A new report of Bloomberg has brought to light a mystery that has been around the fans of “Dandadan”: Why Crunchyrol practically ignored the anime even though it was a resounding success? The series, based on Yukinobu Tatsu's manga, debuted this year and devastated Netflix, becoming the second non -English series more seen on the platform. With such a potential, it was logical to think that Crunchyroll – the anime giant – was going to take advantage of the hype. But no, they hardly promoted it.
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According to an internal filtered mail, the senior vice president of Crunchyroll, Markus Gerdemann, told his team to avoid doing too much noise with Dandadan. The reason? “Ongoing discussions about acquisitions.” What does that mean? No one knows it with certainty, but everything indicates that there were negotiations behind the scenes that made Crunchyroll decide not to bet strongly on the series.
If this already sounds weird, the worst thing is that Crunchyrol stopped talking about “dandadan” since mid -October (shortly after its premiere). Throughout its issuance, there was not a single post on social networks, as if the anime did not exist. They only mentioned it again on December 21, when the series ended and the second season was announced.
If this were an isolated case, maybe nobody would say anything. But the truth is that Crunchyroll has already put the leg before with its marketing. For example, in San Diego Comic-Con, they organized a special concert of “One Piece”, and the idea was that the series of the series would sail through the Bay of San Diego. Sounds epic, right? Well, it was not, because they forgot to illuminate it well and most people could not even see it.
This is where we enter speculation. The “acquisition discussions” could mean many things, but a strong theory is that Crunchyrol was negotiating with Netflix. Maybe they wanted a part of the cake with “Dandadan”, or maybe there was something at stake with other licenses. And since they did not have a closed treatment, they decided not to promote it so as not to benefit their competition.
The problem is that this strategy could have been a shot in the foot. Netflix dominated the audiences with “Dandadan”, and Crunchyroll was as if one of the most promising anime of the year did not care. With Disney and Netflix more and more involved in the world of anime, many fans begin to wonder if Crunchyrol is losing ground in the industry that they themselves helped to make global. Was it a risky strategy? A carafal error? Or simply Crunchyroll knows what it does lately?
Fountain: Bloomberg
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