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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Count_Zero" data-source="post: 8858045" data-attributes="member: 40164">To put a lot in perspective with HBO Max - at the start of the year I was worried about the consolidation of the anime industry and how bad this was for competition when Sony/Funimation bought Crunchyroll, and what this would mean in the long term. After Discovery+ bought Warner Brothers (who previously owned Crunchyroll) and just started cleaving through their new purchase like... I dunno - Titans chowing down on an undefended village - my reaction very quickly changed to "Sony/Funimation buying Crunchyroll is better for the health of the industry, because the risk of Zazlav deciding to just kill the service (which was and is profitable) to save some pennies would be horrifically catastrophic."The consolidation is still bad - as far as anime is concerned, we've got 5 main services - to borrow Snarf's color codes:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Crunchyroll (owned by Sony): Sony has been releasing all of their new series through Crunchyroll, has rolled their old streaming series on the Funimation service into Crunchyroll, and is sunsetting the Funimation physical media branding to Crunchyroll. On the minus side, they have retired having older subtitled-only episodes available for free at lower screen resolutions with ads, at a time when everyone else (especially Disney & Netflix) are considering rolling out free ad-supported tiers.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Hidive (started the year independent, is now owned by AMC): Being owned by AMC had added some firmer financial backing, combined with a possibility of using some of the tech from AMC's other streaming services to help bolster Hidive's rather lackluster player (when it comes to streaming outside of the browser) - combined with grabbing some titles that hit the zeitgeist in terms of anime fandom - particularly "Ya Boy Kongming!" and this season's "Akiba Maid War". However, AMC's own financial issues impacting their other services like Shudder does lead to some worries that counteracts the gains.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Netflix: Netflix continues to license some great series that are airing in Japan, sitting on them until the whole series is out and dumping them out at once, leading to fans who want to watch them as they come out to turn to piracy. That said, this seems to have been avoided when it came to the most recent JoJo's series, so - <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷‍♂️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937-2642.png" title="Man shrugging    :man_shrugging:" data-shortname=":man_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Disney/Hulu: Disney owns a significant stake in Hulu, which is why they're putting the R-Rated and similar properties that they own on there as a sort of streaming "Buena Vista Entertainment" - Hulu is also where Viz is putting the anime they've licensed, and it looks like they've kind of been partnering with Disney as well - considering Viz previously licensed Bleach, and Disney licensed the new Bleach anime and is distributing it on Hulu in the US, and on Disney+ everywhere else. That said, a lot of these shows that are finally starting to come out (Summer Time Render, Black Rock Shooter) came out in Japan up to 6 months ago, and are coming out a much slower pace - leading to jokes about Disney Jail being the new Netflix Jail - with the new Bleach series being the sole exception.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Retrocrush (owned by Digital Media Rights, and who sublicenses a bunch of their stuff to other services): They continue to license for distribution a whole bunch of old stuff (and some slightly less old stuff, like the documentary NHK did on the making of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 which was previously exclusive to Amazon Prime).</li> </ol></blockquote>

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