1 00:00:00,201 --> 00:00:04,049 Speaker 0: Welcome to a mini episode of Project Geekology, 2 00:00:04,812 --> 00:00:06,315 and today it's just Anthony. 3 00:00:06,315 --> 00:00:10,426 This week we are not going to be having a full episode. 4 00:00:10,426 --> 00:00:12,669 That'll be reserved for next week. 5 00:00:12,669 --> 00:00:17,506 Next week we will be covering the new Superman movie, so stay 6 00:00:17,545 --> 00:00:18,748 tuned to that. 7 00:00:18,748 --> 00:00:22,562 But and and I won't talk too much about what I've been up to, 8 00:00:22,562 --> 00:00:27,242 I did see, as of the day of recording, I actually did go and 9 00:00:27,242 --> 00:00:31,353 see Superman, so I'm definitely excited to discuss that with 10 00:00:31,940 --> 00:00:34,707 Dakota and Rich, and you will hear that next week. 11 00:00:34,707 --> 00:00:40,182 But this week I'm, you know, for this mini episode, or 12 00:00:40,262 --> 00:00:43,969 mini-sode, I'm covering a topic that I've wanted to cover for a 13 00:00:44,030 --> 00:00:46,034 little while now, or minisode. 14 00:00:46,034 --> 00:00:48,018 I'm covering a topic that I've wanted to cover for a little 15 00:00:48,039 --> 00:00:54,320 while now, and that's Crunchyroll. 16 00:00:54,320 --> 00:00:54,823 I feel like Crunchyroll. 17 00:00:54,823 --> 00:00:56,567 You could reserve a full episode for Crunchyroll, but 18 00:00:56,588 --> 00:00:57,932 then again you could also reserve an entire series on 19 00:00:57,972 --> 00:01:00,542 Crunchyroll because it definitely has an interesting 20 00:01:00,622 --> 00:01:01,765 past to it. 21 00:01:02,408 --> 00:01:06,179 Within the next 15 to 20 minutes , I want to talk about crunchy 22 00:01:06,239 --> 00:01:06,379 roll. 23 00:01:06,379 --> 00:01:09,266 We have several. 24 00:01:09,266 --> 00:01:13,638 I know we have a lot of fans of the podcast that are anime fans 25 00:01:13,638 --> 00:01:19,206 , especially with demon slayer being our most popular podcast 26 00:01:19,426 --> 00:01:19,865 episode. 27 00:01:19,865 --> 00:01:24,792 We actually that one actually gets a lot of listens a day. 28 00:01:24,792 --> 00:01:29,462 So or I mean by a lot like, I guess, for our standards it's a 29 00:01:29,522 --> 00:01:31,665 lot, and we appreciate that support. 30 00:01:31,665 --> 00:01:36,421 So I I thought why not talk about a website that is very 31 00:01:36,542 --> 00:01:41,388 influential, especially with anime and the west and the way 32 00:01:41,429 --> 00:01:45,634 that we consume anime here in the west, and I mean it's used 33 00:01:45,795 --> 00:01:50,206 worldwide, but it really does find its roots here in the 34 00:01:50,287 --> 00:01:54,180 united states and so I guess, with that being said, I'm going 35 00:01:54,221 --> 00:01:59,811 to hop in and talk about it and I guess, through the years, from 36 00:01:59,811 --> 00:02:04,007 its inception, or from its creation all the way up until 37 00:02:04,569 --> 00:02:05,212 modern day. 38 00:02:05,212 --> 00:02:08,860 So Crunchyroll has been around for a while. 39 00:02:09,040 --> 00:02:16,132 Actually, crunchyroll was created in May of 2006 by four 40 00:02:16,292 --> 00:02:23,747 UC Berkeley grads Kung Gao, james, lin, brandon Oi and Vu 41 00:02:23,768 --> 00:02:27,936 Nguyen I am so sorry for butchering any of those names 42 00:02:28,717 --> 00:02:33,231 and it's really interesting that this project, crunchyroll, was 43 00:02:33,292 --> 00:02:34,796 really just like a side project. 44 00:02:34,796 --> 00:02:39,526 It was something that these gentlemen created with YouTube 45 00:02:39,687 --> 00:02:42,991 having been around for not that long. 46 00:02:42,991 --> 00:02:46,296 Honestly, at that point, what crunchyroll was? 47 00:02:46,296 --> 00:02:47,078 It was? 48 00:02:47,078 --> 00:02:48,882 It was essentially you. 49 00:02:48,882 --> 00:02:53,471 It was a clone of youtube, for east asian fan uploaded videos. 