This includes some popular and critically acclaimed series.
Summary:
- The merger between Crunchyroll and Funimation resulted in more than a hundred of series and movies not being transferred.
- For some anime, only the sub or the dub will be available, while others are completely unavailable legally now.
- Some fans think this might lead to the downfall of Crunchyroll.
The merger between Crunchyroll and Funimation has been quite a controversial topic among anime fans. As it was advertised, it was supposed to bring the anime licensed by Funimation to Crunchyroll.
The reality, however, was far more complicated, with over a hundred anime not ending up there after the merger. Most of these you won’t be able to watch legally at all — and, naturally, this upsets a lot of fans.
Some Dubs and Subs Will Be Missing
Sure, half of the content that is now missing is dubs, with many of the anime that were previously available dubbed on Funimation being only available on Crunchyroll with subs. Yes, to sub watchers this might not be a huge issue — but for dub watchers, it very much is one, especially when iconic series like Magi are affected.
For some anime, subs are unavailable — and sub watchers tend to be more vocal about not watching dubs ever. Anime like Psychic School Wars (Nerawareta Gakuen) and Kimba the White Lion (Jungle Taitei) are currently only available dubbed on Crunchyroll.
Whole Series Are Lost in the Merge, Too
Some of the classic anime ended up not being available at all. That mostly happened to older series — like Serial Experiments Lain, FLCL and the entire Slayers franchise, among others. Currently, none of them are available on Crunchyroll, and fans are noticeably upset.
Perhaps the weirdest case of all is the Monogatari series — fans of which are very upset about the way the anime is streamed.
Between Crunchyroll and Funimation, only the latter had all the episodes of the first entry, Bakemonogatari. The Crunchyroll version is still missing the last 3 episodes, which you can’t watch anywhere — and is of notoriously lower quality.
Moreover, Koyomimonogatari is also not available legally; while it’s mostly side stories, the last 2 episodes are important to the plot.
Fans Are Very Unhappy
It’s easy to see why fans are upset about the way the merger happened. Despite the promises of the full transfer of Funimation’s catalog to Crunchyroll, nothing of sort happened — and many fans will have to resort to piracy to watch some of the classic anime.
It’s also important to address that Crunchyroll is restricting functions like offline watching. Combined with fans’ concerns about price raises for using the service, this makes some think that the age of Crunchyroll dominating legal anime streaming is soon going to be over.
Source: Twitter