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crunchyroll is now a Public Japanese Company
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If you’re into animé or JDrama, you probably know about crunchyroll, a website founded in 2006 by some students containing tons of high-quality dubbed series, perfect for people like me who are addicted to it, JDrama in my case ^^
Anyway, the website started to catch the media’s attention and with hundreds of thousands of views, venture capital and legal problems came. Famous licensed series and movies were quickly removed, and after raising $4 million (!) investment capital from Venrock, other less known series were removed too, even though they were not licensed outside of Japan Y_Y
How my JDrama addiction started
Since I’ve been studying Japanese for a while, a friend of mine suggested watching JDrama instead of animé to practice my Japanese. At the time it didn’t sound like a bad idea at all, so for an unknown reason I stumbled upon crunchyroll. The first drama I saw was 14才の母 (14-year-old mother). I didn’t like it at all, but I did managed to digest it. In any case, it really helped more than my usual animé’s Japanese and I learned a few things here and there, so I thought watching another drama would do so too. This is when 花より男子 (Hana Yori Dango) came.
Again, I didn’t like it that much but it was funny, so at least I was enjoying it. Everything was alright until I watched Hana Yori Dango 2. My inner self awaken, I couldn’t help it but hear Utada’s Flavor of Life and Arashi’s Love So Sweet the whole day, fall in love with Inoue Mao, and watch more and more drama.
Fortunately, my drama addiction stopped for a while after going to Japan, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t watched lots of dramas (actually, I’m watching Mei-chan no Shitsuji). I know, I feel embarrassed sometimes ^^; Anyway, back on track…
クランチロール株式会社
Japanese for, Crunchyroll Public Company. After removing tons of unlicensed content, to my surprise, licensed series started to appear, Naturo Shippuden being the biggest one. I’m not too much into recent animé since I don’t have time to watch 50 episodes of anything except Gundam Seed, so I stopped following crunchyroll. In fact, I just logged in and remembered that I shared a short conversation through messages with Shinji, the creator of crunchyroll. T’was epicness ensued ^^
The company was registered in September, 2008, their website being crunchyroll.co.jp. In summary, the company’s website states that Crunchyroll is the biggest animé social nerworking, and the biggest animé portal site with licensed content, bragging with the above mentioned Naruto ^^, and that through advertising, they are able to license content for their users. The company also states that Japanese animé has zealous fans and is extremely popular worldwide (oh rly).
I’m happy that crunchyroll succeded and that it has the vision that many others lack. Fansubs have been around for years now, and those who don’t understand Japanese or live there don’t have any other way to see content not officially translated, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I’ve paid crunchyroll’s subscription before, and would gladly pay to watch high-quality subbed JDrama or animé if I ever have time to watch animé.
Crunchyroll reserved three halls on the Tokyo Big Sight for tomorrow’s Tokyo International Anime Fair 2009. I don’t promise anything but I’ll try to bring you exclusive pictures of the event, so don’t forget to check back or subscribe!
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Tasty~
I watch an awful lot of drama’s, and quite a bit of anime. but I really don’t like streaming sites, I’d rather download 720p copys to play on my HDTV.
still, alright for some i guess. and i respect what they are doing going all legal.
I agree with Joe…I never liked the concept of streaming anime, but the good thing is that fans can see it without feeling guilty of watching it illegally. ^^ The only thing I’ve watched on CR is 5cm per Second, but that was back during Shinkai Day when they offered the “HD” version.. XD
I found your blog on google Great Info and great People. I just added you to my Google News Reader :) Keep up the good work. Looking forward to reading more from you in the future.