People just don’t understand why Crunchyroll is going to produce original animation series, which is why you get shit like this from people who should know better.
Basically, Crunchyroll, or rather its parent company Ellation, is going to produce new animation series because original content pays more than just streaming anime does and they’ve felt the hot breath of Netflix and Amazon in their neck.
Let’s recap. Crunchyroll started off by doing an Uber, just streaming anime they didn’t actually have the license for, not unlike the evil pirate Kissanime does currently, then went legal when the Japanese anime companies went after them, essentially forcing them to sell streaming licences. This was at a time when this just didn’t happen: thanks to them we now have proper streaming anime in the west. For the most part, they haven’t had much competition either, save from Funimation, which specialises in dubbed rather than subbed anime anyway.
But this changed a year or two ago, when Netflix started to get a bit more serious about anime. They’ve always had a bit of anime, but they started to get more licenses, for example tying up the rights to all new Noitamina series. Netflix of course isn’t as interested in being an anime streaming service like Crunchyroll, but rather wants more, preferably cheap content to provide for its existing audience to keep them happy and if that nets a few otakus, then that’s a bonus. You can tell they don’t really care because they don’t simulcast, but rather treat their anime series like any other “original” content, dumping it in one or two batches once they’re completed.
For Crunchyroll this meant that getting licenses would probably be getting more expensive, especially for the more popular or prestige series. And then the other shoe dropped when Amazon started their Anime Strike service. Amazon was a lot more aggressive than Netflix, teaming up with Sentai –who were already involved with the Anime Network– to get a lot of series available quickly. Cue lots of chin stroking on how this was an existential threat to Crunchyroll, if Amazon is starting a similar service: with the money it has it can always outbid Crunchyroll to get a monopoly in yet another market.
Luckily they fucked up. Anime strike is gone, Sentai has moved on and created Hi-Dive, which is a proper Crunchy competitor and is splitting the market, but which will never be able to crush it like Amazon might’ve. Nevertheless, this whole fiasco served as a warning to Crunchyroll that they couldn’t depend on being the only or even the biggest player in the market anymore. So they pulled a Netflix.
The problem with making money off of other people’s content after all is that you’re just a replacable middleman, that you will lose your license eventually, that there’s always the danger that either those content creators might do it themselves or a new competitor shows up. Netflix has known this for a long time, which is why it’s has been investing a lot in creating original content, either by creating it directly or just throwing money at people to buy their way into it. Crunchyroll was already doing the same, financing new anime by being on the production committee.
Because as you know, Bob, most anime series are produced through socalled production committees, groups of companies that finance a series, with the actual anime studio often being the least important member or even just a sub contractor. The real money in Japan isn’t in anime: it’s in selling the manga, light novels, statues and other merchandise the anime is an advert for. This is why there are so many shitty 13 episode trapped in fantasyland series. If Crunchyroll can get on the production committee, it means it has a stake in a series it cannot have as just a streaming company.
Creating an original series entirely in house is the next logical step, just like Netflix and even Amazon have been doing for years. If High Guardian Spice is a success, the blueray, dvd, manga and merch sales will all be kept by Crunchy, or rather Ellation. It offers a security you can’t get with licensed material. It’s not in competition with the anime series Crunchy licenses, but rather an addition to it. Granted, there is the danger that, like Netflix, CR gets less …completist… about getting anime licenses if their original series take off, but for the moment that’s a low risk.
All the other complains, that it takes money away from improving CR as a service, or that this is just social justice warrior pandering is nonsense, people judging a series by a one and a half minute long promo video coming out a year before the series is due to air. How much can you tell about it this far out after all. As for the SWJ stuff, yes, Crunchy is hyping that this series has a lot of women working on it because that’s what sells instead of creepy lolicon material for skeevy dudes. (Though it has plenty of that as well.) Nobody wants to be associated with the kind of loser ranting about the females destroying anime from their parents’ basements.
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