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Crunchyroll & Netflix are vying for the next hit anime like a football draft - and Delicious in Dungeon could be the big one that got away from Crunchyroll
The anime streaming industry is becoming a profitable - and therefore competitive - place, with Netflix and Crunchyroll trading the biggest blows.

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Though they don’t want to admit it, we can see the start of a fairly intense rivalry between Netflix and Crunchyroll. While Crunchyroll is the undisputed king of anime by sheer number of shows, Netflix has slowly begun to catch up over the years. Like football teams vying for the same pool of players, both streamers hope to snag the rights to the next big hit, with Netflix managing to get Delicious in Dungeon for themselves last year.
During a sit down with BBC News, Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini was asked if Delicious in Dungeon was a show that he wishes he’d managed to secure for Crunchyroll. He deftly sidestepped the question while admitting that even a company like Crunchyroll can’t get every big show. “Yeah, like there’s almost 300 shows made in Japan every year and we want to get as much of that content exclusively on our service.”
That exclusivity is clearly a key word here, as sharing the rights to Dan Da Dan season one with Netflix reportedly became something of a sore spot for Crunchyroll last year.
When asked if it's like multiple football teams vying for a star player in a draft, Purini says it's "somewhat similar."
We can’t blame the BBC for asking Crunchyroll about their competitive relationship with Netflix – we did the same thing at New York Comic-Con last year. All streaming services who want to host anime on their site are competing for the same pool of shows, something that Purini agreed was similar to football teams trying to recruit new players. The important part of that comparison is that most athletes are going to go with whoever offers them more money and we don’t think Crunchyroll can compete with the deep pockets and massive subscriber base of Netflix on that front.
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...
- Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
- The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
- From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
- Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
- Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
- How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
- I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
- The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
- The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
- Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic
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