Back in August 2021, Sony’s acquisition of the Crunchyroll anime streaming service went through. Now it means that Funimation and Crunchyroll are merging, with Crunchyroll and its subscription service being the surviving entity. This means past Funimation and Wakanim subscription holders will need to migrate to the other service.
The announcement offered details about how the merger will work. Things are taking effect immediately. Crunchyroll will get 80% of the Funimation/Wakanim shows by the end of March 2022. It will still offer the same three subscription plans. That means people can pay $7.99, $9.99, or $14.99 per. month for various service tiers. Rather than being Funimation Global Group, LLC, it will now be Crunchyroll, LLC.
If someone is a Funimation or Wakanim subscriber, they will need to cancel their current subscription, make a Crunchyroll account, and purchase a new subscription. Funimation and Wakanim will only continue to add and air existing series on their services and get new episodes from previously announced series. Funimation members’ digital copies of items, gift cards, saved show queues, and watch histories aren’t available on Crunchyroll. The announcement did confirm that digital copies, gift cards, queues, and watch histories support is in the works on Crunchyroll.
Crunchyroll’s most basic $7.99 per month plan removes ads from shows, offers access to everything in the anime library with an option to stream on one device at a time, lets people read English digital manga, and allows people to watch new episodes of ongoing shows an hour after they air in Japan.
