Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcast featuring conversations about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Tyler Aquilina, a media analyst for Variety Intelligence Platform. Anime or Japanese animation has come a long way in the past few decades. Fans who once had little recourse but bootlegs and piracy to watch their favorite shows are now part of a global community and a twenty billion dollar market that's even more robust internationally than it is in Japan. Perhaps no
company better exemplifies that transformation than Crunchy Role. The Sony owned an anime focused subscription streaming platform which has long been a go to destination for watching Japanese animation stateside. Since launching is essentially an anime piracy site in the mid two thousands, Crunchy Role has grown into a legitimate anime powerhouse, with streaming, theatrical and live events businesses under
its umbrella. Sony acquired the company for one point two billion dollars in twenty twenty one, and since then, Crunchy Role has continued to grow under the leadership of its president, Rahul Parini, who has overseen robust expansion of Crunchy Role into new markets and opportunities. Parini is passionate about the anime business, as you'll see, and has even bigger plans in store for what was once a tiny platform where users would catch fans subtitled episodes of Naruto and Dragon Ball.
Our wide ranging conversation is coming up after the break, we are back with Rahul Parini, the president of Crunchy Role.
Welcome, Thank you, dyler, thank you for me having me here. Looking forward to.
This, Yeah, me too. So, just to start off, can you tell us a little bit about Crunchy Role and your role there.
Yeah, Cunchyroll is a media and entertainment company focused on Japanese anime. Anime is a dynamic storytelling format. It's a medium that comes out of Japan and fans globally love it. And we are part of Sony Pictures Entertainment and I'm president of Country Roll. I've been part of this organization for about nine years. And yeah, it's a amazing medium and fan base that we get to serve. Yeah.
Now, a big part of your business is bringing over these anime series from Japan to the United States market. For those who may not know, can you tell us a little bit about what does that process look like from a business perspective.
Yeah, like you said, most of anime is conceived and created in Japan, and what we are focused on is taking those amazing stories from Japanese creators and bringing them to global audiences. So County Role currently operates in about two hundred countries and territory. So what we do is work with our partners in Japan. We take shows that they create and try to bring them to fans as
soon as they are available in Japan. So majority of our content we work we license from our partners, but we are also working closely with our creative partners in Japan to produce some of the shows. So when those shows get released in Japan, we take them and we subtitled them into ten plus languages, We dub them into ten plus languages, and we try to make them available for our fans globally within an hour of broadcast in Japan.
So it is it is a fast process. There's about fifty to sixty shows that we are bringing to audience every quarter, about two hundred to two hundred and twenty shows a year.
Wow, and has the Sony acquisition made it any easier to do business in Japan. Has that affected how you guys do business over there at all?
Look as Crunchy Role and some of the other companies that are part of Crunchy Role, like Funimation, We've been doing this for about twenty five to twenty eight years now. Funimation was set up originally in the mid nineties and was focused on bringing anime to the So we have very long and deep relationships in Japan that we've fostered and nature for a long time. But yeah, we Fundimation was acquired by Sony Pictures in twenty seventeen, and then
we acquired County Role in twenty twenty one. Sony, as a Japanese company, has a deep, long relationship with the anime community, and so us being part of Sony definitely helps. It gives us a level of credibility. Being being owned by a Japanese company that has been in the anime ecosystem and has supported the ecosystem for a long time gives us a level of credibility. But our relationships are also a long, long term relationship, so both of those help.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I'm curious.
Could you talk a little more about how the anime business has changed in the time that you've been involved with it. Obviously you were at Fundamation, you were heavily involved with that before taking over as president of Country. You know, how has the business of anime and also the culture around anime changed, you know, since you've been involved with it.
Yeah. Look, I think both the business of anime and the impact of anime on the culture itself has been has been massive over the last nine years I've been part of this business. So the popularity of anime has been growing really fast globally, and that combined with the adoption of streaming and the accessibility of anime globally, has
made anime reach a huge number of fans. That combined with if you think about who defines culture in our world, artists, taste, makers of fashion, celebrity sports, personalities and all of a lot of them talk about the impact of anime on who they are and how they approach their craft or who they are as a person. So in that sense, anime has had a huge impact on the culture and continues to have a huge impact on the culture.
Yeah, and also obviously it's expanded a lot. You know, it was very much this looked at as this kind of niche market for such a long time. You know, what has it been like to see anime grow into such a huge international business? I believe now like the international market is bigger than the market for it in Japan, right.
Yeah, for the first time about a year ago, the business done outside of Japan is larger than the anime business within Japan. So absolutely, all right, it's seen a huge growth internationally. Like Look, as you would probably expect me to say, we don't consider anime to be a niche, and if it is a niche, it is a gigantic niche.
We have data and research that shows that there's about eight hundred million anime interested fans globe outside of Japan and China, we have over close to two hundred million people watching anime on official sources in those regions. Netflix released a couple of years ago that at least half of their subscription base washed anime during that period, so that's more than one hundred million plus, So it is it is huge in numbers. There's it's a big community.
