Funimation, an American anime production and distributor company has ended its ties with Crunchyroll by concluding its cross-licensing deal. Funimation, a subsidiary entertainment company owned by Sony has announced that it is leaving the third-party streaming sites like Crunchyroll to expand globally.
According to the reports stated by Polygon, Gen Fukunaga, the president of Funimation has sent a memo to the employees of the company announcing that the company is going to leave the streaming sites as a result of the acquisition by Sony. Funimation is specialized in the distribution of anime dubbed in English which includes, One Piece, Dragon Ball Super, and My Hero Academia.
The contract between Crunchyroll and Funimation is going to end on 9th of November 2018. However, things aren’t entirely clear whether it will pull all of its shows from the platform or if it will leave a few anime series that are available. All the anime series that will be removed the Crunchyroll and VRV will be available exclusively on its streaming service, FunimationNow.
Funimation teamed up with Sony to develop the service that was launched in 2016. According to Fukunaga, Funimation will be catering to both sub and dub fans, and at the same time, it will also release the dubbed anime series at lightning speed.
Crunchyroll has released a statement saying that: they partnered with Funimation two years ago and shared anime between the users. And Funimation has decided to take a different venture and end the partnership on November 9th. As far as the Crunchyroll community is concerned, people can still access the biggest anime library in the world other than the title which is licensed under Funimation as they will permanently leave Crunchyroll.
Variety has also reported that Funimation will be ending the partnership between AT&T’s VRV service. Gen Fukunaga also stated that the deal has indeed ended amicably.