Crunchyroll is an American distributor, publisher, licensing company and international online community focused on video streaming East Asian media including anime, manga, drama, music, electronic entertainment, and content. Founded in 2006 by a group of University of California, Berkeley graduates, Crunchyroll's distribution channel and partnership program delivers content to over 23 million online community members worldwide. Crunchyroll is a subsidiary of Ellation, which belongs to Otter Media owned by AT&T and The Chernin Group. Crunchyroll has offices in San Francisco and Tokyo, and is a member of the Association of Japanese Animations (AJA).
Crunchyroll offers over 800 anime shows, more than 200 Asian dramas to users, and 50 manga titles, although not all programming is available worldwide due to licensing restrictions. In February 2017, Crunchyroll passed one million paid subscribers.
Crunchyroll is the exclusive worldwide (excluding Asia) digital distributor for Kadokawa anime titles and publishing in the United States. Crunchyroll also has long-term partnership agreements with Funimation and NBCUniversal.
History
Early years
Crunchyroll started in 2006 as a for-profit video upload and streaming site that specialized in hosting East Asian video content. Some of the content hosted on Crunchyroll included fansubbed versions of East Asian shows.
In 2008, Crunchyroll secured a capital investment of $4.05 million from the venture capital firm Venrock. The investment drew criticism from anime distributors and licensors Bandai Entertainment and Funimation as the site continued to allow users to upload illegal copies of licensed titles.
However, Crunchyroll eventually began securing legal distribution agreements with companies, including Gonzo, for an increasing number of titles. On January 8, 2009, after announcing a deal with TV Tokyo to host episodes of Naruto Shippuden, Crunchyroll stated that it was committed to removing all copyright-infringing material from its site and to hosting only content to which it had legitimate distribution rights.
In 2010, Crunchyroll announced its acquisition of the North American DVD rights to 5 Centimeters Per Second. This was the first DVD release licensed by Crunchyroll.
On October 30, 2013, Crunchyroll began digitally distributing 12 different manga titles from Kodansha â€" series such as Attack on Titan and Fairy Tail were part of the manga that were available initially â€" through Crunchyroll Manga.
Creation of Ellation
On December 2, 2013, The Chernin Group, former News Corp. president Peter Chernin's holding company, announced that it has acquired a controlling interest in Crunchyroll. A person with knowledge of the transaction said the price for the acquisition was close to $100 million. The Chernin Group said that Crunchyroll management and existing investor TV Tokyo will maintain a "significant" stake in the company.
On April 22, 2014, AT&T and The Chernin Group announced the formation of a joint venture to acquire, invest in and launch over-the-top (OTT) video services. Both companies committed over $500 million in funding to the venture. The new company was named Otter Media and became the majority owner of Crunchyroll. On August 3, 2015, Variety reported that Otter Media will unveil Ellation, a new umbrella company for its subscription-based video services including Crunchyroll. Ellation's services included VRV, to debut in 2016, a platform described as targeting "geeks, gamers and lovers of comedy, fantasy and technology."
Growth and Funimation partnership
On October 22, 2015, the Anime News Network reported that Crunchyroll has 700,000 paying subscribers. In addition, the company announced that Crunchyroll and Sumitomo Corporation had created a joint venture to produce and invest in anime productions.
On April 11, 2016, Crunchyroll and Kadokawa Corporation announced the formation of a strategic alliance that gave Crunchyroll exclusive worldwide digital distribution rights (excluding Asia) for Kadokawa anime titles in the upcoming year. It also granted Crunchyroll the right to co-finance Kadokawa anime titles to be produced in the future.
On July 1, 2016, Crunchyroll announced plans to dub and release a number of series on home video.
On September 8, 2016, Crunchyroll announced a partnership with Funimation. Crunchyroll will stream selected Funimation titles, while Funimation will stream selected Crunchyroll titles, as well as their upcoming dubbed content. In addition, Funimation and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment will act as distributors for Crunchyroll's home video catalog.
On February 9, 2017, Crunchyroll announced that it had reached one million paid subscribers.
On March 30, 2017, Crunchyroll began to distribute anime through Steam.
Availability
With paid memberships, streaming to select Windows Phone devices (with OS 7.5 or higher), Roku devices, Boxee, Wii U, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360 and Xbox One consoles, and Vizio, Google and Internet enabled televisions is available. In June 2013 the service became available through Apple TV. It is also the last title for WiiWare released in October of 2015.
The Anime Awards
The Anime Awards, also known as the Crunchyroll Anime Awards, are an annual award first given in 2017. The judges create a short list in 14 different categories and public votes for the winners are held online.
2017
Voting was held between January 3-10, 2017. The results were announced on January 11, 2017, with the exception of the "Anime of the Year" prize, which was announced on January 28, 2017. More than 1.8 million votes from around the world were submitted. In response to complaints about vote rigging, Crunchyroll tweeted "We had very strong anti-cheating methods that gave us results in line with true audience sentiment" and "we had some surprisingly complex ways to fight multiple voting that worked based on multiple tests."
Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface, and indicated with a double dagger ().
See also
- List of United States anime simulcasts
References
External links
- Official website
