Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll is an American website and international online community focused on streaming East Asian media including anime, manga, and electronic entertainment. Founded in 2006 by a group of UC Berkeley undergraduate students, Crunchyroll's distribution channel and partnership program delivers content to over five million online community members worldwide.

In late December 2020, Sony (who owns Funimation) had announced it had acquired Crunchyroll from AT&amp;T (via subsidiary WarnerMedia) for just under $1.2 billion. However the acquisition was delayed by an extension of a U.S. Department of Justice anti-trust investigation.

On August 9, 2021, it was announced that Sony had completed its acquisition of Crunchyroll.

On March 1, 2022, it was announced that the Funimation catalog (along with VRV and Wakanim) would be merging into Crunchyroll and implying anime availability on those other services would effectively end.

On March 24, 2022, Crunchyroll announced that Sentai Filmworks licensed anime would be leaving on March 31. Sentai Filmworks licensed their anime to Funimation, but apparently decided to end the license once Funimation was merged into Crunchyroll. Sentai Filmworks anime will still be available for streaming on the HIDIVE service.

On March 26, 2022, it was reported that Crunchyroll would be ending ad-supported, free viewing for all new seasonal anime starting in the Spring 2022 season (roughly late March). This includes new episodes of continuing series. Spring 2022 anime will allow free viewing a week after the anime episode premieres for the first 3 episodes of the series as long as it happens before May 31, 2022. The trend ending ad-supported, free viewing is likely to extend to all its catalog at some point.

Crunchyroll Anime Awards
The Crunchyroll Anime Awards are awards given annually by the anime streaming service Crunchyroll to recognize the best anime of the previous year. Announced in December 2016, the awards were first presented in January 2017. Crunchyroll describes it as a "global event &lt;that&gt; recognizes the anime shows, characters, and artists that fans around the world love most."

Crunchyroll Originals
Crunchyroll Originals is a sort of brand or label that are a mix of animated features that are either co-produced or directly produced by the company. Most are co-produced and animated by Japanese studios, but some are animated by their in-house Crunchyroll Studios.

Partner animation studios through Spring 2022:
 * Brain's Base for In/Spectre (2020)
 * Telecom Animation Film for Tower of God (2020) and Shenmue the Animation (2022)
 * MAPPA for The God of High School (2020)
 * Lunch Box and Studio Elle for Gibiate (2020)
 * Seven Arcs for Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You (2020)
 * Production I.G for Noblesse (2020) and Fena: Pirate Princess (2021)
 * Millepensee for So I'm A Spider, So What? (2021)
 * Platinum Vision for Dr. Ramune Mysterious Disease Specialist (2021)
 * Visual Flight for Ex-Arm (2021)
 * Sola Digital Arts for Blade Runner: Black Lotus (2022)

Crunchyroll Studios
As mentioned above, some Crunchyroll Originals are animated in-house by Crunchyroll Studios. Reception has been slightly negative to very negative, but partly due to significant stylistic differences from most anime. So far, most of the Crunchyroll Studios shows have had a more American cartoon look which contrasts to most of the co-produced works.

Works as of Spring 2022:
 * Onyx Equinox (2020)
 * High Guardian Spice (2021)
 * FreakAngels (2022)
 * Meiji Gekken: Swords &amp; Guns (TBA)