Funimation

In a recent interview with The Verge about the future of what is now the dominant anime streaming platform in the west, Crunchyroll president Rahul Purini suggested that one way to combat anime piracy should be an embrace of AI models to speed up the subtitling process. But AI won’t do anything of the sort—and a fraught aspect of the process of bringing anime to global audiences will only get messier with it.Prepping the Sandworm Scenes in Dune: Part Two “A.I. is definitely something we think about at a lot of different…

Screenshot: Sunrise/CrunchyrollIn an increasingly perilous streaming and digital media landscape—where content is as quick to vanish into the ether as it is spread out across myriad services—Crunchyroll’s recent announcement it was entirely subsuming Funimation three years after it merged with its largest anime streaming rival by raising prices and wiping out digital libraries from invested users still stung. But after weeks of backlash, Crunchyroll says it’s trying to work on making amends.Lamar Johnson Loves Beyblades…

Image: Funimation/Studio BonesCome April 2, Funimation is going the way of the dodo. Earlier in the week, Sony revealed it’ll be sunsetting Funimation’s app and website in order to unify both it and Crunchyroll...something the company first revealed all the way back in 2022.Lamar Johnson Loves Beyblades and PokemonWhen Funimation was folded into Crunchyroll back in 2021, subscribers could have both services, and Crunchyroll would often rotate Funimation works in and out of its catalog. Those days will soon be over,…

Photo: SOPA Images / Contributor (Getty Images)At the beginning of 2023, TikTok was one of the weirdest and most delightful places on the internet. An app with a reputation for memes and 30-second dances had become the front page of the internet, and it seemed TikTok was only getting better as the platform matured. A year later, TikTok’s growth finally appears to have plateaued, and while the app is still a cultural behemoth, there’s a surprising truth lurking in the app’s success: TikTok is in trouble. In a bid to spread…

A new Sony merger is set to monopolize the anime streaming industry, as the media giant combines Funimation and Crunchyroll. The formerly separate anime subscription services both offered up a healthy selection of fan-favorite anime, but they’re no longer in competition. After first acquiring Funimation in 2017, and then Crunchyroll in 2021, Sony’s been hard at work combining the two into one overarching anime provider. That process is due to finish off in just a few months, and when that happens what used to be…

For years, two primary streaming giants have provided anime to the bulk of viewers. Funimation and Crunchyroll have both been in operation for years now, but Crunchyroll’s tenure as a subscription service far exceeds that of its competition, which came available a good decade later. Despite this fact, Funimation’s been around for longer, bolstered by the Dragon Ball franchise to create Funimation films and, eventually, launch the Funimation streaming service. In the years since Funimation put out its service, it and…

Sony just raised the price of anime and left American otakus with few other options. The company’s anime streamer, Funimation, is officially shutting down on April 2, according to a press release on Wednesday. Crunchyroll, Sony’s other anime service it acquired in 2021, sent an email to subscribers that prices will soon be raised from $55 a year to $100 a year.“You don’t have to leave your Funimation Watch History and Funimation Queue behind, you can migrate them to Crunchyroll,” said Sony in an email to Funimation…

Sony's Funimation purchased Crunchyroll from WarnerMedia for $1.175 billion in 2020, and they kicked off their transformation into a unified anime subscription service under the latter's name a year after the deal was announced. By 2022, Crunchyroll has already added more than 50 shows that were either exclusive to Funimation and weren't available with dubs to its library. Now, it sounds like they're almost done unifying their services: Funimation has revealed that it's going to shut down its old app and website on April…

Image: NetflixMonths after the live-action adaptation of the popular manga/anime One Piece released, Netflixis doing...an anime remake of One Piece. Really. Jujutsu Kaisen 0 Has Infectious Good EnergyRevealed at Jump Festa 2024, the remake—titled The One Piece, so as to make clear it’s not like the other two shows titled One Piece—will start off with the “East Blue” saga that the live-action show just finished partially adapting for its debut season. So what is new about this remake? Thus far, just the team behind it: WIT…

Kid Cudi is working on a wild new monster movie. Mahershala Ali offers a tiny update on Marvel’s Blade movie. Plus, there’s good news for Foundation and Fionna and Cake, with confirmations of new seasons on the way. Spoilers, now!Zillow Says You’ll Buy Your Next House With… AI? | AI UnlockedSlimeDeadline reports Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi will star in and produce Slime, “a classic monster movie decked out in fashion-forward video game skins that are wickedly satirical, scary as hell and trippy AF” directed by animator Jeron…