50 00:02:53,471 --> 00:02:57,485 That's really what it was at that time, in its inception, and 51 00:02:57,485 --> 00:03:00,961 something that's really cool that we have out there if you're 52 00:03:00,961 --> 00:03:04,549 interested in seeing what crunchyrollroll looked like in 53 00:03:04,590 --> 00:03:09,044 that era we do have there is a website called the Wayback 54 00:03:09,104 --> 00:03:15,201 Machine, and pretty much what it is is an archive of different 55 00:03:15,262 --> 00:03:20,532 websites and there's more than just websites but you can use it 56 00:03:20,532 --> 00:03:24,373 to pretty much go back to see what YouTube looked like back in 57 00:03:24,373 --> 00:03:28,225 the day, what Google looked like back in the day, and you 58 00:03:28,246 --> 00:03:30,670 could do the same with Crunchyroll and I actually did 59 00:03:30,752 --> 00:03:36,009 that recently and obviously things progress over the years. 60 00:03:36,009 --> 00:03:41,581 But it really is interesting to see how Crunchyroll looks now 61 00:03:41,682 --> 00:03:43,525 compared to what it looked like back then. 62 00:03:43,525 --> 00:03:47,551 I mean, it really did look like a project that a group of 63 00:03:47,592 --> 00:03:53,643 friends made, and so pretty much from its inception up until 64 00:03:53,823 --> 00:03:59,620 2008, anime was being regularly uploaded there and it was pretty 65 00:03:59,620 --> 00:04:01,263 much fan subbed at that time. 66 00:04:02,931 --> 00:04:08,881 Yes, crunchyroll and its inception was essentially what 67 00:04:08,961 --> 00:04:09,983 KissAnime was. 68 00:04:09,983 --> 00:04:11,724 It was a pirate website. 69 00:04:11,724 --> 00:04:17,862 It was a website where you were able to watch anime illegally 70 00:04:19,252 --> 00:04:21,860 and fans, would you know they would sub it. 71 00:04:21,860 --> 00:04:25,079 They would create their own subs for a lot of the anime. 72 00:04:25,079 --> 00:04:30,875 And something that really interested me in my research was 73 00:04:30,875 --> 00:04:38,862 that sometime in 2008, crunchyroll had gotten a large 74 00:04:38,923 --> 00:04:45,113 investment from an investment firm called Venrock, and it was 75 00:04:45,175 --> 00:04:52,156 around $4.05 million and I mean I guess they saw what the 76 00:04:52,197 --> 00:04:56,495 website could potentially be and that was really smart for them 77 00:04:56,535 --> 00:05:00,302 because I mean, look at what Crunchyroll is now. 78 00:05:00,302 --> 00:05:07,338 But that really didn't hold up well with Bondi and Funimation. 79 00:05:07,338 --> 00:05:12,144 They were pretty upset with that because still at this point 80 00:05:12,144 --> 00:05:17,954 , crunchyroll was still allowing unauthorized, illegal content 81 00:05:18,295 --> 00:05:26,031 to be uploaded regularly, and so , yeah, but I guess, with that 82 00:05:26,091 --> 00:05:32,560 being in mind, that the founders of Crunchy in 2008, like late 83 00:05:32,639 --> 00:05:38,552 2008, they ended up going to japan to negotiate licensing 84 00:05:38,593 --> 00:05:44,105 deals with tv tokyo so that they could actually legally stream 85 00:05:44,646 --> 00:05:48,718 naruto, shippuden, and pretty much what happened when they got 86 00:05:48,718 --> 00:05:52,110 that deal was that, you know, all the illegal stuff went away. 87 00:05:52,110 --> 00:05:56,899 So this is when, so late 2008, this is when they started to 88 00:05:57,521 --> 00:05:59,870 become legitimate, you know. 89 00:05:59,870 --> 00:06:04,499 So we had a couple of years where Crunchyroll was the kiss 90 00:06:04,658 --> 00:06:07,444 anime of anime back in that that era. 91 00:06:07,444 --> 00:06:15,310 So I thought that was really interesting, that that era, so I 92 00:06:15,310 --> 00:06:16,172 thought that was really interesting. 