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July 15, 2025 17 mins

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Ever wonder how a scrappy pirate site became the world's premier anime streaming platform? 

In this bite-sized episode, Anthony dives into the origins and rise of Crunchyroll, the streaming platform that revolutionized how anime is watched around the globe. From its humble beginnings as a small startup to becoming a powerhouse in the anime industry, Anthony explores how Crunchyroll built its massive library, shaped fan culture, and even sparked major industry changes. Whether you’re a longtime subscriber or just curious about the platform’s history, this mini-episode packs all the key moments you need to know!

Check out the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to glimpse Crunchyroll's early days and appreciate just how far this platform has come in revolutionizing anime consumption worldwide. And don't forget to tune in next week when we'll be discussing James Gunn's new Superman movie!


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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 0 (00:00):
Welcome to a mini episode of Project Geekology,
and today it's just Anthony.
This week we are not going tobe having a full episode.
That'll be reserved for nextweek.
Next week we will be coveringthe new Superman movie, so stay
tuned to that.
But and and I won't talk toomuch about what I've been up to,

(00:22):
I did see, as of the day ofrecording, I actually did go and
see Superman, so I'm definitelyexcited to discuss that with
Dakota and Rich, and you willhear that next week.
But this week I'm, you know,for this mini episode, or
mini-sode, I'm covering a topicthat I've wanted to cover for a

(00:44):
little while now, or minisode.
I'm covering a topic that I'vewanted to cover for a little
while now, and that'sCrunchyroll.
I feel like Crunchyroll.
You could reserve a fullepisode for Crunchyroll, but
then again you could alsoreserve an entire series on
Crunchyroll because itdefinitely has an interesting
past to it.
Within the next 15 to 20 minutes, I want to talk about crunchy

(01:06):
roll.
We have several.
I know we have a lot of fans ofthe podcast that are anime fans
, especially with demon slayerbeing our most popular podcast
episode.
We actually that one actuallygets a lot of listens a day.
So or I mean by a lot like, Iguess, for our standards it's a

(01:29):
lot, and we appreciate thatsupport.
So I I thought why not talkabout a website that is very
influential, especially withanime and the west and the way
that we consume anime here inthe west, and I mean it's used
worldwide, but it really doesfind its roots here in the

(01:50):
united states and so I guess,with that being said, I'm going
to hop in and talk about it andI guess, through the years, from
its inception, or from itscreation all the way up until
modern day.
So Crunchyroll has been aroundfor a while.
Actually, crunchyroll wascreated in May of 2006 by four

(02:16):
UC Berkeley grads Kung Gao,james, lin, brandon Oi and Vu
Nguyen I am so sorry forbutchering any of those names
and it's really interesting thatthis project, crunchyroll, was
really just like a side project.
It was something that thesegentlemen created with YouTube

(02:39):
having been around for not thatlong.
Honestly, at that point, whatcrunchyroll was?
It was?
It was essentially you.
It was a clone of youtube, foreast asian fan uploaded videos.
That's really what it was atthat time, in its inception, and
something that's really coolthat we have out there if you're

(03:00):
interested in seeing whatcrunchyrollroll looked like in
that era we do have there is awebsite called the Wayback
Machine, and pretty much what itis is an archive of different
websites and there's more thanjust websites but you can use it
to pretty much go back to seewhat YouTube looked like back in

(03:24):
the day, what Google lookedlike back in the day, and you
could do the same withCrunchyroll and I actually did
that recently and obviouslythings progress over the years.
But it really is interesting tosee how Crunchyroll looks now
compared to what it looked likeback then.
I mean, it really did look likea project that a group of

(03:47):
friends made, and so pretty muchfrom its inception up until
2008, anime was being regularlyuploaded there and it was pretty
much fan subbed at that time.
Yes, crunchyroll and itsinception was essentially what

(04:08):
KissAnime was.
It was a pirate website.
It was a website where you wereable to watch anime illegally
and fans, would you know theywould sub it.
They would create their ownsubs for a lot of the anime.
And something that reallyinterested me in my research was

(04:30):
that sometime in 2008,crunchyroll had gotten a large
investment from an investmentfirm called Venrock, and it was
around $4.05 million and I meanI guess they saw what the

(04:52):
website could potentially be andthat was really smart for them
because I mean, look at whatCrunchyroll is now.
But that really didn't hold upwell with Bondi and Funimation.
They were pretty upset withthat because still at this point
, crunchyroll was still allowingunauthorized, illegal content

(05:18):
to be uploaded regularly, and so, yeah, but I guess, with that
being in mind, that the foundersof Crunchy in 2008, like late
2008, they ended up going tojapan to negotiate licensing

(05:38):
deals with tv tokyo so that theycould actually legally stream
naruto, shippuden, and prettymuch what happened when they got
that deal was that, you know,all the illegal stuff went away.
So this is when, so late 2008,this is when they started to
become legitimate, you know.

