My thoughts on the Crunchyroll / Funimation Partnership

Now that we’re finally getting into Season 1 of the Crunchyroll / Funimation Partnership. Let’s take a look into the benefits and Negatives for both parties and the reason I think this was more of a Funimation motivated deal.

So first let’s look at the benefits for both sides:

BOTH

Working together allows them to get out of a bidding war with each other and curtail licensing costs, making it beneficial to both sides. Working together means that the only real Competition in the North American market is Sentai Filmworks. Viz doesn’t license enough to be a threat (only Anime licenses announced this year are HxH, K movie and Season 2 and One Punch Man), Discotek only licenses catalog titles and NIS America is out for the time being.

Crunchyroll

  • More Titles Available for Streaming, including more popular titles like Cowboy Bebop. etc.

Funimation

  • Allows them to concentrate on just dubbing

  • Potential financial compensation from Home Video Sales

Negative aspects of the deal

  • For Crunchyroll it’s mostly Logistics and being able to handle the increase in streaming traffic, and their storage capacity.

-For Funimation it’s the Delayed Financial compensation from the Home Video Sales, If there’s a string of bombs it could effect them all across the board. There’s also the possibility that they’ll lose subscribers, as they dropped their sub pass subscription option. (Honestly this could effect CR as Well but those who sub to both sites will more than likely drop Funi, if they can tolerate subs, rather than subscribe to both.It may be negligible though)

Thoughts

Honestly, I feel this deal was more driven by Funimation, than Crunchyroll, as Crunchyroll’s deal with Kadokawa scared the pants off Funnimation. With Kadokawa absorbing their Media Factory label into itself earlier this year, and with the potential of sequels to some of Funimation’s more popular shows like High School DxD, or Date A Live etc. It likely drove them to make this deal, which in the short term, doesn’t look like they made that great of a deal, unless the Home video / digital compensation was highly favorable to them.

What’s everyone’s thoughts?

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