93 00:06:16,192 --> 00:06:18,456 And then, sometime in 2010, crunchy roll actually started to 94 00:06:18,456 --> 00:06:19,699 actually sell physical content. 95 00:06:19,699 --> 00:06:20,180 You know how? 96 00:06:20,180 --> 00:06:23,952 In crunchy roll, you can buy figures, you can buy manga, you 97 00:06:23,973 --> 00:06:25,656 can buy anime different things. 98 00:06:25,656 --> 00:06:30,504 Well, this is where the start of that happened here in 2010. 99 00:06:30,504 --> 00:06:36,093 They, so they they licensed the north american dvd rights to 100 00:06:36,274 --> 00:06:37,797 five centimeters per second. 101 00:06:37,797 --> 00:06:41,874 I didn't really look too much into that anime I don't know 102 00:06:41,975 --> 00:06:46,108 much about it, but the fun fact about this is the is that that 103 00:06:46,168 --> 00:06:51,704 was actually the first physical product that crunchyroll offered 104 00:06:51,704 --> 00:06:54,350 outside of streaming, so I thought that was pretty cool. 105 00:06:54,672 --> 00:07:02,303 So we fast forward to to late 2013 in, uh, december so we're 106 00:07:02,324 --> 00:07:07,759 pretty much like towards the end of 2013 and we have a company 107 00:07:07,858 --> 00:07:11,865 called the Churnin Group and they acquire controlling 108 00:07:11,966 --> 00:07:14,834 interest of Crunchyroll and TV. 109 00:07:14,834 --> 00:07:18,894 Tokyo and the founders of Crunchyroll still retained a 110 00:07:18,995 --> 00:07:23,538 significant stake in Crunchyroll , which to me, is smart. 111 00:07:23,538 --> 00:07:29,699 In April of 2014, churnin partnered with AT&T to form 112 00:07:29,858 --> 00:07:35,432 Otter Media, committing $ million dollars to ott ventures, 113 00:07:35,432 --> 00:07:37,295 including crunchyroll. 114 00:07:37,295 --> 00:07:44,291 So at&t and churnin they they group up together and they pump 115 00:07:44,411 --> 00:07:50,038 money into this umbrella that that includes crunchyroll in it. 116 00:07:50,038 --> 00:07:51,360 This was interesting. 117 00:07:51,360 --> 00:07:58,233 In august of 2015 so over a year later, otter media which 118 00:07:58,755 --> 00:08:03,086 that umbrella that included crunchyroll they launched 119 00:08:03,286 --> 00:08:09,338 something called elation and that houses crunchyroll and a 120 00:08:09,478 --> 00:08:11,721 streaming service that it's no longer around. 121 00:08:11,721 --> 00:08:17,014 It's spelt VRV, but it's pronounced Verve, and this was 122 00:08:17,175 --> 00:08:18,877 launched in 2016. 123 00:08:18,877 --> 00:08:22,504 And so Verve was really interesting. 124 00:08:23,004 --> 00:08:31,483 I had it for a little while Back in 2018, I went to New York 125 00:08:31,523 --> 00:08:37,335 Comic Con with Dakota and we've talked about this before and in 126 00:08:37,416 --> 00:08:40,972 New York Comic Con there was a Crunchyroll presence and then 127 00:08:41,013 --> 00:08:46,538 there was a VRV presence, and so I thought it was interesting. 128 00:08:46,538 --> 00:08:50,659 So, after checking it out a little bit, I decided to 129 00:08:50,720 --> 00:08:56,597 subscribe to it and it was actually pretty decent, I guess, 130 00:08:56,597 --> 00:09:00,043 for what it offered and what you had to pay. 131 00:09:00,043 --> 00:09:01,897 You didn't really have to pay all that much. 132 00:09:01,897 --> 00:09:03,738 I think it was like $10. 133 00:09:03,738 --> 00:09:08,576 And you had access to Crunchyroll, funimation and 134 00:09:08,636 --> 00:09:09,317 HiDive. 