Like Polygon just released some data from their research that showed that forty two percent of gen Z watches anime weekly, which is more than some juggernauts in media like NFL. It's only twenty five percent of gen z watch, right, So all of that to say, it's no longer a niche. It is a its mainstream, it's really popular and it continues to grow, right Like, so we're excited. I think we expected to grow to be much bigger.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm curious about how you're expanding, you know, both Crunchy roles as a subscription streaming platform, but also kind of as a broader flywheel. Can you talk about some of the areas where you're growing the business.
Yeah. So internally we say we don't want to be something for everyone. We want to be everything for someone, and that someone for us, is the anime fan. So our mission is to surround the anime fan and service them across their fandom. So we want to create amazing
experience where however they want to exhibit their fandom. And so obviously streaming and our subscription service is a huge touch point for us with our fans, and it is it makes anime accessible for fans worldwide, and so it's a really important piece in our connection with the fans.
Theatrical is another important piece of anime fans love to watch movies on the big screen with their friends and family, see these amazing visuals on a big screen, and we are we continue to lean into bringing more movies for our fans globally. At the same time, we also have games that are based on anime anime IP anime shows and that's something that we are continuing to invest in
and lean into. E Commerce is another channel, so fans as they want to collect figures or other memorabilia from their favorite shows or buy apparel to where to demonstrate their fandom, we give them opportunity to do that on our store, on our e commerce shop and similar lyric whether it's consumer product, goods or events. We try to serve the fans however they want to exhibit their fandom, and look, we are seeing growth across all of those channels.
Fans truly want to demonstrate their fandom. However, they can essentially literally where their fandom on their sleeve. So it's amazing to see these fans connect with those characters and show their fandom how they do.
Yeah, now do you think kind of all those different revenue streams and opportunities to kind of bring people into the ecosystem. Do you think that has helped you guys kind of avoid some of the pitfalls that the broader streaming landscape has seen over the last couple of years.
Look, look, I think the flywheel strategy, as you say, having these mix of touch points with fans has definitely been a differentiator for us. It's been a strategic priority. We know it has helped us connect with fans and have a longer term connection and relationship with our fans because of that approach, it has helped us address some of our retention and churn churned goals, which are major
factors for most of streaming platforms. So yes, that the approach has definitely been a differentiator for us and continues to allow us to expand or reach with fans. Yeah.
Yeah, tell us a little bit more about your audience maybe from the streaming perspective. You know, how do you describe your subscribers in terms of their viewing habits, their behavior in terms of churn and other patterns.
Like I said, anime is a very dynamic medium and there is something for every fan In anime, there's multiple genres and so there is something for everyone. Our research shows that there is everybody from gen Z and Gen Alpha two boomers who are watching anime. But in general, anime fans tend to be young. Like I said, forty two percent of gen Z watch weekly. There's another twenty five percent of millennials that watch weekly, So the anime fans tend to be younger. They are also very diverse.
African American, Hispanic and Asian American fans tend to over index then general population within the fan community anime fan community, so they are very diverse. There again to the question around their watch patterns and behavior, highly engaged, very passionate. They like to watch shows as soon as they're available, so it's not surprising for us to see a large spike in fans streaming at two am in the morning when their favorite show just launches. That's very typical. Again,
like I said, they're very engaged. So on average we see thousand minutes a month, and that's the average across the globe. And you know there are fans that are watching twenty plus hours every week, so it is a very engaged fan base in terms of patterns and viewing behaviors. There's a lot of similarity in fans across the globe and how they watch and what they watch. But there's
also a lot of differences, right. For example, fans in India love to watch action and adventure and fantasy shows, whereas fans in France are more open to art house and experimental shows.
So that happens in France often.
I think they're definitely more open to that kind of thing. And we see similar things across the world, whether it is Latin America or the US, and that's what makes this fun, right, Like, we we get to serve a very similar but audience that has very unique tastes across the world.
Yeah, you mentioned India. I know you. You personally have really spearheaded a big expansion for country role in India. He tells about why that market specifically and what those expansion plans look like over there.
Yeah. So India is the second largest anime market in terms of anime interest and anime watching outside of Japan and China. Only US has more anime interested fans in terms of true numbers absolute numbers outside of India, And for US it was a white space. We weren't there. There weren't many players serving that audience, so there was
a real demand for anime in that community. There were there fans were eager to get an official service to UH serve them, serve them, and so we took that opportunity to be there and serve that audience in India. Like you said, we announced a big push about a year and a half ago, we launched our service with
a catalog focused on that. We announced localization efforts where we started not only sub subtitling into several languages in India, but also dubbing our shows into Hindi, Telugu and Tamil and all of those have been very well received in the market, and I think our plans continue to do more things like that, like we are making more content available for our fans simultaneously with other across the global our global service, we are trying to localize more content
to that to different parts of India. As you know, there's a lot of multiple languages in India and fans like to watch dubbed shows dubbed into their own language, so we're trying to localize more content. We also have announced a partnership with a couple of fairly popular Bollywood celebrities that are really big anime fans. Tiger schaff and Rushimi Kamandana, who who are really big advocates and big fans of anime, and we've partnered with them to bring
Crunchy Role and more anime to fans in India. Very cool.
