Crunchyroll will soon paywall most of One Piece

Three years after buying Crunchyroll for over $1 billion, Sony plans to capitalize on its buy (and piss off numerous anime followers) by shutting free customers out of one in all its hottest sequence. The corporate said that beginning quickly, you’ll want a paid subscription to look at previous the primary 206 episodes of One Piece. Cue the plain jokes about locking a present about pirates behind a paywall. (Yo ho!)

Crunchyroll will use a tiered rollout to dam free members from a lot of the anime, which has been in manufacturing since 1999. On December 23, the Water 7 to Fishman Island story arcs will develop into paywalled. On January 20, Punk Hazard to Complete Cake Island (and 6 specials) will probably be locked behind subscriptions, adopted by Reverie and Wano Kuni to Egghead Island on February 17.

Till Sony’s new content material lockdown takes impact, free customers can (as they at all times have been in a position to) watch the whole sequence with adverts. Snippets of One Piece are additionally accessible on Hulu and Netflix (the latter additionally hosts the live-action version). However Hulu’s library solely reaches episode 384, whereas Netflix’s goes to 238. The sequence presently has over 1,100 episodes.

Sony is reportedly in talks to buy Japanese publisher Kadokawa. Along with video games like Elden Ring, Dark Souls and Bloodborne, the studio produces anime like Overlord and The Rising of the Protect Hero. If at present’s information is any indication, watching a lot anime within the West that doesn’t undergo Sony might quickly require the digital equal of the Straw Hat Pirates.