well guys it turns out that Crunchyroll has committed a federal crime and it's not something that they've done in just one instance it's something that they've been doing for the last 5 years we only found out about it very recently though on October 25th when David Wald a voice actor tweeted that if he's been sent anything in the Last 5 Years in terms of fan art fan letters anything then he has not received it because apparently Crunchyroll has been stealing all of it it this is in direct violation of US federal law or more specifically
the US code 1702 obstruction of Correspondence this has gone absolutely viral everyone is talking about it if they're in the anime sphere in the west and I feel like it's not only the perfect opportunity to raise more Awareness on this disgusting Behavior but to also sit down with you and show you why Crunchyroll has been a terrible company for years now and that this only adds more to their Shady unpleasant history let's talk about it so Crunchyroll as it stands is the biggest anime distributor SL streamer in the west so if you're outside of Asia
this is most likely the service that you're using for anime unless you're a pirate some people and even Publications like the South China Morning Post credit Crunchyroll for turning Japanese anime mainstream in the west it's a very impressive company with its size in non-asian countries and its catalog but it wasn't always this anime licensing sweetheart in fact at some point Japanese license holders wanted to take the website down you see the website was founded in 2006 and back then it was a pirating website not a single thing on this page is legal but it wasn't
just about anime it was about anything whether it be Asian drama things related to video games it was like YouTube but for pirates where anything could be uploaded there were no limits except maybe adult videos this is the exact website you would have seen in 2006 bleach's 108th episode had just come out and Naruto's 24th Episode had just come out as well it's a crazy time capsule in 2008 they somehow convinced a venture capital firm by the name of venrock based out of Palo Alto California to invest $4 million into them after this they sought
to become legal a legitimate space to share anime content on January 8th 2009 they signed deal with TV Tokyo to host episodes of Naruto shapin obviously you can see how big of a deal that is and immediately started to delete all the illegitimate content on its website that they don't hold rights to they then continued to get more and more anime licensed from Japan for their Western audience and you know what they had a talent they knew how to choose the animes that they licensed and then translated because of course there's a lot of anime
that gets made every single season this is what made them different no one could really compete that much with with them because anime wasn't really seen as a big deal until very recently this is when Sony decided to create FUNimation a direct competitor of crunchy roll back in 2017 now of course seeing that it's Sony they had one hell of a lineup of popular anime but they didn't really know how to pick more underrated ones that the Western audience would enjoy at least not as well as crunchy world did but honestly who cares you have
an industry and you have multiple competitors all trying to do their own thing that's very healthy but unfortunately that didn't last too long in August of 2020 there were reports coming out that Sony actually wanted to buy crunchy things were advancing they had offered 1.1 billion to buy it but on March 24 2021 as things were coming to a close the United States Department of Justice extended its review of this because they thought that maybe just maybe this could become a monopoly of anime outside of East Asia somehow okay some way I don't know who
got bribed who got threatened but it got approved and in August 2021 the deal was finalized it was one of the biggest mistakes in the anime industry because this effectively meant that Sony had become the major Monopoly when it comes to anime content outside of Asia seeing that Sony owned so many anime streaming websites including wakanim which was in France they decided to merge everything into crunchy roll really solidifying the idea that they're now a monopoly one of the main reasons why people hate crunchy roll and of course Sony is due to this Monopoly I
mean look at this email that was sent to existing FUNimation customers when the merger happened the first few paragraphs are reassuring you that hey don't worry your account info isn't going to change your watch History all your preferences everything is staying but then you read the final paragraph and it says this as part of our transition to crunchy roll the price of your new crunchy rooll plan will increase from $55 a year to $100 a year beginning January 28th 2025 so yes the price you were paying had effectively doubled overnight and you couldn't do anything
about it what were you going to do about it go to a different service oh wait Sony owns everything and now it's under crunchy roll but even worse and I think this is probably the worst part in all this FUNimation had something crunchy roll didn't instead of having to pay for a subscription you could just flat out buy the anime that you wanted digitally so you could watch it any time well Sony said [ __ ] you and what you own you don't actually own anything this was the explanation crunchy roll gave you when you
inquired about your FUNimation digital copies they said we understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from FUNimation please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support FUNimation digital copies which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported however we are continuously working to enhance our content offerings and provide you with an exceptional anime streaming experience we appreciate your understanding and encourage you to explore the extensive anime Library available on Crunchyroll so this was a very disgusting corporate speak way of saying that everything you own is now in the gutter
you will never be able to access it again [ __ ] you I mean Ubisoft said that Gamers should get used to not owning their copies look at their stock price you do not want to be like Ubisoft this is what a monopoly actually looks like and it's terrible that's not the only thing though look anime is Japanese it was created in Japan Crunchyroll knows this and they actually have a studio in Shibuya Tokyo to make original anime at some point though they decided to use subscription money to create their own studio in Burbank California
to make anime within the United States as you can see from the rating 1.6 out of 10 that was an utter disaster High Guardian spice is the biggest piece of [ __ ] to come out of anime in the last 10 years it was marketed as anime for diverse groups most notably highlighting their lgbtq plus representation well you know you [ __ ] up when even people in the lgbtq plus hate this [ __ ] show to death like no one likes this this is terrible when you become a monopoly you become lazy and complacent
you stop taking risks and you completely get what made you great in the first place this show is proof of that oh and let's not forget that at the end of 2023 they had to settle a class action lawsuit with their own consumers because they violated the United States video privacy protection act by disclosing its subscribers personally identifiable information to third party companies like Facebook Adobe Etc of course it's a very large list they initially tried to deny the claim okay they lied but then then settled anyway to avoid any uncertainties or expenses associated with
