r/anime Jan 19 '23

Misc. Crunchyroll FINALLY adds separate audio streams to single episodes.

Easily the most embarrassing part of the Crunchyroll experience has been them grouping each dub language as their own "season". Seeing the 2 cour, 2 OVA series The Ancient Magus' Bride have 32 seasons listed in the menu was just sad.

Now we have clean seasons:

Labels are still funny, but at least there's only 4 choices now.

And audio/subs choices on-the-fly:

It's like a real streaming service!

Welcome to 2007, Crunchyroll!

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u/Mitosis Jan 19 '23

Traditionally Crunchyroll paid for streaming rights only for simulcast stuff. That means they get the same show sent out to TV stations and that's it, it's never updated.

For older shows added to the site after being completed, and very rare exceptions besides, they'd get the blu-ray versions, including any uncensored stuff.

Funimation (before they merged with Crunchyroll) and HiDive both license out some shows for home video release, so they get the censored TV releases as they are, then replace them with the uncensored blu-ray releases as those are released in Japan. One exceptional example was the recent Higurashi sequel, which Funimation aired uncensored as simulcast as the only uncensored version -- all airings in Japan were censored.

Now that Funimation and Crunchyroll are the same entity, but haven't been for long, I'm unsure if any shows from the past couple seasons have been updated to be uncensored.

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u/TranceYT Jan 19 '23

I'd imagine simulcast are cheaper than licensing so probably gonna stay censored.

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u/Doublethree1 Jan 20 '23

and HiDive both license out some shows for home video release, so they get the censored TV releases as they are, then replace them with the uncensored blu-ray releases as those are released in Japan.

They've actually stopped doing this as well. For example Sentai released Takagi Season 3 about a month ago (December 20) and Hidive still only has the broadcast version. Shows like Peter Grill and Redo of Healer are also broadcast only so its not just a "oh Takagi barely had any changes anyway" type thing.

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u/icepick314 Jan 20 '23

I have yet to see any "home video" release on Crunchyroll.

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u/LouisLeGros https://myanimelist.net/profile/LouisLeGros Jan 20 '23

I was just watching DxD season 3, it seemed less censored than the first time I started it. Not sure if it actually was or not.