Popverse's top stories of the day

• From Meddling Kids to Murdering Teens: Ex-Velma Linda Cardellini is Peacock's Pamela Voorhees in Friday the 13th Prequel
• MEMBERS ONLY: Step into the world of Star Wars, the MCU, Mission: Impossible, and beyond with Katy O'Brian
• From Batman to the Bible, potential new Florida law opens door to a single complaint banning graphic novels or manga in state schools, libraries, and even reading lists

  ---

For years, Crunchyroll has been a dominant name in the anime industry. Though its subscriber base is likely to fall well short of its ambitious “25 million by 2025” goal, it is still the fastest-growing streaming service on the planet and is quickly becoming a big part of parent company Sony’s business. In fact, industry experts believe that Crunchyroll, with its stable streaming business and established place in the market, could soon make up over one-third of Sony’s operating profit.

The figure comes from market research company Bernstein, which estimates that Crunchyroll’s subscriber base, which is well over 15 million at this point, will generate over 40% of Sony Pictures’ operating profit over the next two years. That is a huge number considering the size of Sony Pictures and its interests around the world.

It isn’t just the streaming numbers that influence that number – there are also the theatrical releases like the Demon Slayer Infinity Castle movies that Crunchyroll is helping to facilitate and the upcoming manga app that Crunchyroll has announced for 2025. Despite stiff competition from Netflix, Crunchyroll continues to be the dominant force in anime streaming, with a massive library of shows and merchandise on offer for fans.

If this ends up being true, it certainly justifies Sony’s purchase of Crunchyroll back in 2021 and explains their continued push into the anime and manga industry. With their purchase of a large share of Kadokawa in 2024 and the announced opening of an anime studio between Crunchyroll and Aniplex (yet another Sony-owned company), Sony clearly sees big money in anime. 

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
• 2025 is the year One Punch Man season 3 finally adapts the cosmically weird Monster Association Arc and I can't wait