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← view full thread · High Guardian Spice and Crunchyroll
The hubbub is silly. This is Crunchyroll's owners doing exactly what they bought Crunchyroll for— not just to keep existing as an anime platform, but to expand into a larger platform, with content they own outright instead of licensed, which is easier to make money off of.
Watch the shows you want, ignore the shows you don't want. Or cancel your subscription if you really want. But it's not Crunchyroll calling that shot, I can pretty much guarantee it.
The SJW part isn't even worth addresing.
Netflix is doing what Crunchyroll shoudl be doing. They have Devilman Crybaby, an actual anime. Crunchyroll decided to do a non-anime with questionable figure heads at the helm, on a anime streaming site. Where people paid for anime, not western cartoons. Do actual anime like Devilman Crybaby instead.
Mmm, Netflix didn't make or co-produce Devilman Crybaby, they licensed it. ALL of the anime they call "Netflix Original" is actually just licensed— the "original" part just denotes that it's exclusive to Netflix, usually licensed direct from the production committee rather than through a publisher like Funimation or Sentai. So Netflix is doing what Crunchyroll was already doing long before Netflix started doing it.
What Crunchyroll is doing is, I can pretty much guarantee, what their owners— WarnerMedia => AT&T —want them to do, which is making original content. That's where the big money is— not in licensed content, where you have to pay a significant chunk back to the licensor, but in the content _you get to license out (are the licensor for). One moderately popular owned show would probably make them a LOT more money for them than a more popular licensed show, except maybe the tippy top most popular shows (your Naruto/AoT/FMA type). (To be clear, the 'probably' just depends on the terms of the license agreement.)
They want to leverage Crunchyroll's platform (and more importantly, audience) to create an audience for original content, which they can control and reap rewards from forever, as opposed to licensed content where the licensor gets to approve everything they do (or not!), takes a huge chunk of the profits (if any!), and they have to re-license every 5-7 years (or not!).
Thats pretty much what i mean regarding Devilman. But isn't Devilman special in the way that it was tailor made to be Netflix exclusive, where as every anime Crunchyroll has licenced would have existed anyway, without Crunchyrolls involvement (besides something like Shelter?). At least this is the story I have heard, that Netflix's platform was ideal for a show that was not suitable for TV, but still reached a massive audience.
I get the profiting part, but I can hardly see something that has a rocky start like this to be a commercial success. I don't know how possible it would be for Crunchyroll to create a animation studio branch in Japan that exclusively makes original anime for Crunchyroll, but it would be somehting ideal for the company, rather than doing anime-inspired series. They did mention about doing something in Tokyo, but rather than doing another American directed/writen series much like Avatar, I would prefer a creative team compiled from Japan's anime industry to do the work. But hey, I'm not the one ordering Crunchyrol.
Their is nothing to support the idea that devilman was different in anyway due to being released through Netflix.
Yes, it's likely that all or most of the planning was complete before Netflix licensed it. Possibly before Netflix was even aware of it.
Given the timing of announcements (it seems like it was already attached to Netflix when it was announced and had even been unintentionally(?) teased), my best guess is that they didn't have a TV producer lined up when they established the production committee, so they pitched a couple of options, including Netflix (especially since the content is so atypical).
Definitely some production elements were different because they had to complete everything (including the dubs for many languages) prior to the series launching, but beyond that would be unusual and we don't really have any reason to expect it.