FUNimation made the announcement that they have entered into a partnership with Crunchyroll in order to bring more anime to fans around the world.
FUNimation made a statement on the partnership with the following press release:
Since Gen Fukunaga started Funimation with the first ever English dub of Dragon Ball Z, our goal has been to make the best anime in the world accessible to most fans possible. Today, we’re announcing a new partnership with Crunchyroll that lets us both work together to bring anime to fans around the world.
What does this mean for you? Simpler, easier choices about where to watch anime. For subtitled viewing, you’ll be able to go to Crunchyroll – in fact, we’ve already started putting some of our subtitled shows up on their service today, and we will be adding more over the weeks to come. For English dubs, you’ll continue to get those from Funimation – we will have select shows from Crunchyroll’s catalog up on FunimationNow coming soon, and we will be creating new dubs for even more shows in the future!
Our partnership includes new shows, too. We will be working together with Crunchyroll to bring you new titles going forward, starting with the Fall 2016 season. Simulcasts of those shows with English subtitles will be up on Crunchyroll, and Funimation will be creating Broadcast Dubs for many of these titles, available on FunimationNow just 2-4 weeks after each episode airs in Japan!
All of this means no more hunting for who’s got your favorite shows each season, and it means each company can focus on what they do best. For Funimation, that means creating more dubs than ever before, and adding to the world’s largest library of English-dubbed anime on FunimationNow.
Funimation will also be your source for all the ways to collect your own library of anime – we will be creating, promoting and distributing DVD, Blu-ray, and digital download-to-own releases for titles in our partnership. And, most of these will have both English audio and Japanese audio with English subtitles.
Why are Funimation and Crunchyroll partnering together? To the anime industry, our companies have always been two sides of the same coin – we focus on dubs, Crunchyroll focuses on subs. Funimation has a long history of creating home video and download-to-own releases for anime, where Crunchyroll has been built on streaming.
Creating a confusing landscape where fans have to know which company has which show has never been ideal, and it made it harder for new fans to fall in love with anime. We knew that this was something we could fix if we worked together – and in the process, could create new opportunities for everyone.
What changes are coming to FunimationNow? In the coming weeks will have English dub for Free! -Iwatobi Swim Club, and The Testament of Sister New Devil. We’ve also announced upcoming Broadcast Dubs for 91 Days, Orange, and Mob Psycho 100.
Starting today and over the next few weeks, we will be moving subtitled versions for many of our shows over to Crunchyroll. This process will happen in stages, and we will post updates to our Blog with new changes.
You will also see some new changes coming to subscription plans on FunimationNow, starting with reducing our plan options from two to one. Later today, we’ll begin rolling out FunimationNow Premium which will allow you to access all of our ad-free content for the new price of just $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year. Current subscribers should be on the lookout for emails that detail how their subscriptions will be affected. This means a whole new lower price for the largest catalog of English-dubbed anime legally available anywhere online!
