Funimation was just the beginning.
Summary:
- Crunchyroll’s CEO mentioned that he can see the company buying out other anime streaming services.
- As the recent Funimation situation showed, a lot of content is getting lost during these mergers.
- This will not have a positive effect on the industry.
The recent interview with Crunchyroll CEO Rahul Purini shed some light on how the company really operates. While most of it wasn’t particularly interesting, there are some parts that caught the attention of the fans.
Namely, an important thing mentioned was using artificial intelligence for subtitles. This, naturally, wasn’t received well by the fans. However, an even more concerning part is the potential for Crunchyroll to remain the only big anime streaming service out there — and this is something otaku definitely don’t want.
Funimation merger might have been just a beginning
Recently, Crunchyroll acquiring Funimation already sparked controversies among fans. There have been questions of whether some series will be transferred or not — and while Crunchyroll mentioned that Funimation-exclusive anime will be transferred, this left many questions unanswered.
What about anime that existed in better quality on Funimation? What about certain dubs, or series like Bakemonogatari, which were missing episodes on Crunchyroll?
It seems like all the details of the merger haven’t been thought out. In the case of Crunchyroll acquiring more services, we might have more content losses like that — but complaining about them is not going to solve anything.
There’s a possibility that Crunchyroll is planning to remain the only major streaming service on the market, another thing that was mentioned in the interview.
Why this is a bad sign for the industry
This kind of monopoly will allow Crunchyroll to significantly lower its quality standards, which some fans already consider too low. There are occasional mistakes in subs, and if AI is used for them, we might see more of them. Perhaps the use of AI is another cost-saving measure.
Crunchyroll is also notoriously bad at paying its own workers. There have been controversies involving the translators having very low wages, and this raises another question. If Crunchyroll is considering buying out other streaming services, they definitely have enough money to pay the workers properly, so why aren’t they doing it?
The answer, sadly, is pretty obvious: as long as the company can keep getting away with it, they will cut the costs — and this includes workers’ wages.
Crunchyroll won’t remain the only anime streaming service
However, most fans consider the idea of Crunchyroll buying out all of its competitors unlikely to happen in reality. Services like Netflix and Hulu are way too big and also don’t focus on anime alone, so they are unlikely to be bought by Crunchyroll.
However, this does mean that they’ll remain in the market and provide adequate competition