So for those of you who did not know, a couple of years ago, Funimation and Crunchyroll became partners. They sat down under the kotatsu, broke pocky, and exchanged waifus in an attempt to... well I do not know. Anyway, through this alliance Crunchyroll became the official sub streaming service, and Funimation became the official dub streaming service. They also did a bit of cross-pollinating with their various licenses. Though I am not sure what this lead to as far as Funimation getting stuff from Crunchyroll, it leads to a ton of Funimation stuff bleeding over into Crunchyroll. Well now things are over, so I guess I will waste some time here and babble about this topic.

So I guess the main question to answer is why? Why did Funimation part ways, yes it was Funimation's idea. Well, the answer is hidden, but overall Funimation was bought out by Sony. Which might mean good things for us PS+ users, but it also meant the end of the alliance. Since I know that Crunchyroll does not have the same parent company. As such, the major giant of Sony will not tolerate the alliance anymore. Which I want to say is sad, but I cannot say that it is sad.

I will be honest, this whole sharing and partnership thing only really worked to bring more Simulcast titles to both sites. That was the only real major benefit to having this alliance. Otherwise, the effects of the alliance were pretty subtle. As mentioned, the companies did share some titles, but beyond doing that, you will be hard pressed to see what benefit came from this alliance. I can say that I had forgotten that there was even an alliance for a little while. Often there would be months of silence, then randomly a bunch of old Funimation shows would show up on Crunchyroll. So to be honest, I am not sure how this is going to hurt anyone.

Well, there is one way, the Funimation Simuldub. Ah yes, this alliance probably benefited Funimation a great deal. With the agreement to be the dub channel, they were freed up from straight translation. You would watch the amount of shows they were doing with Simuldubs explode when this alliance was first mentioned. Before that, and likely after the alliance ends, you had one or two REALLY popular shows that were dubbed and not much else. Everything else was subbed, which is not surprising at all. Straight up translation is a pain in the ass, not to mention the localization and going from the written word to more commonly understood spoken words. I bet it would have been a nightmare to do. I guess that Sony will bring in more labor. I mean, to be honest, I do not see how Sony will manage to keep making money if they do not keep working with Crunchyroll. Oh well, I guess that time will only tell.

So I guess that it is back to keeping track of stuff on two different sites. It was nice to have FUNimation when I wanted to play an MMO or something, but now I am going to have to hope for the best with what will happen next. Thankfully, I do not see this Crunchyroll. It is not like people who only had Funimation decided to get Crunchyroll because they wanted to support the cause. I am sure that the fall out from this will become obvious throughout the year, but until then I guess I am happy that I kept both my accounts. Let us see what other horrible decisions will be made over the rest of the year.