Crunchyroll Senior Vice President of Global Commerce Mitchel Berger was in ebullient mood as he gave a talk on the growing global reach of anime at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival this week.
The Sony-owned platform is in attendance this year with soccer-themed Blue Lock the Movie – Episode Nagi, which made its international premiere here, and comedy series Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead in the TV Films competition.
Beyond Crunchyroll’s presence, anime productions are out in force at Annecy, with four titles playing in the main competition: Ghost Cat Anzu, The Colors Within, Totto-Chan: The Little Girl At The Window and The Imaginary.
Outside the festival, Crunchyroll has just begun rolling out Japanese hit Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle in key European territories following its release in the U.S., Asia and Latin America in May.
It is also gearing up for the international theatrical release of Blue Lock The Movie, kicking off on June 27 in select EMEA territories, followed by North America on June 28, and France on July 3 in France.
In a quick-paced overview, Berger suggested there were currently some 800 million active anime fans worldwide. He also pointed to the rapid growth of the global anime business, which is projected to to generate $37 billion in 2025, against $14 billion a decade ago.
Against this backdrop, Crunchyroll currently has 13 million subscribers across 200 countries, excluding Japan and China, where the platform is not live.
Deadline sat down with Berger after the talk for a catch up on Crunchyroll’s ambitions and strategy.
DEADLINE: You mentioned that Crunchyroll currently has 13 million subscribers worldwide. Do you have projections for where you want to be in five, 10 years’ time?
MITCHEL BERGER: Not that we’ve shared publicly. I would say we want to be more, a lot more. When you look at the addressable anime market, there’s probably 800 million anime fans globally. So, we think there’s huge room to grow.
You heard the question about piracy. Obviously, piracy is a big issue but there’s a huge market we believe we can capture with legal streaming across the world. How high that is, I don’t know yet. But it would be bigger, much bigger.
DEADLINE: Are you being impacted by the cost-of-living crisis as people reassess their spending and cut back on streaming subscriptions?
BERGER: Like every other platform, we have churn. People come in and out. We see people come in for a season because we have a show they want to see, and then leave. We’re always trying to find ways to address that and make sure there’s a value year-round. What’s important for us is we have continued to see growth year over year, further substantial growth.
Yes, it’s there but I think our fan base is such a passionate, dedicated fan base, that this is something at the top of their list for streaming services and must haves when they’re trying to allocate what they have to spend on a monthly basis.
DEADLINE: You mentioned an anime series you liked on Netflix, and the platform is currently offering the anime hit One Piece, a show that Crunchyroll also distributes on its platform. Does that complicate things for Crunchyroll?
BERGER: I was referencing the One Piece live action adaptation, but the original series is also available on their platform. When we license content, sometimes it’ll be on an exclusive basis, and we’ll have a window of six months, a year, a couple years. Sometimes it’s on a non-exclusive basis. So, it’s both on our platform and other platforms. Sometimes it’s on our platform first and then we license it to Netflix. So, it’s kind of all over the place.
The way we look at it is that Netflix obviously has a large platform, a large addressable audience. Anytime that we can expose people to anime, I think it’s better for the industry, it’s better for us. What we find is that anime fans know instantly whether they’re a fan or not. You’re either really a fan or you’re like, ‘I really have no idea what’s going on here’. So, giving people the opportunity to sample on a platform like Netflix and look at it, I think is great for the fans, for the industry, and it’s great for us, ultimately.
DEADLINE: On One Piece, it’s currently up to more than 1,100 episodes, do you have any insight into how long it can continue to run?
BERGER: I don’t. It’s based on a massively long running manga. I do believe there’s an end planned for the story at some point. I have no idea when that is, or what that looks like.
DEADLINE: Anime hails from Japan and is intrinsically tied up with Japanese culture. However, its codes and aesthetics are increasingly influencing international animation. Can you envisage a scenario, where anime moves away from being uniquely Japanese?
BERGER: I don’t know is the real answer. The storytelling, the visual style, the pacing, the whole vibe, or the essence of what makes an anime is very distinctly Japanese, but you’re right, we’re seeing its influence in so many things. You’re seeing it show up in regular film and other animation.
Whether it ever evolves beyond that, I don’t know. I think what you’re going to see is Japanese storytelling and anime continuing to influence other art forms, even if it doesn’t really move outside. You’re going to see things that feel anime-adjacent and look anime-adjacent. What it is five or 10 years from now, I don’t know, it’s hard to say.
DEADLINE: I was thinking of the example of Saudi Arabia, where there is a huge appetite for anime and the country has started producing its own anime-style animations inspired by local Middle Eastern stories…
BERGER:. Ultimately, it’s up to the fans. If fans embrace things like that from outside Japan, from other places, then they embrace it. It’s not for us, ultimately, to say. We’re following where the fans are right now but it could change over time. Ultimately, the fans are going to be the arbiters of what they want to consume and what they fall in love with.
DEADLINE: You’re currently very strong in North America and Europe. Are you looking at other markets, such as MENA, for example. Do you have offices there?
BERGER: We don’t have an office there, but we do have services available. It’s an area that’s very interesting from a demographic standpoint. Anime is very popular there. So, it’s absolutely something we’re looking at. Like you said, we’re well-established in North America and Europe. We’re also in Australia. Latin America is a great growth area for us, as is India. The Middle East is something that we continue to look at. This is a global phenomenon. There are fans everywhere and we’re trying to figure that out.
DEADLINE: You’re gearing up for the international release of the soccer-themed Blue Lock the Movie – Episode Nagi, can you talk about this?
BERGER: It’s a movie coming out in July. It’s a prequel to a show that we did on the service called Blue Lock, about the origin of one of the characters in the show.
I think that it’s uniquely situated from a time perspective around the Olympics and FIFA and things like that. It’s a great show. It’s a great movie. There’s some really good sports in it, so I’m hoping that it’s very successful for a multitude of reasons including what’s going on in the broader world.
DEADLINE: You’ve just started the European theatrical release of Japanese hit Haikyu!!. How important is theatrical to Crunchyroll? Can you say what the revenue split is between streaming, theatrical, merchandise and events?
BERGER: I can’t say but what I would say is that theatrical is very important to us from multitude of perspectives. One, it does make money, we make box office. Some are bigger than others. The Demon Slayer – Mugen Train film, two or three years ago, we did $50 million at the U.S. box office. It was the second highest grossing animated film of all time. We do everything from that down to something that might do a million dollars or half a million dollars in the U.S.
From a fan perspective, the theatrical experience is key. Getting together in that community in the theatre is really important to anime fans. We’ve shown that anime fans will come out. They were among the first to come back to theatres after the pandemic for the Demon Slayer.
Part of that is that anime fans in general love conventions and things like that. Getting together and sharing that passion in real life is really important. Not everybody can get to a convention, not everybody can travel to ComicCon or AnimeJapan, so getting together in a theatre around a piece of IP that you love is a nice analogue.
Everybody there is going a enjoy it. There’s a lot of cosplay. It’s a fun environment. So that’s important to us, from the community building standpoint of giving people that opportunity to connect. So it’s great that we make money, but we also give this great experience to the fans. The whole flywheel works together: so streaming, manga publishing, home video, consumer products. It’s about the lifestyle.
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