People in the anime fandom have been familiar with the Crunchyroll brand for so many years. When it all began in 2006, it was a streaming site which hosted pirated content, before becoming a legal streaming site in 2009. Over the following years, Crunchyroll has hosted so many different anime titles, as well as making digital manga legally accessible since 2013. But nowadays, Crunchyroll, under Sony Pictures Entertainment, has not been seen in a positive light with much of the anime fandom, and it's not hard to see why.
In 2021, Sony Pictures Entertainment, who purchased Funimation in 2018, completed the acquisition of Crunchyroll, which included the US only streaming service, VRV. Since then, it was feared that the Funimation brand would wipe out the Crunchyroll brand. However, it was the other way round, with Crunchyroll wiping the Funimation brand, with home video titles from June 2022 onwards released under the Crunchyroll brand. In addition, many Funimation titles are being transferred over to Crunchyroll in blocks. Although as of this writing, the Funimation streaming service is still active.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the other streaming services that Crunchyroll had ownership of. VRV, which launched in the US in November 2016, was shut down in April 2023. VRV previously hosted content from other partners, including Rooster Teeth, Boomerang, Funimation, HIDIVE (which replaced Funimation) and Cartoon Hangover, to name a few. And that's not all. After 14 years, Wakanim, a European streaming service based in France, was shut down in the beginning of November 2023. As for Crunchyroll itself, it has been announced that the Crunchyroll manga service, which allowed people legal access to digital manga, including the latest chapters, for the past 10 years, is to be shut down in December 2023.
In the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, following Crunchyroll's rebranding of Funimation UK and Ireland (previously Manga Entertainment) and Madman Anime Group respectively, staff from these territories were sacked, meaning that any communication between fans and their local branches is no longer existent. Various home video titles released in North America have not seen the light of day in the UK/IE and AU/NZ. The UK and Ireland especially. Lately, in terms of titles that have or will be released in the UK, some that have been given the Limited Edition treatment in NA and in AU/NZ won't be given such treatment in the UK and Ireland (My Dress-Up Darling being a prime example).
If anything, I think they're trying to deliberately do away with home video releases altogether and encourage everyone to stick to their streaming site, and even then, streaming doesn't last forever as licenses would expire. The benefits of owning a home video release is that if anyone bought a home video release of a title and the license expires and/or it goes out of print for good, people can still watch the series/movie, as they still have a physical copy to watch, providing it's still in good condition. Whereas if the license for streaming expires and there is no home video release at all, you're left with no legal way of watching it, and if you're desperate to watch it, you have to resort to fansubs, and that shouldn't have to be the way to go (unfortunately, tokusatsu fans have it worse, especially outside North America, but that's for another opinion piece).
Speaking of home video releases, in the UK and Ireland, thanks to Crunchyroll's decision to create multi-language releases which include options for French and German speakers, this resulted in prices skyrocketing. And even then, some of the more expensive releases weren't even given the multi-language treatment (such as the part sets of The Devil is a Part-Timer Season 2).
And if that wasn't bad enough, as a result of the Crunchyroll rebrand, many other distributors across the UK, Ireland and North America will no longer be able to license any Crunchyroll title, including those that have other instalments previously released (e.g. KonoSuba), causing inconsistencies amongst releases. Although in the UK and Ireland, there are exceptions. Another UK distributor (either MVM or Anime Limited) can license a Crunchyroll title if either Crunchyroll themselves don't have UK/IE rights or another distributor licenses it before Crunchyroll gets the chance. In Australia and New Zealand, since the rebrand, their releases of titles by US distributors other than Crunchyroll have greatly been reduced, which is problematic, as Crunchyroll is currently their only distributor (seeing as Siren Visual and Hanabee are no more), but all is not lost, as Tim Anderson, co-founder and former CEO of Madman Entertainment, announced a new anime distributor, called Sugoi Co, co-founded with Sylvester "Sly" Ip, with the first license being The First Slam Dunk, which was given a theatrical release across Australia and New Zealand. There aren't any home video releases directly from them yet, but it's early days, so let's hope it becomes successful.
And it's not just streaming services and home video distribution companies that take the brunt of it all. In October 2023, after 36 years, anime retailer Right Stuf shut down and merged into the Crunchyroll store, although their distribution studio, Nozomi Entertainment, will continue on under the Crunchyroll banner. Right Stuf has been an important part of the anime industry for so long, both domestically and internationally, so for them to be shut down after over 3 decades is a real kick in the teeth. To make things worse, the Crunchyroll store does not ship home video releases outside of North America, making it impossible to import Aniplex titles without using a proxy shipping service, and the only way to import Discotek titles now is to buy them from Amazon, and that's not ideal if you want them to arrive without any major damage. And to add insult to injury, Crunchyroll had cut off all communication with Right Stuf's wholesalers, including those based in the UK such as United Publications and Otaku, meaning that they couldn't get any news regarding the future of the companies releasing North American titles, only getting a response along the lines that "somebody in management will be in touch". As a result, North American releases have been removed from the websites.
Crunchyroll and Sony have done more harm than good for the anime fandom in recent years. Phasing out and rebranding long running distributors, increasing prices on various home video releases (especially UK/IE releases), laying off staff in overseas branches, shutting down a long running anime retailer to merge to their own store, doing away with digital manga, decreasing the amount of home video releases, and monopolising the anime industry. Crunchyroll has often boasted about giving us a fan-first experience. Fan-first experience? Don't make me laugh! This monopoly has only gone from bad to worse over the years, even during the last few Funimation years. And it's only going to get worse from here.
