By Gavin Boyle
Anime streaming platform Crunchyroll is expanding its offerings by launching a 24 hour channel that will be available through Samsung TV Plus.
“Crunchyroll is committed to making anime more accessible than ever and the launch of the Crunchyroll Channel on Samsung is another step towards ensuring we’re everywhere our fans want to enjoy their anime,” Mitchel Berger, Crunchyroll’s head of global commerce, told Variety. “We’re excited to give fans, and those just discovering anime, a curated, always-on way to experience the stories and characters they love, right from their Samsung Smart TVs.”
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The launching of this channel comes after the Samsung and Crunchyroll began a partnership last year when the Crunchyroll app launched on the TV.
Crunchyroll currently serves as the second-largest Anime streaming service, trailing only Netflix which features multiple anime shows on its platform. Crunchyroll, however, serves as the premiere destination for the largest anime series such as ATTACK ON TITAN, NARUTO, MY HERO ACADEMIA, and ONE PIECE.
Earlier this year, Sony – Crunchyroll’s parent company – merged the platform with Aniplex, another anime platform, to create a new anime studio that joined the two company’s assets under one banner. The merge comes as Anime has exploded in popularity in recent years, becoming more mainstream with the American audience.
“In other English-speaking countries, there’s a lot [of people] that want to kind of continue to branch out and and watch more and more new types of anime, so it’s a really helpful user acquisition tool,” explained Michael Dempsey, an animation expert and general partner at Compound, when explaining how social media has helped the genre grow. “It’s definitely more mainstream. It’s not as contained towards niches as it used to be. I think that’s probably because there’s just a broader, continual hunger for animated content.”
The expanding popularity of the genre, however, has not come without controversy as many of the shows sexualize their characters, many of whom are underage. Earlier this year, Texas introduced a bill that would criminalize consuming some of this content specifically because of how it fetishizes young men and women.
“A person commits an offense if the person knowingly possesses, accesses with intent to view, or promotes obscene visual material containing a depiction that appears to be of a child younger than 18 years of age engaging in [obscene activities], regardless of whether the depiction is an image of an actual child, a cartoon or animation, or an image created using an artificial intelligent application or other computer software,” the bill reads, per Screen Rant.
Nonetheless, Anime fans will rejoice at the addition of the Crunchyroll channel on Samsung TV Plus, especially given the vast selection of titles, which will now be curated for them through the channel.
Read Next: Why Anime’s Growing Popularity Should Be A Cause For Concern For The Christian Parent
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