Crunchyroll has faced backlash after voice actor David Wald revealed the company has been illegally opening and distributing his fan mail for the past five years, violating U.S. federal law regarding obstruction of correspondence. This revelation sparked widespread outrage, highlighting Crunchyroll’s questionable practices, including its monopoly over anime distribution in the West following its acquisition by Sony. Critics argue that Crunchyroll has become complacent, exemplified by the failure of its original content and a significant price increase for subscriptions. Furthermore, Wald’s situation underscores broader issues within the company, such as alleged discrimination against voice actors and a toxic work environment. Crunchyroll’s response has been inadequate, stating they are investigating the matter but failing to acknowledge their responsibility. This incident adds to the growing list of grievances against Crunchyroll, raising concerns about the treatment of voice actors and the future of anime distribution.
I buy almost exclusively physical media. I don’t care about streaming so crunchy roll was just a thing I ignored. Then they bought like everything… Funimation and Rightstuf/Nozomi being the largest. I use to have probably a grand on preorder with rightstuf at any point in time. Talking easily 10K+ a year. I haven’t bought a damn thing off crunchy roll’s site. I don’t care for the company and their site sucks. Which is saying something cause rightstuf’s site was slow and clunky but it was simple and got the job done. Crunchy roll’s store site is just a giant ad for their streaming service that they also happen to sell stuff on.
Also despise that I had to talk with customer support multiple times to get off their damn mailing lists that they just signed everybody up for because they converted rightstuf accounts. The ‘unsubscribe’ link in the email was broken…hell it’s probably still broken. Even though that violates laws…clearly they don’t care about those.