135 00:09:09,317 --> 00:09:14,684 This one app offered a trifecta of different anime so you could 136 00:09:14,684 --> 00:09:17,917 get your dubs and Funimation, you could get your subs and 137 00:09:17,937 --> 00:09:23,215 Crunchyroll and then whatever HiDive offered at the time, and 138 00:09:23,235 --> 00:09:26,301 they they offered Verve offered other stuff. 139 00:09:26,301 --> 00:09:30,636 They had Geek and Sundry on there and a couple of other 140 00:09:30,736 --> 00:09:34,412 things like old school cartoons, I think, nicktoons and stuff. 141 00:09:35,014 --> 00:09:38,259 It's been a while, but the service for that ended up 142 00:09:38,740 --> 00:09:42,014 shutting down in sometime in 2023. 143 00:09:42,014 --> 00:09:46,365 By then, the only thing that was like left over as far as 144 00:09:46,466 --> 00:09:48,351 anime was just crunchy roll. 145 00:09:48,351 --> 00:09:52,706 Funimation left pretty early on and then high dive ended up 146 00:09:52,768 --> 00:09:53,370 leaving also. 147 00:09:53,370 --> 00:09:57,759 I might be flipping those around, but all I know is that 148 00:09:57,899 --> 00:09:59,864 they ended up leaving at some point. 149 00:09:59,864 --> 00:10:03,879 But yeah, so the cool thing is is that in late 2015, 150 00:10:03,960 --> 00:10:10,701 crunchyroll had around 700 000 paying subscribers and that was 151 00:10:10,741 --> 00:10:13,836 really cool, you know, like finding that out, I mean, we 152 00:10:13,875 --> 00:10:18,897 started to get, you know, anime starting to become a lot more 153 00:10:18,996 --> 00:10:19,960 accessible, a lot. 154 00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:20,360 I mean. 155 00:10:20,441 --> 00:10:24,798 I think I don't think people realize, like, how hard anime 156 00:10:24,937 --> 00:10:25,259 was. 157 00:10:25,259 --> 00:10:29,469 It was hard to access anime for a while and even with 158 00:10:29,528 --> 00:10:35,520 crunchyroll, not everybody was on crunchyroll at the time and 159 00:10:35,721 --> 00:10:40,328 you know, like we said, it was, some of it was fan subbing, so 160 00:10:40,450 --> 00:10:45,856 you might not have gotten a% correct localization and you 161 00:10:45,876 --> 00:10:48,525 know it's like somebody abridging it or something. 162 00:10:48,525 --> 00:10:53,307 And so we fast forward into 2016. 163 00:10:53,307 --> 00:11:00,934 And in 2016, this is where Crunchyroll starts dubbing anime 164 00:11:00,934 --> 00:11:00,934 . 165 00:11:00,934 --> 00:11:06,635 Crunchyroll for a long time was mostly subs, it was mostly just 166 00:11:06,635 --> 00:11:10,187 subtitled anime and this is around when they started 167 00:11:10,248 --> 00:11:17,802 releasing blu-ray and dvd titles in mid-2016, in late 2016, they 168 00:11:17,802 --> 00:11:22,250 enter into a a bit of a partnership with funimation, 169 00:11:25,375 --> 00:11:27,099 into a a bit of a partnership with Funimation to share content 170 00:11:27,099 --> 00:11:27,099 . 171 00:11:27,099 --> 00:11:28,442 So pretty much they were like sharing each other's content to 172 00:11:28,461 --> 00:11:30,988 be able to kind of, I guess, so that people had more options for 173 00:11:30,988 --> 00:11:32,057 anime for both. 174 00:11:32,057 --> 00:11:35,309 But still, you know there was still a lot that was only 175 00:11:35,429 --> 00:11:38,537 offered on Funimation and stuff that was only offered on 176 00:11:38,576 --> 00:11:43,945 Crunchyroll, and, and so this was late 2016. 177 00:11:44,725 --> 00:11:50,976 In early 2017, around February, crunchyroll was around 1 million 178 00:11:50,976 --> 00:11:51,878 subscribers. 179 00:11:51,878 --> 00:11:55,380 That's a lot of 300,000 people. 180 00:11:55,380 --> 00:12:22,408 So that's awesome and we would say, give or take that number. 