Funimation Shutdown

Overview

Funimation Shutdown, also known as Funimation Shutting Down Controversy, refers to the change in policy by the streaming platform Crunchyroll in early February 2024, which announced the end of support for online anime streaming provided by Funimation services. The sudden announcement of the cancelation, as well as a price hike on current Crunchyrole services, lead to a large fan backlash against the company and the online animation streaming marketplace as a whole.

Background

On February 7th, 2024, customers of the Funimation online streaming service received notice that the service itself was shutting down. That day, X user @Pikagreg^[1] uploaded this notice, captioning it "RIP Funimation," which explained that the service is being shut down but users can still migrate all of their watch history and favorites over to Crunchyroll's service. This notice also announced that the price of Crunchyroll would be doubling on January 28th, 2025, giving fans a year to opt out and cancel their service (shown below).

Online Reactions

The news quickly spread and created a significant amount of backlash against Crunchyroll, with numerous fans being upset at both the shutdown of Funimation and the doubling of Crunchyroll's price.

For example, on February 7th, 2024, X user @EposVox^[2] alerted others to the question and answer section of Crunchyroll, which stated that people who had previously purchased a product, such as an entire season of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, that it would be revoked upon the switch to Crunchyroll, effectively nullifying the purchase. This notice, which received over 4.1 million views in one day, reignited conversations on what digitally buying a product means versus true ownership (shown below).

On February 8th, YouTuber and esports team owner Cr1tikal uploaded a video to his YouTube^[3] channel titled "Goodbye Funimation" in which he talked about the news and the anime industry as a whole, earning over 300,000 views in one hour while advocating for the ownership of physical goods and items over digital services (shown below).

Various Reactions

Search Interest

External References