As revealed on September 8, Crunchyroll and FUNimation are partnering up to transform the anime streaming market. Starting with the Fall 2016 anime season,they'll both debut the same titles but CR will be the home for subtitled episodes while FUNIi will provide English dubs. They'll also be retroactively combing through their respective back catalogs and selecting key anime titles that will also receive this same split. Below, you can find a breakdown of the key information you'll need to determine whether to continue your membership on both platforms or opt to subscribe to only one.
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Crunchyroll (CR) and FUNimation (FUNi) are not merging and will continue to exist as separate companies. Having a Crunchyroll subscription/account will not give you access to FUNimation and vice-versa. The benefit of the deal is that anime fans no longer have to look at the new line-up of shows debuting and continuing each season and decide whether to subscribe to CR or FUNi based on which platform was streaming the shows they want to watch. Instead, it appears that each new show licensed by either FUNI or CR will be available on both platforms with the only difference being that CR will stream subtitled episodes and FUNi will stream English-dubbed episodes.
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Moving forward, Crunchyroll will no longer stream dubbed episodes and FUNimation will no longer have subs. As a result of no longer having subs, FUNimation's ad-free price is dropping from $7.99 to $5.99/month. Crunchyroll's ad-free price will remain $6.95/month. By the end of 2016, all subs will be removed from FUNimation and all dubs will be removed from CR.
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Partnership was first announced on September 8th and the new pricing for FUNimation is already in effect for FUNimation Now subscribers.
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Crunchyroll will continue to place greater emphasis on streaming while FUNimation's larger focus will be on digital purchases, DVDs, Blu-rays and limited theatrical runs. Moving forward, FUNimation will be the home video distributor for Crunchyroll.
It appears the partnership was born by the increasing licensing fees both platforms were being charged by the Japanese anime studios. Instead of being competitors and driving up the price on highly sought after titles, it looks as if they'll be sharing the cost.
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