Three years after shopping for Crunchyroll for over $1 billion, Sony plans to capitalize on its buy (and piss off numerous anime followers) by shutting free customers out of one among its hottest sequence. The corporate stated that beginning quickly, you’ll want a paid subscription to look at previous the primary 206 episodes of One Piece. Cue the plain jokes about locking a present about pirates behind a paywall. (Yo ho!)
Crunchyroll will use a tiered rollout to dam free members from many of the anime, which has been in manufacturing since 1999. On December 23, the Water 7 to Fishman Island story arcs will turn out to be paywalled. On January 20, Punk Hazard to Entire Cake Island (and 6 specials) can be locked behind subscriptions, adopted by Reverie and Wano Kuni to Egghead Island on February 17.
Till Sony’s new content material lockdown takes impact, free customers can (as they at all times have been capable of) watch your entire sequence with advertisements. Snippets of One Piece are additionally obtainable on Hulu and Netflix (the latter additionally hosts the live-action model). However Hulu’s library solely reaches episode 384, whereas Netflix’s goes to 238. The sequence at present has over 1,100 episodes.
Sony is reportedly in talks to purchase Japanese writer Kadokawa. Along with video games like Elden Ring, Darkish Souls and Bloodborne, the studio produces anime like Overlord and The Rising of the Defend Hero. If at present’s information is any indication, watching a lot anime within the West that doesn’t undergo Sony could quickly require the digital equal of the Straw Hat Pirates.
