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Crunchyroll & Netflix are vying for the next hit anime like a football draft - and Delicious in Dungeon could be the big one that got away from Crunchyroll
The anime streaming industry is becoming a profitable - and therefore competitive - place, with Netflix and Crunchyroll trading the biggest blows.

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Though they don’t want to admit it, we can see the start of a fairly intense rivalry between Netflix and Crunchyroll. While Crunchyroll is the undisputed king of anime by sheer number of shows, Netflix has slowly begun to catch up over the years. Like football teams vying for the same pool of players, both streamers hope to snag the rights to the next big hit, with Netflix managing to get Delicious in Dungeon for themselves last year.
During a sit down with BBC News, Crunchyroll President Rahul Purini was asked if Delicious in Dungeon was a show that he wishes he’d managed to secure for Crunchyroll. He deftly sidestepped the question while admitting that even a company like Crunchyroll can’t get every big show. “Yeah, like there’s almost 300 shows made in Japan every year and we want to get as much of that content exclusively on our service.”
That exclusivity is clearly a key word here, as sharing the rights to Dan Da Dan season one with Netflix reportedly became something of a sore spot for Crunchyroll last year.
When asked if it's like multiple football teams vying for a star player in a draft, Purini says it's "somewhat similar."
We can’t blame the BBC for asking Crunchyroll about their competitive relationship with Netflix – we did the same thing at New York Comic-Con last year. All streaming services who want to host anime on their site are competing for the same pool of shows, something that Purini agreed was similar to football teams trying to recruit new players. The important part of that comparison is that most athletes are going to go with whoever offers them more money and we don’t think Crunchyroll can compete with the deep pockets and massive subscriber base of Netflix on that front.
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...
- Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
- Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
- Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
- Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
- 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
- Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
- Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
- Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
- Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba
- 2025 is the year One Punch Man season 3 finally adapts the cosmically weird Monster Association Arc and I can't wait
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