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Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll anime simulcasts, movies and news.

Written by Total Apex Entertainment Staff · Editorial Policy · Updated

Total Apex Take

Crunchyroll has effectively won the anime streaming wars by absorbing every serious competitor, and now the real test is whether Sony lets it become the dominant anime gatekeeper or just another price-hiking subscription service.

Sony completed the consolidation of Crunchyroll and Funimation into a single platform, closing out years of merger integration pain, and the service has ridden a genuine global anime boom — Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Solo Leveling among the biggest draws — into a position as the default destination for the genre outside Japan. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle's theatrical run in 2025 underscored how far anime has moved into mainstream box office territory, with Crunchyroll and Sony's Aniplex positioned at the center of that crossover.

We think Sony's anime strategy is one of the smartest moves in its entire entertainment portfolio right now — anime fandom has grown far faster than general Hollywood box office, and owning the dominant distribution platform for it gives Sony leverage that Netflix and others are still trying to buy their way into through licensing. The risk is complacency: price increases and the post-merger app experience have already generated real fan frustration, and Crunchyroll's dominance only holds if it doesn't start treating a captive audience carelessly.

Watch how aggressively Sony pushes anime theatrical releases following Demon Slayer's success — that's the next frontier where Crunchyroll's platform and Sony's studio muscle together could meaningfully reshape how anime reaches Western audiences.

About Crunchyroll

Crunchyroll began in 2006 as a site hosting fan-uploaded, unlicensed anime before pivoting to licensed, officially authorized streaming later that decade. Sony's Funimation Global Group acquired Crunchyroll for roughly $1.175 billion in 2020, and over the following two years folded Funimation's own anime catalog and dub production into the unified Crunchyroll brand and app.

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