(05:59):
So we had a couple of yearswhere Crunchyroll was the kiss
anime of anime back in that thatera.
So I thought that was reallyinteresting, that that era, so I
thought that was reallyinteresting.
And then, sometime in 2010,crunchy roll actually started to
actually sell physical content.
You know how?

(06:20):
In crunchy roll, you can buyfigures, you can buy manga, you
can buy anime different things.
Well, this is where the startof that happened here in 2010.
They, so they they licensed thenorth american dvd rights to
five centimeters per second.
I didn't really look too muchinto that anime I don't know

(06:41):
much about it, but the fun factabout this is the is that that
was actually the first physicalproduct that crunchyroll offered
outside of streaming, so Ithought that was pretty cool.
So we fast forward to to late2013 in, uh, december so we're

(07:02):
pretty much like towards the endof 2013 and we have a company
called the Churnin Group andthey acquire controlling
interest of Crunchyroll and TV.
Tokyo and the founders ofCrunchyroll still retained a
significant stake in Crunchyroll, which to me, is smart.

(07:23):
In April of 2014, churninpartnered with AT&T to form
Otter Media, committing $million dollars to ott ventures,
including crunchyroll.
So at&t and churnin they theygroup up together and they pump

(07:44):
money into this umbrella thatthat includes crunchyroll in it.
This was interesting.
In august of 2015 so over ayear later, otter media which
that umbrella that includedcrunchyroll they launched
something called elation andthat houses crunchyroll and a

(08:09):
streaming service that it's nolonger around.
It's spelt VRV, but it'spronounced Verve, and this was
launched in 2016.
And so Verve was reallyinteresting.
I had it for a little while Backin 2018, I went to New York

(08:31):
Comic Con with Dakota and we'vetalked about this before and in
New York Comic Con there was aCrunchyroll presence and then
there was a VRV presence, and soI thought it was interesting.
So, after checking it out alittle bit, I decided to
subscribe to it and it wasactually pretty decent, I guess,

(08:56):
for what it offered and whatyou had to pay.
You didn't really have to payall that much.
I think it was like $10.
And you had access toCrunchyroll, funimation and
HiDive.
This one app offered a trifectaof different anime so you could
get your dubs and Funimation,you could get your subs and

(09:17):
Crunchyroll and then whateverHiDive offered at the time, and
they they offered Verve offeredother stuff.
They had Geek and Sundry onthere and a couple of other
things like old school cartoons,I think, nicktoons and stuff.
It's been a while, but theservice for that ended up

(09:38):
shutting down in sometime in2023.
By then, the only thing thatwas like left over as far as
anime was just crunchy roll.
Funimation left pretty early onand then high dive ended up
leaving also.
I might be flipping thosearound, but all I know is that
they ended up leaving at somepoint.

(09:59):
But yeah, so the cool thing isis that in late 2015,
crunchyroll had around 700 000paying subscribers and that was
really cool, you know, likefinding that out, I mean, we
started to get, you know, animestarting to become a lot more
accessible, a lot.

(10:19):
I mean.
I think I don't think peoplerealize, like, how hard anime
was.
It was hard to access anime fora while and even with
crunchyroll, not everybody wason crunchyroll at the time and
you know, like we said, it was,some of it was fan subbing, so

(10:40):
you might not have gotten a%correct localization and you
know it's like somebodyabridging it or something.
And so we fast forward into2016.
And in 2016, this is whereCrunchyroll starts dubbing anime

(11:00):
.
Crunchyroll for a long time wasmostly subs, it was mostly just
subtitled anime and this isaround when they started
releasing blu-ray and dvd titlesin mid-2016, in late 2016, they
enter into a a bit of apartnership with funimation,

(11:25):
into a a bit of a partnershipwith Funimation to share content
.
So pretty much they were likesharing each other's content to
be able to kind of, I guess, sothat people had more options for
anime for both.
But still, you know there wasstill a lot that was only
offered on Funimation and stuffthat was only offered on
Crunchyroll, and, and so thiswas late 2016.
In early 2017, around February,crunchyroll was around 1 million

(11:50):
subscribers.
That's a lot of 300,000 people.
So that's awesome and we wouldsay, give or take that number.