181 00:12:22,408 --> 00:12:29,775 And something that was hacked early in the morning and that it 182 00:12:29,775 --> 00:12:34,327 redirected people to a crunchyviewerexe download. 183 00:12:34,327 --> 00:12:38,859 So you know you're you're downloading malware when, when 184 00:12:38,879 --> 00:12:41,524 you're trying to access your anime, you're downloading 185 00:12:41,563 --> 00:12:42,726 malware into your computer. 186 00:12:42,726 --> 00:12:46,410 That's crazy and it said so. 187 00:12:46,410 --> 00:12:50,000 So, yeah, so around that time I mean the way that they fought 188 00:12:50,039 --> 00:12:53,586 that was that they had to take the website down and they did 189 00:12:53,626 --> 00:13:00,346 this around 6 am and it took them about three hours to regain 190 00:13:00,346 --> 00:13:04,384 control of the website and about 30 minutes later they, you 191 00:13:04,384 --> 00:13:05,437 know, restore the service. 192 00:13:05,437 --> 00:13:06,600 But that's that's crazy. 193 00:13:06,600 --> 00:13:09,726 You know that they got hacked and it took them. 194 00:13:09,726 --> 00:13:12,921 It took them a few hours to get control. 195 00:13:12,921 --> 00:13:16,609 So them hackers, definitely they did some work. 196 00:13:16,609 --> 00:13:20,360 So we fast forward up to 2018. 197 00:13:21,061 --> 00:13:26,148 Otter Media buys out the remaining shares of crunchyroll 198 00:13:26,227 --> 00:13:34,980 from tv tokyo and, by august 2018, at&t fully acquires otter. 199 00:13:34,980 --> 00:13:41,847 They merge crunchyroll into warner media in october 2018. 200 00:13:41,847 --> 00:13:46,514 The partnership that crunchyroll has with with 201 00:13:46,573 --> 00:13:47,274 funimation. 202 00:13:47,274 --> 00:13:49,899 That pretty much ends at the, the. 203 00:13:49,899 --> 00:13:55,368 There's a corporate ownership shift so that so that 204 00:13:55,467 --> 00:13:57,836 partnership you know it gets shut down. 205 00:13:57,836 --> 00:14:02,422 So in december of 2020, sony's Funimation Global Group. 206 00:14:02,422 --> 00:14:11,677 They acquire Crunchyroll for about $1.175 billion and it 207 00:14:12,177 --> 00:14:16,528 takes a little under a year for that deal to like finally close. 208 00:14:16,528 --> 00:14:21,140 At this point, funimation is owned by Sony, funimation is 209 00:14:21,221 --> 00:14:22,341 owned by Sony. 210 00:14:22,341 --> 00:14:28,048 So now you have Sony that has control of Funimation and now 211 00:14:28,090 --> 00:14:28,850 Crunchyroll. 212 00:14:37,815 --> 00:14:39,658 I also read was that so after that acquisition, the amount of 213 00:14:39,677 --> 00:14:40,840 people who paid for subscriptions went from 5 214 00:14:40,860 --> 00:14:41,480 million to 15 million. 215 00:14:41,480 --> 00:14:47,129 This was by late 2024 that this happened, and so after this 216 00:14:47,230 --> 00:14:53,965 deal finally goes through, in august of 2021, funimation and 217 00:14:54,004 --> 00:14:55,167 crunchyroll merge. 218 00:14:55,167 --> 00:14:59,239 It was like a slow burn kind of merger, not super slow, but, 219 00:14:59,278 --> 00:15:02,947 like you know, you still had funimation, you still had access 220 00:15:02,947 --> 00:15:07,642 to funivate until eventually they were prepping people like, 221 00:15:07,721 --> 00:15:12,035 okay, you know, funimation is, you know, after a while they're 222 00:15:12,056 --> 00:15:14,081 not going to put any new anime on there, you know. 223 00:15:14,081 --> 00:15:16,687 So, yeah, we're, you know we're caught up. 224 00:15:16,835 --> 00:15:21,503 You know there's a lot of other stuff that you can talk about 225 00:15:21,663 --> 00:15:25,208 crunchyroll, you know we have the, the anime awards. 