After SONY bought CrunchyRoll, many people were apprehensive about the anime industry. Anime is already being censored by western countries, mainly in the United States. Ever since SONY moved their headquarters from Japan to California, they have been pushing more censorship in PlayStation games and now don’t be surprise if they push it even more with anime.
Although CrunchyRoll only had about 3 million paying subscribers, it was the leading video streaming service focused on Anime. Every other streaming service was trying to catch up to Crunchy Roll in the anime game.
Now that SONY owns Crunchy Roll, they could tell other studios what to do or even worst, they could threaten studios to change their content or not stream their anime what so ever.
SONY is now the overlord of anime the same way that Amazon is to online retail, Facebook so social media websites and Google as the dominant search engine in the world. Also lets not forget the fact that SONY owns Funimation, another giant in the anime game.
Predictions
What might happen in the future is that more and more people will just start reading the original manga to escape all the bullshit. While anime is always censored, the manga always contains the original raw content.
Do you hate filler episodes? Read the manga.
Do you hate it when anime is censored? Read the original manga.
Do you hate how the anime was changed in the dubbed version? Read the manga.
Manga sales are going to increase and the American comic book industry does not stand a chance. For those of you who have not heard the story yet, Demon Slayer (Kitmesu No Yaiba) alone sold more copies than the entire American comic book market. 100 million copies of the demon slayer manga.
That is a fact.
Anime studios will probably find other ways to reach their audience and fans. We might see more artist and studios selling directly to the fans. We will see more anime studios ditching CrunchyRoll and the grasp of SONY and go with Netflix or HBO (which is already more adult).
Technology has made it easy for artist to connect directly with their fans. Also with cryptocurrencies removing the middle man out of the way, people will be able to buy from overseas and get items ship with no problems therefore, many studios will make more money from over seas fandom.
We might see other video streaming services for anime like HiDive as a way to combat censorship and give the creators more freedom.
SONY had moved to their headquarters to California from Japan in 2016. They said moving to California would help them keep up with the trends faster (as if they could not keep up with the trends via digital communication.) SONY no longer serves Japan like it used to mainly because, Japan is not as profitable anymore so they rather cater to American and western audiences. After all, they are a business and are in it to make money.
After moving to California, noticed that SONY started censoring Japanese games. This is a fact.
SONY is failing in Japan so they are going for the world market. The PS4 sold over 7 million copies in Japan while the PS5 sold only over 200,000 units. In case you were not aware, Japan hates censorship. Why do you think that their anime is so raw and honest.
To make up for their loss, SONY will now try to take control of the anime industry. Also, is not just SONY but also China wants to get into anime. China is making their own anime (Chinese anime) with a similar style and everything. One of the most recent anime I watched was called, Fog Hill of the 5 Elements and its pretty darn good.
PlayStation is one the decline in Japan. They are not interested in SONY as much as they used to. Also Japan is a mobile first country. Mobile gaming in Japan is HUGE. SONY probably noticed that and decided to take their business elsewhere. SONY did try to get into the mobile gaming business when they released the PlayStation VITA but it did not go so well, since Nintendo conquers most of the mobile gaming market with the Nintendo DS and now with the Nintendo Switch.
What do you think about SONY conquering anime?
