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There can’t be any doubt that Dan Da Dan has been one of the biggest hits of the Fall 2024 anime season. Not only has it captured our hearts with its deft blend of action and romance but it managed to rank in the top ten of Netflix’s television programs throughout its season one run. However, it was suspiciously absent from much of Crunchyroll’s marketing throughout the season and, according to a recent report, now we know why.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the directive to not promote Dan Da Dan as much as it normally would comes from Crunchyroll senior vice president Markus Gerdemann. In October, just as Dan Da Dan was starting to air, Gerdemann sent an email to staff saying “Due to ongoing acquisition discussions, we decided not to further lean into the promotion of Dandadan.” The acquisition discussions in question likely stem from Toho’s decision to license the anime to both Netflix and Crunchyroll on the same day, robbing Sony’s streaming service of the exclusivity that is such an important part of their business.

The decision to push back on Netflix’s acquisition of Dan Da Dan is a strange one for Crunchyroll, who relies on their existing relationships with Japanese animation studios to secure international streaming rights, but it also marks a change in how Crunchyroll sees Netflix as direct competition. Previously, they have said that they are happy for Netflix to be something of a gateway for new anime fans to discover hit shows before turning to Crunchyroll for its deeper library and larger offering each season. Netflix, with its massive subscriber base and deeper pockets, could pose a bigger threat to Crunchyroll’s domination of the anime industry than we thought.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic