Naughty and Nice ’23 No. 2: Anime

1. Crunchyroll Takes Away the Right Stuf

In September Crunchyroll dropped a frustrating announcement on anime fans. Right Stuf, an anime store that’s been around for over 36 years was going to be absorbed into the Crunchyroll Store. On October 10, the beloved brand ceased to exist. In the immediate future, Nozomi Entertainment licenses would go on. Orders placed with Right Stuf would continue to be fulfilled. Since the purchase was announced in 2022, fans knew it would only be a matter of time before Crunchyroll devoured another brand. After all, it happened to Funimation, one of the most recognizable brands in North America. No Crunchyroll acquisition is safe from having their identity stripped and rolled into the video streaming giant.

2. Crunchyroll’s Light Physical Media Release Schedule

Compared to the comprehensive home release schedule Funimation used to keep, Crunchyroll’s is light in comparison. Unfortunately, press releases and schedules coming directly from Funimation’s own website are long gone. 2021 was the last year Funimation remained as a separate entity from Crunchyroll. In 2021 Funimation released 136 titles on home video. Crunchyroll’s home video release schedule is hard to find on their site. For the most part it’s buried in the news feed which does not have a great layout. In 2023 Crunchyroll released about 102 titles physically with another six planned for December. Quite a few of those releases were re-releases. As for new shows currently streaming, only a small few of those are trickling out onto physical discs these days. It’s better than nothing, but the heydays of Funimation trying to release everything they license on home video is behind us.

3. My Anime Backlog Came Roaring Back

2023 was an eventful year for anime releases. Each new season saw at least 50 new shows. It would be insane to try and watch all of them. That said, I’ve found myself unable to watch even a handful of new shows. Much less write about them like I once did in the past. For each new season, I’ve only been able to watch maybe one or two shows — sometimes only getting to those shows weeks or months after they’ve aired. In the past I kept track of around five or six series that caught my interest. Since I’m behind, I find myself struggling to catch up, and that often spirals into a new season. On top of that, I’ve not been following anime news as closely as I once did. I guess two new shows a season are better than none.

1. Crunchyroll Will Be Made to Pay

While we were all lamenting over how Crunchyroll gutted Right Stuf, something else was happening with the company in September. The anime streaming service’s parent company, Sony Pictures Entertainment, was part of a class-action lawsuit for illegally disclosing its subscribers’ personal information to third-parties without consent. This included companies such as Facebook. Without claiming wrong-doing, Sony entered a settlement with the U.S. District Court of Illinois. Affected individuals eligible for the settlement claim must be United States residents, and a registered user of Crunchyroll services from September 8, 2020 through September 20, 2023. Each individual is expected to receive a total of $30 if the court approves the settlement. Let me clarify. It was naughty of Crunchyroll to sell personal data, but it’s nice they’ve at least been taken to court. If you’re curious, yes I did file a claim. Today is the final day you can file a claim if you’re eligible, provided you’re reading this on December 12, 2023.

2. Discotek’s Influence Grows Larger

As Crunchyroll has slowly been cutting back on their number of home video releases after absorbing Funimation, Discotek’s offerings have grown. Lately, they’ve taken the place of Funimation’s license rescues of older shows. Each month Discotek releases an average of four to seven shows on Blu-ray and DVD. Their offerings aren’t of the most current anime, but this distributor is providing a good service to anyone who likes to collect physical media. Shows that have long gone out of print, or never received a proper release now have a second chance at life for a reasonable price. Some of those shows have even gotten new English dubs. So if you’re a fan of older anime and like to collect discs, don’t sleep on this independently run company. As a bonus (for me anyway), they’re still one of the few distributors and licensors that still make their way out to Otakon every summer.

3. A Good Year For the New Anime I Did Watch

Sure, I lamented in my naughty column about how I only managed to watch one or two shows each season. What I did watch was fairly good, and I even managed to write about a few of them for Quarantine Control. For the most part, what I watched were continuations of shows I’d already been keeping an eye on from previous months or even years. I recommended them in QC, and so I will recommend them here as well. Vinland Saga season 2, Aggretsuko season 5, Attack on Titan, Final Season, The Final Chapters, Specials 1 and 2, Dr. Stone New World part 1, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury season 2, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc, Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War -The Separation-, and Dr. Stone New World part 2 (which is still airing as of this writing). I’d be remiss if I didn’t also recommend Helck, which is on my list to watch, and comes highly recommended from a friend of the blog. A bunch of other amazing shows aired in 2023 that I’ll probably keep talking about well into 2024.

1. Farewell to Right Stuf

Perhaps this was deserving of an Amnesia Lane, but longtime purveyor of anime and related sundries Right Stuf has been completely consumed by Crunchyroll. You may recall that last year that Sony bought the company as the latest chunk of meat to feed to Crunchyroll, with the actual merger of the stores finally landed in October. Now, rightstuff only exists as a legacy subdomain to ease member’s transition to the Crunchyroll Store.
My memories of Right Stuf go far back to the late 90s and its voluminous catalogs that told me more anime than I could ever dream of existed out there for the taking. Those catalogs were also well-known for their large adult entertainment section in the back. The only particular thing I can remember of it was a half-page ad for La Blue Girl in which every sentence of the description was followed by the word “Tentacles” as if it were STOP on a telegram. While I never did end up ordering anything from the catalogs they did remain an important link to just plain knowing what was out there.
I did plenty of ordering on their website once that was up and running, though. Whether that continues is hard to say. I certainly don’t like the way the arc of Crunchyroll’s story has bent nor Sony’s active efforts to monopolize the North American distribution system for anime. But not unlike Walmart rolling into town and putting all the existing stores out of business, we may one day have to choose between buying from the monopolist or buying nothing at all.

1. The Boy and the Heron and Ghibli Fest

What was supposed to be Hayao Miyazaki’s final movie (again) announced itself with authority in the United States this past weekend. The Golden Globe-nominated film The Boy and the Heron was No. 1 in the domestic Box Office, the first time an anime title has led the pack. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the take on its first day surpassed the entire run of The Wind rises, Studio Ghibli’s previous best-performing theatrical run in the US. While The Heron and the Boy is no longer supposed to be Miyazaki’s last movie, it may yet still be. At 82, whether he actually gets to complete another one is up to Father Time.
This was the culmination of a Studio Ghibli hype train started by our good friends at GKIDS (which somehow isn’t owned by Sony), who scooped up the distribution rights to all their movies. This was GKIDS sixth annual Studio Ghibli Fest and its largest, featuring 10 films plus the US’s first screening of the stage adaptation of Spirited Away. While Studio Ghibli is probably the best-known producer of auteur content for anime, the fact that Ghibli Fest is still growing seems to indicate that Disney uncharacteristically left money on the table by not pushing to grow the audience back when it owned the distribution rights.

1. Sunrise Flubs with The Witch from Mercury:

For as successful as Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury was in several territories around the world, it feels as if this was achieved despite Sunrise and Bandai Namco Filmworks’ efforts, and not because of them. The series is very gay, yes, but the company seemed to recoil at that fact despite the production team and voice talent leaning into it. I don’t want to delve into too many spoilers here (I have yet to see the series, but couldn’t avoid this fact), but I’ll just say that something that seriously excited the series LGBTQ+ fanbase happens near the end. Sunrise did their best to try and hide this in an embarrassing fashion.

2. MAPPA Blows

MAPPA provides superlative animation in the anime they produce, reflected through shows likeJujutsu Kaisen and Attack on Titan’s final final final works just this year. Creating that animation is another matter. Japanese animators have always had it rougher than they should have, and are massively underpaid for the work they’re responsible for. But MAPPA is the worst in this regard. Its animators have provided thinly-coded messages about how arduous their work is through social media, and how ridiculous the deadlines are for their work completion. Worse yet: MAPPA’s higher-ups have received pushback, but there’s nothing forcing them to legally stop running a sweatshop. They’re stuck there.

3. Crunchyroll Subsuming Rightstuf

Crunchyroll has significantly reduced their home video output since purchasing and absorbing Funimation, a deal that completed in March 2022. It makes perfect sense that this company, Big Anime as I like to call them, absorbed Rightstuf, the biggest anime retailer around for more than two decades. The company’s founders both left before the acquisition was completed, and Crunchyroll has changed the store’s longtime atmosphere to one with a considerably blander and more “corporate” design. Nothing too bad has happened with the store itself yet, as they’re still holding the holiday deals they’ve always carried around this time of the year. But it’s very difficult not to get an ill omen here, the feeling that any megacorporation sends out.

1. Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Is a Huge Success

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury was the first new Alternate Universe Gundam show in several years, since Iron-Blooded Orphans finished in early 2017. The combination of the long gap, the first female protagonist in the franchise, and that it was very (though not overtly) gay was a winning one. All of this, alongside the important element of those concepts being solidly executed, led to the series garnering the highest merchandise sales for an installment in the franchise since the Gundam SEED titles. Whether it will further mimic SEED through receiving a successor remains to be seen, though it would be a big surprise if it didn’t.

2. One Piece Sets Sail in the US This Year

Funimation/Crunchyroll, Toei Animation, and the fanbase have all been trying very hard to spread the word about One Piece’s solid quality for several years, but not enough potential fans were listening. 4Kids’ poor handling of the franchise with the first hilariously bad English dub did serious damage to the brand, which seemed irreversible. But this was the year where it became clear that the series had finally caught on in the United States. The reaction to One Piece Film Red and the new-and-still-current English dub finally making its way to Crunchyroll proved that the series was popular now, alongside how well the surprisingly-solid live-action adaptation performed. A series’ exorbitant length isn’t too big a hindrance when it’s good.

3. More Collaborations, especially from Warner Bros.

Do you know how you can tell that anime is “back,” per se? Collaborations are happening between larger entertainment companies. One among them is Warner Bros. with the new Suicide Squad Isekai coming next year, a bonkers concept that just could work with a solid budget behind it. Netflix has also funded several initiatives, including for franchises like Pluto and especially Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Considering the success of anime through streaming and even theatrically with movies like The Boy and the Heron, there could be more in 2024.