By Niko Balkaran
Sony has merged anime streaming services Crunchyroll and Funimation. As a result, anime that was exclusive to Funimation will now be available to Crunchyroll subscribers.
There will be over 1600 hours and more than 50 new shows on Crunchyroll, according to the press release. Future exclusive content will also begin airing from April 1. Sony also confirmed that current Crunchyroll prices would remain unchanged.
“The best thing I see coming out of this is that now the casual anime watcher won’t need to be paying more for two apps,” said Divad Smith, president of the York’s Anime Club.
This merger means that Sony now controls the world’s largest anime library. Sony bought Crunchyroll last August for over $1 billion from AT&T, according to a Wired article.
Sony said that existing Funimation users would have access to a deal where they can get two months of Crunchyroll Premium for free.
“When we brought Funimation and Crunchyroll together last year, our top priority was to put fans first,” said Colin Decker, CEO of Crunchyroll. “Unifying all of our brands and services under the Crunchyroll brand globally enables us to offer more value than ever before as we combine subs, dubs, simulcasts, library, music, movies, manga-all into one subscription.”
Crunchyroll is currently used in over 200 countries and territories and is offered in 10 languages, according to the press release.
