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The anime shoutmasters have jumped on a 10-day old relatively minor piece of news about a couple Japanese licensors putting catalog content on YouTube and are loudly proclaiming this is because "Japan is mad at Crunchyroll and FUNimation," and that "CR and Funi are finished."
Anyway, it's really cool that this old catalog content of going to be freely available on YouTube. Whatever legit platform it can be on, more anime, including catalog content, needs to be available worldwide to fans.
But this is zero threat to CR, FUNimation, HiDive or any anime streaming platform out there. Most, of bout all of the content bring put on YouTube is content these platforms didn't try to license.
This isn't even"Japan" (as if the Japanese anime industry was assume monolithic entity that acted in unison), the guy in charge is @bjgrubbs.
Whether you love the idea of a United Japanese anime industry run site or hate the idea, fact is that a few visionaries have tried it in the past and we're never able to get anywhere near universal support from the Japanese industry.
The reasons are too numerous to list, but I'd say the most important reason is the simple fact that "Japan Anime" simply isn't a united team. They're are projects that everyone can come together for from time to time, but fact is they're competitors, and...
will usually put their own company interests first. The actual investors in the original Daisuki still licensed their shows to Crunchyroll because Crunchyroll paid more.
Fun note, around a decade ago, a Crunchyroll exec casually mentioned to an AJA exec that they would be willing to discuss selling CR to the AJA or it's members (I don't think that's ever been said publicly before).
Oh right, forgot to link to the news. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-08-07/toei-kodansha-other-anime-firms-launch-youtube-initiative-with-overseas-plans/.162682
