Anime Expo took place this past weekend, and as always, there were a lot of announcements for anime and manga fans. This year’s convention may not have had the biggest surprises in its nearly 30-year history, but it certainly had some news outside of publishers announcing their latest licenses. Let’s take a look at one in particular.
Since its separation from Crunchyroll, Funimation has been working hard to challenge and surpass its former partner. Over the last year or so, they’ve been acquired by Sony, redid their subscription tiers, and have started including digital copies in their home video releases. Whether a lot of these moves are good or bad, that’s for you to decide. But Crunchyroll has the larger catalog, and even some major Funimation releases like Attack on Titan and Fruits Basket are still available to watch for free without a subscription on Crunchyroll.
But Funimation’s offerings are about to get a boost from an unlikely source: Right Stuf Anime and their Nozomi Entertainment division.
Right Stuf and Nozomi Entertainment is a niche licenser, but despite their size, they haven’t been ignoring the streaming market. They have full series available to play for free on YouTube. Most are either available as subs or dubs, but not both.
All of the currently-announced titles for this new partnership are available on YouTube in some form except for one: Yakitate!! Japan. That’s because it’s available on Crunchyroll, so this series is going to stream on Funimation as well.
So while this isn’t the most earth-shattering news, it is unexpected, unlike the fact that Crunchyroll and VIZ Media are partnering up.
In case you missed it, VIZ Media is going to release some Crunchyroll series on home video and make digital copies available to purchase. For fans of physical media or owning digital copies, this is good news, but why isn’t this a surprise? The manga giant’s anime releases are distributed by Warner Home Video, the division of WarnerMedia that handles DVD/Blu-ray releases. WarnerMedia is also the parent company of Crunchyroll. So it’s not a surprise VIZ Media and Crunchyroll would team up – rather, it’s streamlining the process in making many Crunchyroll series available for the mass market.
The Funimation/Right Stuf deals does make things interesting for the future. Will Right Stuf follow Funimation’s suit and re-release anime with digital copies available? Could recent and future Right Stuf and Nozomi titles be put on Funimation’s website, like their recent acquisitions of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei? Is Funimation pursuing partnerships with other small anime publishers to combat Crunchyroll and, to a lesser extent, VRV (which includes HIDIVE)? Discotek might have been a good choice, but they do seem to already have some type of deal with Crunchyroll.
Still, if Yakitate!! Japan is any indication, it’s possible that currently-streaming Crunchyroll could make their way elsewhere. We just don’t know if Right Stuf and Nozomi Entertainment titles are going to be removed from YouTube or elsewhere to be exclusive to Funimation. I do doubt that, as it’s probably a way to get some views thanks to Funimation’s player recommending titles and to perhaps making it easier for uploading episodes since Funimation’s video player is, obviously, a platform designed to view anime.
So, while this is a small development in the Great Streaming Wars, it could be a sign of things to come.