Go ahead, Crunchyroll, treat youself to a...crunch roll. You've earned it.
A good amount of Crunchyroll's success can probably be traced to TV Tokyo's hot properties Naruto and Bleach, but as regular viewers may know the company has diversified greatly in the past year and is going full steam ahead with its simulcast program. The next stage in Crunchyroll's strategy (along with minority partner TV Tokyo) will involve a push for online e-manga distribution with Bitway, Japan's only digital manga provider, followed by worldwide streaming anime broadcast with local partners.
Bold plans, Crunchyroll. Bold plans indeed. Here's hoping they don't flame out before realizing these ambitions.
What have your experiences been like with Crunchyroll, dear readers? And are you interested in their digital manga initiative?
I watched Sasameki Koto, Corba and Aoi Hana on Crunchyroll. I've been watching legal anime ever since Crunchyroll, Funimation and Hulu stared streaming anime on their websites.
good for them, and now that they have bleach there, i can now catch up on the anime that i'm missing.
@Boddington said:
I'm not really watching Bleach and Naruto. I've kind of lost interested in them, but I still wouldn't since they are VIZ productions, when it comes to the dubs. I'd still probably use fan subs for those two series if I was still watching them.
While I'm all for legitimate animes if these official sites don't edit the content. When it comes to anything VIZ is involved with. I'm against.
1. Hulu. They have the type of anime I like the most.
2. Crunchyroll.
3. Funimation.
4. Media Blasters.
Of course, the fansubbers edit the content of the big shonen titles all the time, adding all sorts of swearing that is not in the original.
Fansubs don't change character names from Japanese to European. Fan subs keep in Japanese culture, such as honorifics. Fab subs don't change meaning of scenes.. Adding in the occasion curse word hardly compares to the utter butchery that VIZ Media does to multiple series.
VIZ Media is the lowest quality publisher. They don't deserve to be supported.
Will you just change your username to "I hate VIZ" already?
I'm glad to see Crunchyroll is doing okay financially. I recently tuned in to start watching Bleach on the site since its now official subs, but I don't really think I will benefit from a membership
It's their own fault for producing such low quality work. I just call them on the stuff they pull. You're just going to have to excuse me for not being like so many and kissing VIZ's rear all the time.
They are the ones that alter content, censor art, removed Japanese culture from the mangas (never using terms like sensei or jutsu in Naruto), refuse to use any honorifics, make absolutely pointless changes to stories, such as renaming "Gin and Vodka" to "Melkior and Kaspar"; no translator notes in the books, and provide poor translations and editing.
All of this while providing absolutely no alternative to their alterations.
Part of me would like to support them, but I'm going to call them out what I see the kind of poor product they put out. There are far better publisher worth support. I used to buy VIZ until I discovered just how extensively they were editing series. They don't deserve to be supported for just existing. They are not the industry. They are just one publisher in the industry. They are low quality publishers and the facts back me up on it. I'm not making up the things they do.
Scanlations of their series are far more accurate to the originals.
I think it's good of them to release series like One Piece into higher production so that the US market is only a month behind where Japan is, but that doesn't make up for their edits and alterations.
I encourage people to buy from Del Rey and Yen Press. They produce incredible products that are as close to the originals and still be in English.
I'm a major supporter of FUNimation releasing One Piece on their site. They offer episodes in both dub and subtitled forms. They offer alternatives. They also release the latest episodes right out of Japan an hour after they air. Their subtitle work is pretty good with nearly no edits at all.
Before FUNimation had the series. It was being dubbed by 4Kids, who utterly butchered the series. Much in the same way VIZ does with mangas. Fans didn't support it and went to fansubs for the "real" story. Eventually 4Kids lost their distribution license and FUNimation picked it up. They do such a good job that most fansub sites removed the series from their catalogs and direct people to FUNimation's site. These groups still post Naruto and Bleach.
I'm saying that it wont really matter what VIZ tries as far as internet distribution of mangas if they just continue to alter the content. Readers of scanlations want the real story. Not what VIZ changed it to.
MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!
* go cr *
Don't worry, I understand your concern. I also think it is disrespectful for translation companies to alter or omit culture & themes from the original work just so that some consumers can continue to be ignorant of the source culture. It's 2010 and companies should not deprive people of that kind of stuff trying to pretend it doesn't exist. I would much rather have a sidebar explanation for what something means than never know it exists at all. If fansubs can do it for free then publishers can do it as well.
It's just funny how many of your posts somehow turn into rants against VIZ, regardless of the topic. I'm teasing, and besides, somebody has to speak up because if nobody does then VIZ isn't going to change their methods.