(12:22):
And something that was hackedearly in the morning and that it
redirected people to acrunchyviewerexe download.
So you know you're you'redownloading malware when, when
you're trying to access youranime, you're downloading
malware into your computer.

(12:42):
That's crazy and it said so.
So, yeah, so around that time Imean the way that they fought
that was that they had to takethe website down and they did
this around 6 am and it tookthem about three hours to regain
control of the website andabout 30 minutes later they, you

(13:04):
know, restore the service.
But that's that's crazy.
You know that they got hackedand it took them.
It took them a few hours to getcontrol.
So them hackers, definitelythey did some work.
So we fast forward up to 2018.
Otter Media buys out theremaining shares of crunchyroll

(13:26):
from tv tokyo and, by august2018, at&t fully acquires otter.
They merge crunchyroll intowarner media in october 2018.
The partnership thatcrunchyroll has with with

(13:46):
funimation.
That pretty much ends at the,the.
There's a corporate ownershipshift so that so that
partnership you know it getsshut down.
So in december of 2020, sony'sFunimation Global Group.
They acquire Crunchyroll forabout $1.175 billion and it

(14:12):
takes a little under a year forthat deal to like finally close.
At this point, funimation isowned by Sony, funimation is
owned by Sony.
So now you have Sony that hascontrol of Funimation and now
Crunchyroll.

(14:37):
I also read was that so afterthat acquisition, the amount of
people who paid forsubscriptions went from 5
million to 15 million.
This was by late 2024 that thishappened, and so after this
deal finally goes through, inaugust of 2021, funimation and
crunchyroll merge.
It was like a slow burn kind ofmerger, not super slow, but,

(14:59):
like you know, you still hadfunimation, you still had access
to funivate until eventuallythey were prepping people like,
okay, you know, funimation is,you know, after a while they're
not going to put any new animeon there, you know.
So, yeah, we're, you know we'recaught up.
You know there's a lot of otherstuff that you can talk about

(15:21):
crunchyroll, you know we havethe, the anime awards.
There's different things thatcrunchyroll does, but for me,
the biggest thing that I wantedto talk about was kind of like
how it went from like this smallpirate site up to a huge force
and the way that we consumeanime.

(15:42):
And you know, we we havenetflix out there, we have hulu
out there and even prime, andthey are really really like
boxing when it comes to theavailability of anime and also
like creating their own anime,like there's anime out there

(16:02):
that now is under the Netflixbanner.
I think even Prime has theirown anime.
So there's definitelycompetition out there.
But I would say that you know,I don't know if that competition
would be out there if we didn'thave websites out there like

(16:22):
Crunchyroll and Funimation.
You know a lot of them are,like, really important.
You don't really hear every dayabout a pirate website becoming
a legitimate spearhead.
I mean, it happens, but it'salmost like, for instance, it's
almost like the Pirate Bay,almost like the pirate bay

(16:43):
becoming a legitimate moviedistributor.
You know it's reallymind-boggling the story of
crunchyroll, and you know I Ireally do suggest you going to
the wayback machine and seeingwhat crunchyroll looked like
back.
Then it really will blow yourmind.
You're like, wow, this is thewebsite that started the way
that we consume anime and andit's, it's really cool.

(17:06):
It's.
It's definitely something thatI've wanted to cover for a while
and, like I said, we, like Isaid I could do a whole episode
on this I could do.
I could easily do an hour ormore covering this, but I wanted
to get really the gist of it,and I mean, for the most part, a

(17:27):
lot of the meat of theirjourney is in this discussion.
Thank you for listening to thismini-sode of project geekology
and keep your ear out for nextweek we will be discussing the
james gunn superman movie.
Like I said, I'm definitelyexcited to discuss that with
dakota and rich.
Keep your ear out for next weekwe will be discussing the James
Gunn Superman movie.
Like I said, I'm definitelyexcited to discuss that with

(17:47):
Dakota and Rich, so definitelykeep an eye out for that.
Thank you for listening to thisand I hope you enjoy it.
I hope you all have a greatrest of your week.
Bye.
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