The Verge interviewed Crunchyroll CEO, Rahul Purini, who spoke about Crunchyroll’s history of mergers and acquisitions, and how it’s fortunately enabled them to land in the supportive environment of Sony Pictures Entertainment and Aniplex. When asked whether the big merger with Funimation meant Crunchyroll now felt stable enough to attack the market or if there were more mergers and acquisitions to come, Purini replied:
“We feel like, structurally, we’re in the right place. We are in the right holding company so that we can go and attack the opportunity that’s in front of us. Will there be potential inorganic opportunities to add to our current growth?” Purini laughed. “Yes. And would we pursue them when they make sense? Yes. But I do feel like we are in the right place. We have the right structure to focus on our future.“
Purini’s comments follow the recent Funimation end-of-service announcement. The majority of its customers were smoothly moved over to the Crunchyroll service. Nevertheless, the announcement sparked controversy over the loss of digital copies of the content that Funimation customers had owned after buying the physical copies of the release. Purini addressed this, advising customers to contact customer support, and outlining that Crunchyroll was open to alternate forms of compensation. This could include as Purini says, “access to a digital copy on any of the existing other services where they might be able to access it. It could be a discount access to our subscription service so they can get access to the same shows through our subscription service. So we are trying to make it right based on each user’s preference.” Still, many Funimation users reported significant price hikes to make the move, and The Verge, which itself tested this policy, stated that Crunchyroll’s current compensation policy “seems inconsistent and difficult to take advantage of.”
As Crunchyroll establishes itself as a one-stop shop for anime fans — with Purini outlining his vision of casual anime fans perhaps starting on Netflix, and moving to Crunchyroll when they wanted more — many voice concerns over their dominance over the industry. The possible benefits could include ensuring creators are better compensated through Crunchyroll, as opposed to pirate sites, and the offering of massive amounts of overseas data to Japanese producers so that the demands of international fans are best reflected in anime production. Purini highlighted this in the case of the popular Solo Leveling anime, where he said, “Our team had read the manhwa, liked the IP, and so we actually took it to our partners in Japan — one of our sister companies, actually, Aniplex — and co-produced the show with them. And so that’s one example where we co-produced a show that we brought to the table based on what we were hearing from our fans.“
However, Crunchyroll’s dominance frees it to hike prices with no real legal alternative. While Purini’s admission that they were open to more mergers is normal in business, dominating an industry to the scale that Crunchyroll does isn’t. It arguably incentivizes the streaming service not to readily improve its quality of service due to a lack of competitors. Anime fans have reported lower-quality service since Right Stuf was incorporated into the Crunchyroll store – mainly shipping delays and packaging issues, as well as an unreliable video player, website, and subtitles which are sometimes unavailable at launch.
Source: The Verge
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