“Dang it, Gohan! This isn’t the Fourth Of July. Or America. Or a version of Earth where either matters!”
Anime fans were worried when Sony bought Funimation and decided to merge it with their Crunchyroll anime streaming service. The concern was a monopoly, or at least a near monopoly as sites like RetroCrush and Filmrise’s anime division still exist. It would be the biggest service and probably lead to having too large a control on where you got your anime. Except now anime studios have official YouTube channels where TMS and other studios show off their work. Other streaming sites have an anime division as well. So this may not end up being the problem we thought.
We have a different issue instead.
Following the successful merger of the two sites (going to funimation.com now redirects to Crunchyroll), Bounding Into Comics is reporting that a whole lot of anime are being dropped altogether due to licences that weren’t transferred over. Sadly this still puts Robotech behind the paywall and I really wish Harmony Gold had stayed with Filmrise. It would have made comparing episodes and comic adaptations when I went over the old Comico comics easier. Here’s the full listing compiled by Bounding Into Comics. I’m just going to touch on some of the more confusing ones to me.
Their list is in two groups: anime no longer streaming anywhere (though Just Watch isn’t always accurate), and items still on the digital store but not streaming. Some of them are still available for rent or buying through other sites. For curiosity sake I looked up the second anime Ghost In The Shell movie, Innocence, and it’s still on YouTube’s paywall. I was confused that the Astro Boy series, and I don’t know if it’s the original, the remake, or both, were on that first list. Nozomi Entertainment has the original series on YouTube while Tubi has the 1980s and early 2000s remakes (not sure about the American produced movie). Other heavy hitters like Kimba The White Lion, the Tenchi Muyo series, later seasons of Ikki Tousen, and various Gundam productions were on that list.
Strangest of all were Dragon Ball movies were on that list. I don’t know if they went back and redid the ones Funimation didn’t dub, but to lose something from the franchise that basically put Funimation on the map is a surprise, even if digital stores are still carrying them. (They’re on the second list.) However, Special History Of Trunks, the lone Dragonball Z movie on the list, was totally theirs and to lose that is a problem. Other anime I still hear people talk about include the ://hack franchise, Armitage shows and movies, The second two live-action Rurouni Kenshin movies (they still have the anime series…behind the paywall), a live-action Attack On Titan movie (I don’t know if they’re as well received as the anime and manga) Vision Of Escaflowne, and one of the Soul Eater spinoffs are on there. That’s got to hurt.
If you were using streaming to see all of this, you may be out of luck. While some streaming sites may carry a few of these that Crunchyroll currently isn’t, and if there’s fully no Funimation anymore I’m not sure how they pull it off unless they just haven’t updated their sites yet, if that’s your only option you’re out of luck. This is why over at The Clutter Reports I discuss the importance of maintaining a physical media library. Unless something happens to your house you don’t lose any of these shows, and you have a better chance of not having a censored version like Disney+ is doing to the various classic movie libraries the parent company absorbed into the Collective. Once you own it, you own it. You don’t lose it because a service goes down or loses the license.
Nothing on the list is a huge loss to me as it’s not anime I developed a huge interest in even when I saw them. There were some I liked and some I’m curious about (and most of it was behind the paywall anyway, while even if it isn’t the Fire TV app won’t let you use it if you don’t have a Crunchyroll account anyway) but for fans of what’s up there now I’d recommend getting a physical copy as soon as you can before all of that disappears as well. Hold on to your VCRs, DVD and Blu-Ray, laserdiscs, and Beta Max players and copies as long as you can because you may end up with no way to rewatch something you really love.
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