Sony’s Investment In Bilibili Could Provide A Pipeline Of Anime Into Funimation

 

 

 

A video sharing platform with over 30 million registered users, trading on the New York Stock Exchange, and continues to make investments in original content, and I’m willing to be you’ve never heard of Bilibili aka “B”? It’s OK, but now you have, and the China-based platform has just received a $400 million investment from Sony to create new original animated content and a bunch of other intellectual property that could not only service it’s existing Chinese market, but international as well.

Enter Funimation. The US-based streaming service has been hit hard by production delays caused by COVID-19, but is soldiering on with a promising Spring 2020 lineup that will hopefully come to fruition sooner rather than later. The company was purchased by Sony last year which has certainly caused some to gripe, but this new partnership could be a way for the streamer to further differentiate itself from other anime platforms like it’s ex-wife Crunchyroll and even Netflix by increasing the number of original Chinese-produced titles that would be English-dubbed and make it’s way on over to American audiences much in the same way the Lion Forge Animation deal with Starlight is going to.

If this were to come to pass, Netflix and Crunchyroll would be at a disadvantage because both are seen as competitors of Bilibili in China (you can’t even get Netflix in China) which doesn’t bother Sony because they want international distribution deals and even IP for original gaming that could feed it’s upcoming Playstation 5 console. This deal could change things. HiDive is already starting to divest itself into just Japanese productions as the are doing an English dubbed adaptation of Future Folktales, a family-friendly offering that is a co-production with Saudi Arabia’s Manga Productions and Toei that, in the future, could have similar ramifications. Adult animation from Saudi Arabia is already showing up on Netflix today, just not in English dubbed format as of yet.

More as it develops.