Fasten your seatbelts, as watching anime has gotten more expensive in several countries.
Months after Crunchyroll declared that it reduced prices in over 100 countries, including India, UAE, Brazil, and United Kingdom, the studio has stunned its subscribers; however, to a different set of users, in other countries.
The streaming giant has sent out e-mails informing its premium subscribers that their subscription prices would increase starting in the last week of October.
Earlier this year, Funimation’s complete library of content, along with a few other studios, was set to move into Crunchyroll as a part of Sony’s acquisition. Further, Funimation would also be rebranded as Crunchyroll.
The streaming platform justified the sudden spike in subscription prices due to the library merger with Funimation and released the following statement amidst the price spike, “With these changes we can continue the expansion of show content, we get to keep adding more dubs, and offer more Anime and Manga services and content. You can already see the huge increases in shows already added. As always, we are committed to connecting you to the best Anime and Manga products and services anywhere in the world.”
That’s not it; along with Crunchyroll, Funimation is also increasing the subscription price for its premium users.
The e-mail sent by the platform said the following:
Beginning October 31st, 2022, the price of some Crunchyroll plans will increase from 7.99 NZD/month to 9.99 NZD/month. Changes will be reflected in your next billing cycle starting on 2022-11-06 and charged to your current payment method on file. If you want to make any changes to your subscription, please visit your account page, or you may cancel at any time prior to your next billing date.
As part of Crunchyroll's transition to a unified subscription service with Funimation, a necessary step to achieve completion of the unification is for Crunchyroll to adjust the prices in Canada for the Mega Fan plan.
Depending on the subscribed tier and the nation customers are in, there may be a price rise; this adjustment appears to be implemented on premium members who live in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Europe, Chile, and Mexico. Funimation premium plan is set at $13.99, a whopping 75% jump from its previous price, which was $7.95.
A Canadian premium subscriber revealed that the monthly cost had jumped to CAD 9.99 from its previous price of CAD 7.99.
Now, several users have expressed extreme displeasure online over the price rise. Few Crunchyroll users are convinced by the platform’s justification for increasing their library.
Most of the users are left baffled and somewhat exasperated by the sudden price increase, so much so that a few are ready to go old school with pirating anime, while some are unsubscribing from the streaming platform.
What do you think of the raise in subscription prices?
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