimation partnership, and home video expansion.
On July 1, 2016, Crunchyroll announced plans to dub and release a number of series on home video.
On September 8, 2016, Crunchyroll announced a partnership with Funimation. Crunchyroll would stream selected Funimation titles, while Funimation would stream selected Crunchyroll titles, as well as their upcoming dubbed content. In addition, Funimation and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment would act as distributors for Crunchyroll's home video catalog. On October 18, 2018, Funimation announced that their partnership with Crunchyroll ended as a result of Sony Pictures Television's acquisition of Funimation and AT&T's acquisition of Crunchyroll's parent company Otter Media.
On February 9, 2017, Crunchyroll announced that it had reached one million paid subscribers.
On March 22, 2017, Kun Gao took over as representative director of its Japanese branch, succeeding Vincent Shortino.
On March 30, 2017, Crunchyroll began to distribute anime through Steam.
On November 4, 2017, a group of hackers managed to DNS hijack the official site for almost six hours. Users were redirected to a fake lookalike site which prompted users to download ransomware under the guise of "CrunchyViewer". Crunchyroll filed a first information report against the hackers.
WarnerMedia ownership and internal productions.
In January 2018, Otter Media bought the remaining shares (20%) of Crunchyroll from TV Tokyo and other investors. In August 2018, AT&T acquired the remainder of Otter Media that it did not already own from Chernin Group; the company and Crunchyroll were thus folded under WarnerMedia (formerly Time Warner, of which AT&T had also recently completed an acquisition).
In October 2018, the service announced an expansion into original content with the anime-inspired series "High Guardian Spice" produced by Ellation Studios.
On March 4, 2019, it was announced that Otter Media would be placed under Warner Bros. as part of a reorganization. As a result of said reorganization, the company and Crunchyroll became corporate sisters to the American cable channel Cartoon Network and its nighttime programming block Adult Swim, which have been known for their television broadcasting of most of its anime under their "Toonami" brand. Due to a subsequent reorganization, Crunchyroll was moved under WarnerMedia Entertainment (owner of networks such as TBS and TNT) in May 2019, so that its COO could oversee an upcoming entertainment streaming service from the brand.
On July 3, 2019, Crunchyroll announced that they had partnered with Viz Media to distribute select Crunchyroll licensed titles on home video and electronic sell-through in the United States and Canada.
On July 20, 2019, independent Australian production company Glitch Productions announced that they had partnered with Crunchyroll to produce their YouTube original series, "Meta Runner".
On September 6, 2019, Crunchyroll announced that they became the majority investor in Viz Media Europe. Crunchyroll solidified this deal on December 4, 2019, becoming the majority owners of Viz Media Europe Group, and appointed former Viz Media Europe president John Easum as Head of Crunchyroll EMEA.
On October 15, 2019, it was announced that Naver Corporation's webtoon publishing portal, WEBTOON, was partnering with Crunchyroll to produce animated adaptations of its series. On February 25, 2020, Crunchyroll announced a slate of several programs under their new "Crunchyroll Originals" brand, including anime adaptations of the webtoons "Tower of God", "The God of High School", and "Noblesse".
On April 2, 2020, Crunchyroll announced it had rebranded Viz Media Europe as Crunchyroll EMEA, with former Viz Media Europe brands Kazé, Anime on Demand, Anime Digital Network and Eye See Movies becoming Crunchyroll brands, and AV Visionen and Ellation becoming Crunchyroll companies. As a result of the rebranding, the Ellation name transitioned from Otter Media's Consumer Division to Crunchyroll's Moldovan offices, and VRV became a brand of Crunchyroll.
On September 5, 2020, Crunchyroll announced that they had entered in a partnership with Sentai Filmworks to distribute Crunchyroll licensed titles onto home video and electronic sell-through, with "Granbelm", "", "Ascendance of a Bookworm", and "World Trigger" being the first titles distributed through the partnership.
Acquisition by Sony.
On August 12, 2020, The Information reported that Sony Pictures Entertainment, Funimation's parent company, was in talks to acquire Crunchyroll from WarnerMedia for . According to "Variety", the amount was decreased to . Later in October 2020, it was reported that Sony was in its final talks with AT&T to acquire the streaming service for more than , roughly .
On December 9, 2020, Funimation and its owner Sony announced that they had reached a deal with AT&T and WarnerMedia to acquire Crunchyroll for around . The acquisition is considered to be a major consolidation of global anime distribution rights outside of East Asia. However, on March 24, 2021, it was reported that the United States Department of Justice had extended its antitrust review of the acquisition.
The Anime Awards.
The Anime Awards, also known as the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, are annual awards given to recognize anime from the previous year. The awards were first held in January 2017 and returned for 2018. Crunchyroll selects twenty judges from diverse backgrounds who then create a list of six nominees within each category. This list is then made available to the public for online voting to choose the winners.
Crunchyroll Expo.
In February 2017, Crunchyroll created the Crunchyroll Expo (CRX) anime convention with organizational support from Left Field Media. The inaugural Expo was held at the Santa Clara Convention Center on August 25–27, with team manager Dallas Middaugh noting much of the ticket sales came within ten days of the convention. Special guests for the Expo included "The Fairly OddParents" creator Butch Hartman, voice actors Shun Horie and Hiromi Igarashi, illustrator Yoshitaka Amano, figure skater Johnny Weir, manga artist Kore Yamazaki, and author Keiichi Sigsawa.
The Expo was moved to the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in 2018 on Labor Day weekend. The convention saw 45,000 in turnstile attendance. Among the guests for the convention were "Dragon Quest" creator Yuji Horii, voice actors Ryo Horikawa, Justin Briner, Luci Christian, Clifford Chapin and Colleen Clinkenbeard, and the staff of "Darling in the Franxx".
Crunchyroll Expo 2019, also in San Jose, saw the premieres of the movie "Blackfox" and the "Mob Psycho 100 II" original video animation, while Toei Animation organized a screening of the movies ' and '. Among the guests invited were horror mangaka Junji Ito; "22/7" voice actors Sally Amaki, Kanae Shirosawa, and Ruri Umino; "" writer Yūto Tsukuda and artist Shun Saeki; and staff members of "Zombie Land Saga", including voice actors Kaede Hondo and Asami Tano, composer Yasuharu Takanashi, and MAPPA CEO Manabu Ohtsuka. Rock band Flow, whose songs have been featured in various anime as opening themes, held a concert on August 30.
In 2020, Crunchyroll held its first virtual expo due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event includes Hime's Cosplay Cup on September 5, 2020. Special guests included Shusuke Katagiri, Myth & Roid, Rian Tachibana, and Matt Schley.
Crunchyroll Originals.
On February 25, 2020, Crunchyroll initially announced several series under its Crunchyroll Originals label. These are anime or other animated series that are either co-produced or directly produced by the company. Crunchyroll previously co-produced anime titles before, but this list will only include those that Crunchyroll themselves officially place under the label.
So far, these series include: