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There can’t be any doubt that Dan Da Dan has been one of the biggest hits of the Fall 2024 anime season. Not only has it captured our hearts with its deft blend of action and romance but it managed to rank in the top ten of Netflix’s television programs throughout its season one run. However, it was suspiciously absent from much of Crunchyroll’s marketing throughout the season and, according to a recent report, now we know why.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the directive to not promote Dan Da Dan as much as it normally would comes from Crunchyroll senior vice president Markus Gerdemann. In October, just as Dan Da Dan was starting to air, Gerdemann sent an email to staff saying “Due to ongoing acquisition discussions, we decided not to further lean into the promotion of Dandadan.” The acquisition discussions in question likely stem from Toho’s decision to license the anime to both Netflix and Crunchyroll on the same day, robbing Sony’s streaming service of the exclusivity that is such an important part of their business.

The decision to push back on Netflix’s acquisition of Dan Da Dan is a strange one for Crunchyroll, who relies on their existing relationships with Japanese animation studios to secure international streaming rights, but it also marks a change in how Crunchyroll sees Netflix as direct competition. Previously, they have said that they are happy for Netflix to be something of a gateway for new anime fans to discover hit shows before turning to Crunchyroll for its deeper library and larger offering each season. Netflix, with its massive subscriber base and deeper pockets, could pose a bigger threat to Crunchyroll’s domination of the anime industry than we thought.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba