For the past few months, I’ve been receiving emails from Funimation regarding the transition of their anime titles to Crunchyroll.
Funimation and Crunchyroll have the same parent corporation - Sony. As such, it was inevitable that one streaming site would be folded into the other. Unfortunately, the transition process has been clumsy so far.
The Funimation emails stated rather grandly that I could go ahead and cancel my Funi subscription if I was already a Crunchyroll subscriber. However... what they didn’t say was that I wouldn't be able to stream Funimation’s entire catalog at Crunchyroll yet if I did so.
... Which is still the case, and it's now May 2022. It’s been months since the official announcement, but Funi’s titles are being switched over to Crunchyroll at a snail’s pace.
I began to look into this by going to Funimation’s website. Despite maintaining a Funimation subscription for years, I haven’t used it much. My term for it is my “emergency Funimation subscription,” as Crunchyroll doesn’t license one hundred percent of all anime series. They get maybe ninety-five percent (or at least - ninety-five percent of what I would be interested in), and the other five percent was always licensed by Funimation, so I always paid to keep a streaming subscription at both sites.
I looked at the FAQs. Here are two examples of FAQs from Funimation’s website:
Then there's this page:
Once again, they say that we can go ahead and cancel our Funi subscription if we also have a Crunchyroll subscription. But at the same time, they state that “many” (note: not all) of Funimation’s titles will be available at Crunchyroll “by the end of March 2022.” It’s now May, and titles are still in the process of being moved to Crunchyroll.
None of this was really giving me the info I needed, so I signed into Crunchyroll and found this page that lists the Funi titles that are now available at Crunchyroll as of May 17.
The link to this page is here, if you want to read it. This post elicited many comments. I am in total agreement with two of them:
"Some_weirdGuy" [Premium Member]
3/11/22
Gotta say this cause I'm seeing is a lot of "why are people complaining/guys chill out/everyone have patience" type comments -- Why are you doing that? stop that :X - They are a multi-billion dollar company, you are a paying customer, they can shine their boots just fine without your licking. They could have easily uploaded all this content on the back end behind a hidden flag, have everything ready, have all the information/answers written up and ready to go in advance, and *then* in one go make the annoucement and turn it on - thats absolutely possible, reasonable, and indeed what gets done elsewhere. They actively chose to have a messy/confusing, half-baked public rollout - So lets not make up excuses and verbally give them a free pass, they should do better, thats basic quality control/standards. :/ if people have complaints, let them complain, it's absolutely justified to expect better in these circumstances.
"Saryrn"
3/23/22
Can we speed this up a bit, a lot of us have canceled funimation a bit too early it seems as your original announcement made it sound like funimation was moments from shutting off the lights. However at the rate you seem to transfer the shows it sure seems like some people will want to keep funimation for at least one more month if not more at that rate. If it truly is this slow of a process can you at least be more up front about it and announce your intended move schedule, like these shows this week, these shows next week, ect so people can plan accordingly. If you really wanted to calm a lot of the stress people have down, can you just be upfront and let us know what shows will not be making the jump just incase we want to watch them one more time before funimation site truly does shut down. For instance just at the top of my head, I keep waiting to see if slayers is making the jump, I haven't seen it in years and was looking forward to rewatching it before this merge was announced.
Of course, neither of these comments received answers from Crunchyroll. I looked to see which of the Funi titles that I've watched or wanted to watch were now at Crunchyroll. As of May 17, the latest update, both seasons of Muhyo and Roji are now at Crunchyroll, but Sasaki and Miyano, which I’d been meaning to watch, is not at Crunchy yet, nor are Hetalia or Heaven Official’s Blessing. It does look like the entirety of The Prince of Tennis has been moved to Crunchyroll.
If you’re not familiar with the Prince of Tennis series, well... the main canon series took a long time to wrap up. I think the anime caught up with the manga too many times... there were delays... so the canon story had to be finished with OVAs. Then the new Prince of Tennis (Shin Prince of Tennis) manga series began in 2009. There are also several movies that are part of the canon, plus several post-main series seasons, etc. I’ve been in a Prince of Tennis mood lately, so I guess it’s ready at Crunchyroll now for me to pick up from wherever it was I left off at... which I’ll have to figure out. It’s been a while.
This fumbled rollout of Funi titles at Crunchyroll may seem like a minor thing to gripe about. Considering that Crunchyroll began as a pirate site before going legit, and that Funimation’s streaming platform was the buggiest in the business (they did gradually improve it over the years), I understand that this slow transition of titles doesn’t sound like a big deal in comparison.
But in a way, it is. Anime occupies a unique place in the U.S. entertainment industry. It is a significant piece of the entertainment business now in the U.S., not only in terms of revenues generated, but also as something that brings in and engages young fans - diverse fans - the fans of the future, the ones everyone is trying to cultivate. My point is that it’s not pirate sites operating on the fly anymore. Sony is a billion-dollar corporation, yet sometimes the industry still feels like people making VHS copies for their college anime club, with the same level of professionalism and dedication, in other words, not much.
I believe anime could compete on the level of Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if presented in the right way to the American audience. I really do. So it frustrates me to see this kind of unprofessional treatment of paying customers, as if we should be grateful that we don't have to hunt down fansubs on You Tube anymore and that this is a good enough effort. We're not going to get out of the entertainment ghetto this way, so I hope Sony steps up and takes care of this issue soon.
