Yo guys, Cuchallain here and yes, it has been a long time since I've covered a news story here on the channel. This one however has me very intrigued so without further ado let's just dive into it! Bilibili and funimation have announced a partnership which will be working together to liscence not only anime but in general intellectual property rights for television, video on demand, digital distribution, home entertainment, gaming and merchandise. This deal is apparently going to last "for the next few years" and may not just be limited to Japanese properties. So what does all of that mean for anime fans? Well essentially those battles we've all been watching for years now in the anime release schedule are about to get a lot more heated up. You know the ones I'm talking about: that heated moment when an anime is announced and it looks incredible and fans in the west are waiting with baited breath to see which particular platform we'll be able to watch it on. The series could end up on Amazon prime, netflix, crunchyroll or indeed funimation which also has a partnership for distribution with Hulu. This new partnership is about to make the liscensing war much more intense. While some sites like crunchyroll and Amazon prime provide a decent platform for digital distribution of anime, Funimation have always been a little bit more enticing with a long history of dubbing the same anime series into English and home releases such as DVDs and Blu-rays. In the past they had partnered with Crunchyroll to jointly license anime but that agreement fell through last year with funimation then making a similar arrangement with Hulu. With this new joint partnership with Bilibili they're not only able to offer licensing to the west, but indeed the pair of companies are offering licensing of anime series throughout a large part of China too. Bilibili already have a large majority of the control when it comes to anime distribution in China. While other companies like Iqiyi Nd Tencent animation compete with them, they tend to have the lions share of releases. So who are Bilibili exactly and why is this video baiting you with the phrase: saviour of anime? Bilibili has often been compared to other western companies at different times. Some will call it the YouTube of China while others will call it the netflix of China. The truth of the matter is something vaguely in between. Bilibili has a service much like YouTube that allows users to create accounts and then upload and share videos, pictures and blog-posts. It also allows users to live-stream content including gaming, blogging, singing, cosplaying and a very strong community based around Vtubers and Vsingers, mich like Kizuna Ai these are virtual avatars turned into celebrities. On top of this they own the rights to a large amount of Chinese animation titles and often act in a producing role, financing and serving on production committees not only in Chinese animation but also recently in Japanese anime releases. As well as anime and Chinese animation Bilibili also has a hand in other forms of entertainment. Their gaming platform has the rights to Azur Lane and the Chinese version of Fate Grand Order. They've also acquired rights to many comics releases and the occasional live action release. They made news in the animation world just a few days ago as well with many silly bloggers joking that China was here to save anime... (clear throat) This was due to them posting an advertisement online specifically looking to hire Japanese animators to work at a brand new animation studio they're creating. So in the future bilibili hope to not just be producing and licensing animation but to also have their own animation studio creating its own content. This news went a little bit viral as the original job advertisement was offering far more than the average Japanese rate for animators. Since then the original advertisement has been removed however and a new advert was released without immediate mention of pay. So that's about it with how this story related to anime fans. Bilibili are going to be making big splashes in the anime world with this new agreement with funimation and a suggested link to aniplex, already advertising their future release of demon slayer of Kimetsu no Yaiba. Theres already speculation that this means well see more funding and subsequent control of anime releases by a joint funimation and bilibili partnership which has Japanese companies a little threatened. What I'm very interested in, as a fan of donghua or Chinese animation is the way that Li Ni, the chief operating officer for Bilibili described the partnership. He said that they quote " look forward to maximizing our mutual advantages through this cooperation and further promoting the globalization of the animation industry." If you know anything about the Chinese animation industry then you may know how rare it is for the titles to receive an official global release or even English subtitles. The King's Avatar for example released officially on Tencent Video's YouTube channel thanks to a partnership with Bayi subs, a fan subbing group and the occasional untouched release such as 2016's Big Fish and Begonia which got a global release in 2018. More recently Tencent animation have begun releasing some of their works on a brand new YouTube channel with so far little success compared to fansubbing groups. The best scenario in recent years have been Haoliners who have had their Japanese based Studio Emon release Japanese localized versions of their animated series which also make it to the west on crunchyroll but these are often heavily edited and dont always carry the same weight as their Chinese counterparts. With Bilibili partnering up with funimation its possible that we could be about to see an explosion of Chinese animation released in the west with official translations and possibly even English dubs available. Bilibili hold the rights to several valuable IPs and most noteworthy of all recently released 2019's White Snake a critically acclaimed animated movie that so far has only an English subtitled trailer with no mention of when or how they plan to globally release this movie. So yes, as a donghua fan this is absolutely incredible news which could suggest a great step forward for Chinese animation reaching a global audience. As an anime fan I'm not too fussed by this as it likely simply means more anime making it to hulu instead of crunchyroll or Amazon and I already have subscriptions to all 3. But I want to hear what you guys think about this news in the comments below! I've already seen some anime fans worried that this would mean more censored versions of anime in line with China's hard stance on certain topics and even worries that Bilibili will use funimation to get more control in the industry then either take them over or cut them out. Personally I dont know. Funimation's deals with other companies often only last a short number of years then they switch strategies so this may just be a way to price out Crunchyroll and Netflix for a little while as each of those companies are already investing in their own separate animation ventures. As I said as a donghua fan I'm ecstatic and as an anime fan I just think any way of getting more cashflow into the industry and hopefully in the hands of overworked and underpaid animators is a good thing but i want to hear from you guys down below! If you're interested in donghua or Chinese animation consider subscribing to the channel and sticking around as i generally make reviews, analysis and occasionally news videos involving that fandom here. Either way thank you for watching till the end, and I will see you guys next time.
