Akemi's Anime World

Crunchyroll Anime Company

A bit of info about Crunchyroll.

Company Overview

Crunchyroll is an oddity of a streaming video site. Focusing on anime and J-Drama, and having a huge catalog of brand-new shounen releases and fresh-off-TV oddball series not available on DVD in the US, it's easy to mistake Crunchyroll for yet another fansub streamer, but they are in fact completely legit, and their releases are licensed. A number of indie shows, or shows without a big-name North American distributor, have found their way to Crunchyroll, and it's been embraced as a method for Japanese companies willing to target English-speaking viewers to do an end-run around fansubbers by getting stuff up and available almost immediately.

Their Catalog

While their biggest draw is probably the big-name shounen shows like Naruto Shippuden and Bleach, they have a wide range of titles available, both big-name and special-interest, many of which are available at the same time as the Japanese broadcast. They also have at least a few pure indie releases available nowhere else.

What Their Releases Are Like

Nearly everything on Crunchyroll is subtitled. Since they're more a distributor than a producer, the quality of the individual production will depend entirely on who did the production--subtitles range from passable to very good. Video quality, likewise, varies widely; low-resolution streams are available for free with ads on most titles, though the video quality on those ranges from quite muddy to relatively good. Higher resolution streams (either DVD-grade 480p or hi-def 720p) are also available for most shows with a paid membership.

Their web player is a little quirky, and their ads tend to be very repetitive, but it's overall a decent experience, and the show pages are nicely organized, including episode synopses. They do not offer paid downloads, but they do have apps available for iOS devices and Android, as well as several varieties of set top box (as of this writing, the iOS apps offer free streaming, while you'll need a paid membership to use the Android app).

Their name has just begun to appear on DVDs as of this writing, though so far only as co-producer with a more widely recognized company.

Reviews

Other Releases

The company was also involved in some way with releasing these anime, though they're not the primary company.