226 00:15:25,208 --> 00:15:29,383 There's different things that crunchyroll does, but for me, 227 00:15:29,442 --> 00:15:32,936 the biggest thing that I wanted to talk about was kind of like 228 00:15:32,995 --> 00:15:38,942 how it went from like this small pirate site up to a huge force 229 00:15:39,182 --> 00:15:42,027 and the way that we consume anime. 230 00:15:42,027 --> 00:15:46,797 And you know, we we have netflix out there, we have hulu 231 00:15:46,956 --> 00:15:51,946 out there and even prime, and they are really really like 232 00:15:52,167 --> 00:15:58,163 boxing when it comes to the availability of anime and also 233 00:15:58,644 --> 00:16:02,431 like creating their own anime, like there's anime out there 234 00:16:02,490 --> 00:16:04,914 that now is under the Netflix banner. 235 00:16:04,914 --> 00:16:08,620 I think even Prime has their own anime. 236 00:16:08,620 --> 00:16:12,226 So there's definitely competition out there. 237 00:16:12,226 --> 00:16:17,143 But I would say that you know, I don't know if that competition 238 00:16:17,143 --> 00:16:22,337 would be out there if we didn't have websites out there like 239 00:16:22,538 --> 00:16:25,686 Crunchyroll and Funimation. 240 00:16:25,686 --> 00:16:27,799 You know a lot of them are, like, really important. 241 00:16:28,883 --> 00:16:33,897 You don't really hear every day about a pirate website becoming 242 00:16:34,236 --> 00:16:36,881 a legitimate spearhead. 243 00:16:36,881 --> 00:16:40,654 I mean, it happens, but it's almost like, for instance, it's 244 00:16:40,695 --> 00:16:42,942 almost like the Pirate Bay, almost like the pirate bay 245 00:16:43,001 --> 00:16:45,437 becoming a legitimate movie distributor. 246 00:16:45,437 --> 00:16:49,187 You know it's really mind-boggling the story of 247 00:16:49,347 --> 00:16:53,818 crunchyroll, and you know I I really do suggest you going to 248 00:16:53,860 --> 00:16:56,907 the wayback machine and seeing what crunchyroll looked like 249 00:16:56,947 --> 00:16:57,187 back. 250 00:16:57,187 --> 00:16:58,918 Then it really will blow your mind. 251 00:16:58,918 --> 00:17:02,804 You're like, wow, this is the website that started the way 252 00:17:02,825 --> 00:17:06,159 that we consume anime and and it's, it's really cool. 253 00:17:06,159 --> 00:17:06,781 It's. 254 00:17:07,222 --> 00:17:10,275 It's definitely something that I've wanted to cover for a while 255 00:17:10,275 --> 00:17:14,903 and, like I said, we, like I said I could do a whole episode 256 00:17:15,604 --> 00:17:16,766 on this I could do. 257 00:17:16,766 --> 00:17:21,359 I could easily do an hour or more covering this, but I wanted 258 00:17:21,359 --> 00:17:27,037 to get really the gist of it, and I mean, for the most part, a 259 00:17:27,037 --> 00:17:31,445 lot of the meat of their journey is in this discussion. 260 00:17:31,445 --> 00:17:36,420 Thank you for listening to this mini-sode of project geekology 261 00:17:37,422 --> 00:17:41,749 and keep your ear out for next week we will be discussing the 262 00:17:41,888 --> 00:17:42,803 james gunn superman movie. 263 00:17:42,803 --> 00:17:43,207 Like I said, I'm definitely excited to discuss that with 264 00:17:43,141 --> 00:17:43,290 dakota and rich. 265 00:17:43,290 --> 00:17:43,557 Keep your ear out for next week we will be discussing the James 266 00:17:43,557 --> 00:17:43,760 Gunn Superman movie. 267 00:17:43,760 --> 00:17:47,084 Like I said, I'm definitely excited to discuss that with 268 00:17:47,104 --> 00:17:50,021 Dakota and Rich, so definitely keep an eye out for that. 269 00:17:50,021 --> 00:17:53,204 Thank you for listening to this and I hope you enjoy it. 270 00:17:53,204 --> 00:17:56,046 I hope you all have a great rest of your week. 271 00:17:56,046 --> 00:17:56,970 Bye.