Crunchyroll

This article is about the
real world.

Crunchyroll's third logo (2018-present)

Crunchyroll is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Sony through a joint venture between Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment Japan's Aniplex. The company focuses on the distribution, production and licensing of Japanese anime and dorama.

In 2022, it merged with Funimation (previously known as Funimation Productions , Funimation Entertainment, and Funimation Global Group LLC, sometimes stylized as FUNimation and also known as Funimation Productions LLC^[1]), an American entertainment and dubbing company formed by Gen Fukunaga on May 9, 1994 to produce, merchandise and distribute anime and other entertainment properties in the United States and international markets. The company is headquartered and based in Flower Mound, Texas.

History[]

Funimation rose to prominence by acquiring the rights to Dragon Ball (licensed early to mid 1990s), Dragon Ball Z (also licensed early to mid 1990s) and Dragon Ball GT (licensed between 2003–2004). By 1998, they were able to gain widespread television exposure for Dragon Ball Z via Cartoon Network's Toonami block, and the Dragon Ball phenomenon quickly grew in the United States as it had elsewhere. (Two previous attempts by Funimation to release Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z to network television had been canceled, before the anime and the company found success on Cartoon Network.) In the UK, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT ran on a twined channel called Toonami, a channel that aired many anime shows as well as a few American cartoons.

From 1995 to 1998, all their Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z dubs used a different Canadian voice cast. The episodes and movies dubbed by Canada's Ocean Productions for Funimation are known as the Ocean dub. The episodes dubbed by Funimation's in-house talents are known as the Funimation dub.

Funimation became a subsidiary of Navarre Corporation on May 11, 2005, only to be sold back to Fukunaga in April 2011.

In 2018, 95% of the company was acquired by Sony Pictures which has since operated as a joint venture alongside with Aniplex.

Funimation was often criticized for their heavy localization of the Dragon Ball franchise, which included censorship, arbitrary changes to character dialogue, replacing the soundtrack and name changes, although in more recent years they have stopped most of these practices through their dubs of Dragon Ball Z Kai, Dragon Ball Super, and the more recent Dragon Ball movies.

Merger with Crunchyroll[]

Since 2022, Funimation is planned to be relaunched as Crunchyroll, a name of the streaming service that Sony acquired in August 2021. Crunchyroll itself was launched in 2006 as a pirate streaming service by a group of University of California, Berkeley, graduates which has since become legitimate. It also operates the VRV streaming service. The Funimation name and branding is expected to be phased out.