Crunchyroll

American video streaming service

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Platforms: Android Discord Ouya Sony Group Wii Wii U Xbox Series X/S smart TV
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Country: United States

About

Crunchyroll is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service owned by the Sony Group Corporation. The service primarily distributes Japanese anime television series and films, as well as other East Asian media, and also hosts anime content from other providers, content add-ons, live events, music, video games, and video channels.

Launched in May 2006, the service offers more than 1,000 anime series, more than 200 East Asian dramas in more than 18 languages, and formerly offered around 80 manga titles through its Crunchyroll Manga anthology, although the number of available titles varied by country due to licensing restrictions. Crunchyroll is one of the most-subscribed video on demand streaming media services globally, with 21 million subscriptions as of 2026.

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

Crunchyroll was launched on May 14, 2006, as a pirate site that specialized in hosting East Asian content. It was founded by Kun Gao, James Lin, Vu Nguyen, and Brandon Ooi, four computer science graduates at the University of California, Berkeley. Some of the content hosted on this platform included versions of East Asian shows that had been subtitled by fans.

In 2008, Crunchyroll secured a capital investment of $4.05 million from the venture capital firm Venrock. The investment drew criticism from anime distributors and licensors Bandai Entertainment and Funimation as the site continued to allow users to upload unlicensed copies of copyrighted titles.

Reception

Crunchyroll has been generally well-received as a streaming service dedicated to anime. IGN highlighted its simulcast streams of new shows as they air in Japan. While PCMag was impressed by the selection of shows available, their reviewers felt that the user interface was too cluttered.

Crunchyroll Originals have been less well received. Callum May of Anime News Network outlined the production issues that Originals have faced, both for internal productions and U.S.-Japan co-productions.