continuing the case so not only were they a monopoly not only did they double the price of annual subscriptions and are offering nothing to show for it they were also selling their own users data and by the way the settlement was terrible it was $30 per crunchy roll user like wow thanks my data probably cost more than that but these three reasons I just gave you I think are enough for you to think wow this is a terrible lazy Monopoly that can do whatever it wants because no one can even compete this brings us back
to the crime that they committed against David Wald now look David Wald is a seasoned voice actor he's been in the industry for a long time he doesn't just dub anime which is the act of voice acting English dialogue for something that isn't originally in English but he also voice acted in games some of the biggest animes he's dubbed in were Attack on Titan my hero Academia or even Vinland Saga now you'd think that crunchy roll would give a veteran voice actor like himself the respect he deserves well no it turns out Crunchyroll has been
receiving packages meant for David and distributing them to staff instead without him knowing for 5 years look at this tweet as an example he says Dear fellow workers at crunchy roll below is a photo of the complete contents of one of the packages address to me that was open and distributed to employees if you ended up in possession of any of it I would very much like it returned to me and as you can see there are many things here I should mention all of this is handmade even this even though it looks like an
official magazine the character itself is is iosa Kush shindo and this is someone that David voices in dub and harumi quot tweeted this saying I remember when my friend put this together to sent to you it was a group effort everyone was so looking forward to you getting it this is extremely heartbreaking David replies and says I promise you the situation will be rectified we're just lucky you sent me a photo of the unique contents and the USBs tracking info to which harumi said it was all their efforts in doing so I really hope this
gets resolved I'm so sorry to hear about this so imagine taking so much time to make a care package like this spefic specifically for the person dubbing your favorite character in an anime and finding out so much later that no it was just passed around employees and he never received it I mean imagine how David feels having something like this made specifically for him and not even receiving and not even being notified about it it's insane there was a quote tweet saying that all the employees should be fired for this but David specified the employees
are definitely not to blame they just walked by the company freebies table and thought something looked cool the management who elected to take this course of action however are another m matter if you work in a company that does a lot of collaborations you'd understand this perfectly the companies you work with will send you freebies all the time and you take them but someone else in hire management getting a package that says David Wald choosing to open it and then distribute it to employees that's something else entirely I've also seen some people say well why
didn't he just put his home address this is partly his fault well think about it this way if there was a crazy obsessed fan out there wouldn't they just go to his house knock on the door and leave a package for him personally what David did is actually very common if you're watching this video and work in an office you probably do the same thing maybe you send your Amazon packages to your office that way you receive them on the job and with no one letting him know that there's a package that arrived at Crunchyroll
like how would he know the only reason he knew about this was because the people who sent it gave him the tracking info he saw it arrived and that he never received it that's what's incredible here so what the hell happens next as you might have already guessed stealing male in the United States is a federal crime I'd love to sit here and tell you that this is going to be the end of crunchy roll but the law itself is actually pretty damn vague according to Legal mindset who is a lawyer on YouTube that I
like to reference sometimes Whenever there are legal problems this line right here that says before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed is the problem so the law itself says oh yeah if you tamper with something before it's delivered to the person you're in trouble but what is the person it says the person to whom it was directed well technically the package says David sure but the address is Crunchyroll HQ when the judge looks at this they will actually side with Crunchyroll unfortunately because technically the package arrived at the right
address whether someone else opened it or tampered with it doesn't really matter you're not the only one to think that this sucks but unfortunately that's the legal reality I do hope that the higher-up manager though suffers direct consequences because this is disgusting and we have to ask this question how many other voice actors are going through the same thing without even knowing this is why we need a statement from Crunchyroll ASAP Crunchyroll has been in absolute silence everyone has been replying to their tweets asking for answers and they only gave one on the 27th of
October 2 days after David Walt's tweet a Crunchyroll spokesperson told anime News Network that it's investigating the situation here's the full statement anime fans have a special connection with dub voice talent and that emotional expression is important in fueling more love of anime content we are currently investigating the matter regarding the allegation of undelivered fan mail to a voice actor we respect the privacy of all our voice actors and do not intentionally open mailer packages not intended for crunchy roll any fan mail should be sent directly to talent and their management that last sentence in
particular is pretty damn dirty like yeah sure okay you can say that but you could have also called David five years ago or just sent him an email five years ago when the first package came and told him hey your fan mail shouldn't be coming to us it should come to you but no instead you chose to open it for 5 years distribute it for five years and only now are caught because he had a tracking number from a specific fan so again crunchy rooll is yet in another controversy and they come out extremely unlikable
as if it's effortless for them of course David's allegations don't end here he says in a tweet shortly after revealing that his mail has been stolen saying me thinking gez it's a good thing I didn't tell them about the gay discrimination or the medical discrimination or the union busting or the continuous Culture of Fear or the Hostile workplace environment or three dots additionally another voice actress by the name of Alexis Tipton replied to his tweet saying oh my God what the [ __ ] adding this to the fact that they constantly give out free merch
to the employees and voice actors aren't allowed to participate we also no longer get free copies of our own work we don't even get invited to Christmas parties we are just a product look there's a big worry already within the voice acting community that AI is going to come in and steal all their jobs the fact that Crunchyroll treats their voice actors like complete utter disposable trash on the street tells me that they're probably already looking into AI technology to not have to hire voice Act ever again monopolies suck and I hope that crunchy roll
gets what's coming to them I also hope that David can get all of his stuff back but unfortunately the idea of a lawsuit doesn't really seem very viable or at least that's what legal experts say guys stay safe out there and if you have any important mail coming your way do not list your company as the address just send it straight to your door instead thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next video whenever that is I love you oh [Music]
