Crunchyroll buying out and shutting down Funimaton, deleting everyone’s purchased copies, and then hiking up their prices by 200% is just another example of why you should buy physical media. If you want to buy things you actually own, don’t look to streaming.
Wish I had the business acumen to make my own anime streaming competitor to Crunchyroll. Because it’s doubling its prices after FUNimation is folded into it. And you aren’t even getting a better service!
News - Crunchyroll has announced that the Funimation app will finally shut down on April 2, 2024. Paid Funimation subscribers can migrate their account to Crunchyroll (including their watch history and queue), or merge their Funimation account with a pre-existing Crunchyroll account, if they happen to share the same email address.
Crunchyroll also announced that they will not support Funimation's digital copy content, so any digital copies of Funimation anime you may have purchased or had claimed with codes included in your Funimation DVD/BDs will no longer be available to watch in your libraries after the shut down date.
Soul Eater official sparkly Funimation stickers. I scanned them with full resolution because everywhere else makes their designs blurred. The blue Death the Kid sticker art is more unique. I think this is the only way to get this design of his in, because I don't remember this on anything else.
Crunchyroll’s awful anti consumer practices are made even worse when you realize that they have a stranglehold on anime distribution in the west.
Sure, Sentai Frameworks is still around, but their catalogue of shows pales in comparison to Chruchyroll’s.
It’s kinda insane how many shows CR licenses each season, seriously half of the shows I watched last year were licensed by CR.
As one would expect, because CR ends up licensing out a bunch of shows each season, they start to get lazy when it comes to the localization.
They have just straight up given up when it came to translating signs and episode titles in certain shows.
And because they’re notoriously anti union, all their English dubs feature the same actors from the Dallas area. Which becomes a huge problem with they end up licensing a show that was previously dubbed by a union studio.
Looking at you Mob Psycho 100 Season 3.
Pretty wild how a shitty company like CR managed to conquer the anime market in the west.
Even during the height of their popularity, Funimation didn’t license as many shows as CR. Though to be fair, anime was still pretty niche in the 2000’s and early 2010’s.
But still, the fact that CR doesn’t have that many competitors in the anime market is pretty concerning. As they will continue to double down on their shitty business practices.
Q: What are these?
A: These are cards from the Case Closed TCG!
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Promotional cards are only distinct from their base counterparts by the white-colored icon in the top right corner. Promos are just alt art versions of existing cards, but are exceptionally rare as they could not be obtained in booster packs or starter boxes, instead only being available as tournament prizes or coupled with other media.
Two sets of CC TCG promo cards exist, one for each booster release. Every Premier starter box comes with a small poster which includes these alt art cards in its set count, however no such list exists for Crime and Punishment that was released to the public (there is only an equally rare promotional poster).
This card is from the Premier release and was obtained via a first-edition print copy of Viz's release of Case Closed Vol. 7 in 2005. A sticker on the front of the volume claims this version was limited to 8000 copies; the card was contained in a sleeve behind the back cover and is the alt-art release of Premier #120 (rare rarity). Interestingly, the wrong art is used on the sleeve the alt-art version is packaged in, instead depicting the standard release.
Early sale sheets for the Premier set show that Score Entertainment intended to print foil cards for this TCG (1 per booster pack). I imagine this was also the plan for promo cards but have heard from other collectors that they ultimately didn't bother as the TCG had already been written off prior to production (however, info about this game being so scarce... I cannot confirm with a source).
Feel free to add examples in the replies if you know of any other Manga/Anime creators who have made comments or done things implying they support the LGBT community and I’ll add them to the OP (note this moreso applies to assumed heterosexual creators or creators who have not stated their personal sexuality rather than out gay creators, basically it’s an Ally list)
Kunihiko ikuhara: vehemently hates straight romance and is pushing for more and gayer romance in manga and anime
hiro mashima: deleted an offensive character in his own manga and replaced him with a more positive gay coded one
Satoru Noda: reads Bara and his manga is incredibly homoerotic
Hirohiko Araki: see Satoru Noda
Yoshihiro Togashi: has made multiple attempts to make a manga with a gay protagonist and has basically called out his publishers as homophobes for not letting hin
Hiroyuki Takei: included a Gay romance arc in his collab manga with Stan lee(that stan lee had himself alan smithee’d off of because he was a homophobe) and has a canon trans man character in Shaman King’s spin offs
Atsushi Ohkubo: became aware that Fire Force had a large gay male fanbase and started adding more fanservice of the male characters specifically for that side fanbase, has also made many comments implying other progressive personal views (and calling out other mangakas for the racist way they depict black characters)
shirahama kamome: her Manga Witch hat Atelier has several openly LGBT characters
katsura hoshino: her mangas have very heavy LGBT subtext/text and I’m told some actual canon LGBT rep
Tatsuki Fujimoto: his manga prior to Chainsaw man had a trans masc character
Disney+ Adds Hulu Content for Bundle Subscribers in Beta Launch With FOX Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Nickelodeon & FUNIMATION Titles.
The beta version of Hulu on Disney+ has started to rollout in some homes, the biggest change is the addition of Nickelodeon, FOX, FUNIMATION, Adult Swim and Cartoon Network shows on the house of mouse streaming platform.
Beginning Dec. 6, the significant majority of Hulu content will be available on Disney+ in the U.S. for subscribers of both services. It’s phase one of the Disney+/Hulu integration plan, first outlined by CEO Bob Iger earlier this year. The initial “beta” of Hulu on Disney+ will be followed by the launch of a more integrated version in March 2024.
Disney’s expectation is that by mixing Hulu programming into Disney+, customers will spend more time overall watching stuff — thereby cutting churn and customer-acquisition costs, as Iger said on the company’s earnings call last month. Next year, the Mouse House intends to begin promoting Disney+/Hulu bundles more aggressively.