Last Wednesday, Funimation, beloved anime streaming platform that offered good quality streaming while on a free account, announced that their website and app would be closing its doors due to their “collaboration” (they’re merging, guys, it is not a collaboration,) with Crunchyroll. All Funimation subscribers will be migrated immediately starting April second, and will be able to keep their queues and watch history even in the change of platforms. To me, Jujitsu Kaisen isn’t worth fifteen dollars a month, so for me, it’s Gojover.
However, Funimation was the better deal for streaming. For eight dollars a month, you got ad-free streaming —even though the ads on Funimation were honestly very manageable—, offline watching, early access and exclusives, and member-only shop sales. Crunchyroll’s “Mega Fan” subscription is two more dollars and gets you the exact same thing!
Beyond that, for fifteen dollars, Crunchyroll isn’t even giving you much more. You can stream on six devices instead of four, receive 25$ off of 100$+ orders instead of 15$, get free shipping on all orders from the Crunchyroll store, and after giving this monopoly 200 of your hard earned dollars, you receive an exclusive swag bag.
Subscribers that bought digital copies of all of their favorite shows will unfortunately be losing out, as during the merge, Crunchyroll will not be supporting Funimation’s digital copies.
Funimation subscribers after April second will now be paying Crunchyroll prices, which—it’s only a two dollar difference—, but it’s the principle of the thing!
I feel like the collapse of Funimation into Crunchyroll could really trigger a return to physical media. Many anime fans may not have the means to pay $120 dollars a month just to watch Attack On Titan over and over again to see Eren Jaeger. I can see this leading to a rise in manga sales and collecting physical items like figures and standees.
Many anime also have a continuously running manga, surprise surprise, and some manga went on for long after their anime ended. The Promised Neverland, a fan favorite, ended abruptly but was officially finished as a manga in 2020, and I foresee many fans giving up on paying for anime subscriptions and just buying the manga for a one-time fifteen bucks and then having it forever.
Having physical copies of manga could also lead to more discussion about favored panels and more in depth theories. In Chapter 101 of Bungo Stray Dogs, Chuuya Nakahara is shown to “drown.” With season 5 of BSD on pause at the time of release for this chapter, fans of the show were left to theorize based on previous chapters. This discussion about whether it was “soukokover” for Nakahara brought a lot of attention to BSD and gained a lot more viewers for the fifth season of the anime.
If manga does rise in popularity, we could also see unique variants of published manga. I would love to see colored manga, like Critical Role’s “The Legend of Vox Machina: Origins,” but instead of a dwarf it’s a sparkly anime girl.
Collector’s editions of manga could also see an increase in popularity as more people begin to buy it, just like many NYT bestselling books receive special editions. These could be high points of collections and still be cheaper than paying for a Crunchyroll subscription.
I can see a real downfall in anime subscriptions on the horizon, and Funimation being bought out by Crunchyroll is just the start of it. Don’t pay the 200 dollars so your friends can watch anime at the same time as you. There are other methods. Maybe even go outside, touch some grass, see the sun. Either way, I’d hold on to my 200$.
