As the Great Streaming Wars find a prime time to grow in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and summer vacation, for anime fans, there has been some good and bad news.
Let’s start with an announcement that disappointed many viewers. On July 30th, Crunchyroll announced a slew of titles were leaving their service. Among the titles were Aoharu x Machinegun, Bodacious Space Pirates, Engaged to the Unidentified, KINMOZA!, So, I Can’t Play H, and Uta no Prince Sama. What do all 77 of these titles have in common? They are or were Sentai Filmworks licenses. A majority of these will still be available to stream, but on HIDIVE instead of Crunchyroll. These series were removed as of August 1st, so a lot of people were upset over the late notice.
However, Crunchyroll probably couldn’t have announced it too early in case whatever deal they have to make these titles available was renewed. And HIDIVE wouldn’t want it announced too early either. Too many people would marathon (or finish) these series and not be tempted to sign up for their platform.
But it’s probably not a huge deal overall. In fact, Crunchyroll reached a new milestone: they announced the service has surpassed three million paid subscribers. They had reached two million in October 2018 after having one million in February 2017.
So I doubt many of those three million Premium members will find those 77 anime to be the make-it-or-break-it point as to whether to keep paying or not. Of course it’s a disappointment, but Crunchyroll’s catalog is still vast. Plus, for those already having a Crunchyroll membership, it isn’t that much more to sign up for VRV and gain access to HIDIVE.
However, recently, a competitor to both HIDIVE and Crunchyroll has been adding more anime: Funimation. But the thing is is that a lot of their new-to-Funimation series aren’t titles licensed by them; they’re from VIZ Media. This includes episodes of Naruto and Hunter x Hunter and movies from Berserk and Sailor Moon. VIZ Media is hardly Funimation’s only partner on FunimationNow, as they have titles from Aniplex (which, like Funimation, is owned by Sony) and Right Stuf’s Nozomi Entertainment. And Crunchyroll has some of them, and VIZ themselves has a free (with ads) streaming service. But it’s still a significant partnership that has more potential. After all, at the very least, Berserk and Sailor Moon have more movies.
Meanwhile, other platforms like HBO Max and RetroCrush have been adding more anime. RetroCrush has been adding new titles monthly, including an exclusive deal with Tezuka Productions. HBO Max has started streaming more anime like Death Note, Tower of God, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and The Promised Neverland.
HBO Max, which went live at the end of May, has had a good debut so far. It currently has over four million subscribers, with three million of those paid memberships (versus free with select AT&T services). According to Broadband TV News, it beat Disney+ “in terms of streaming viewing share and seems to be eating market share from the Top 3 US streamers, Netflix, Prime Video and Hulu”.
It’s possible that people have been taking advantage of the various HBO Max trial offers and/or that the numbers are getting a boost because it’s a new service during a pandemic. But that’s still an impressive start. Plus, with AT&T’s Crunchyroll service still gaining subscribers at a steady pace, it wouldn’t be surprising that more anime will be added to HBO Max through the Crunchyroll partnership — getting some series additional views and tempting many viewers to sign up for both.
So, while some anime are now being forced into exclusivity, the various partnerships going on have allowed for a lot more series to be available on multiple platforms. That’s good news during the Great Streaming Wars since all companies are trying to push you to sign up with them. No matter if you’d rather watch for free with ads (Crunchyroll, RetroCrush) or subscribe for HQ streams (Crunchyroll, FunimationNow, HIDIVE), the Great Streaming Wars are providing fans with options.