You know you mentioned piracy, which I think is so tied up in the history of anime's global expansion. You know, like US fans used to have to had basically no recourse but piracy to find some of these shows. What strategies I think? You also mentioned the statistic that like, there's eight hundred million anime fans worldwide, but only two
hundred million are watching on legitimate sources. Obviously, it's it's one thing to expand into a place like India where there is no legal avenue to watch these shows, but how are you combating and fighting piracy in markets where the legitimate sources is already available.
Yeah. Look, piracy and an official sources of anime is a big component of anime watching for fans globally. Anime has been popular for a long time, but fans weren't able to access it until recently when streaming became a really viable option for fans. So piracy was the way where fans were watching these shows. For a long time. From our perspective, what we are focused on is convenience
for fans. We want to make a service that is convenient, that gives the fans the ability to watch their favorite shows as soon as they watch however they want to watch it, whether it is subtitled into their favorite language, dubbed into their favorite language, on their favorite device, whether it is mobile or gaming console or a smart TV,
and however they want to structure the experience. So our focus is on making this content available as soon as possible in whatever language they want, and as convenient as possible at a very comparative price. And we believe that is the strategy that is going to allow us to make this much more compelling and attractive to fans. To switch to an official source rather than using an official sources is.
Kind of expanding ways to kind of funnel people into that also part of that, I know last year you guys expanded into the fast space, which is to say, free ad supported streaming. What are some of the opportunities there, and is that you know, another way to kind of reel people in who might not other way otherwise be there.
Yeah, last year we announced that we were launching a twenty four seven ADS supported linear channel. It's available on most Fast platforms in the US now. Recently it also was made available on Pluto TV, and our strategy and approach with that is to make this content and anime
available to casual anime fans where they are. As you know, Fast is a really emerging sizeable distribution channel to reach audience, and so we want to tap into that distribution mechanism to be able to put anime in front of fans in a curated way that we can introduce it to them, allow them to experience it in a quick, easy way, and if then they want a deeper connection or deeper experience, they can come to Country Roll for that deeper experience.
And that's the that's the strategy. So we're seeing we're seeing fans engage with our Fast channel really really well on those platforms, and we're excited to see what we can do more and how we can attract them into our ecosystem. Yeah.
Yeah, it's maybe easier to just catch an episode of Cowboy Bebop or something and be like, oh, that looks cool. What is that rather than just seeing this huge array of you know, posters in front of you, it'd be like, which one do I pick?
Yeah? Like, look, I think like with any streaming service, there is so much content. Consumers have a hard time with discovery, right, and it's the same thing with anime. We have a lot of shows, a lot of different genres, and I think our idea is with a fast channel, we can curate an experience that makes it easy and convenient for fans to get in and try this, and if they like it, they can go have a deeper experience within our subscription service.
Yeah, yeah, for sure, to talk a little bit more about that subscription business. You know, I'm curious, you know, as you said, obviously, if anime is a niche, it's a very large niche. But how do you view the position of streamers like crunchy Role that serve a particular specific interest in this media landscape where you know, companies only seem to get bigger and business modelsers seem to
be more about offering all things to all people. You know, how do you see you know, platforms like crunchy Roll kind of fitting into the landscape like that.
Like I said earlier, we're trying to be everything for someone, right, and that focus gives us an advantage. We know we're not going to be the first subscription service for a consumer or a household. What we are trying to be is that second or third subscription service. So if you're an anime fan, we want to add so much value that we would be that second subscription service or third
subscription service. So from that perspective, we're not really competing with a general entertainment service because we know our fans will have a general entertainment service as an option because where they get their entertainment, but they come to us for their anime connection, right, And so that that focus and that clarity in terms of where we fit in our fans entertainment ecosystem gives tells us that we're not we're not really competing for the same thing as a
general entertainment services.
Yeah, it's interesting though, like those general entertainment services are starting to move more into the anime space. I mean, Netflix has for a long time been putting more animations on this platform. It feels like as that market continues to expand, you'll see more companies like Disney trying to
get into that. You know, how do you see that is there an opportunity there with general entertainment services getting more into anime, is there an opportunity for you guys or is that just going to create more competition for titles.
Yeah, look, there is definitely an interest to serve this fan base. As this fan base gross, general entertainment companies have worked hard to find content to serve them. So, yes, we compete for content with all of those players, but we think it is good for anime and anime community that these large services have anime content and make them
available to large sets of audience. Right because if somebody gets introduced to anime and they want a deeper or a broader experience, then they come to a CERT's like crunch Role for that broader experience. So we believe it is actually good for anime and anime community that these services offer some anime and are introducing anime to fans. I think overall it is good and I think those fans that want that deeper experience will then come to crunturrole.
We work with some of these general entertainment services. We've had we've licensed content to some of them. We've licensed content to linear channels like Cartoon Network because we know our fans are there, and if we can get them to experience a show or experience anime, then some of them will become anime fans and come to Crunch role. Yeah.
I was going to ask about that because licensing TV shows is really back in vogue now. You know, you're seeing all these companies loan out more titles to Netflix. Obviously, Sony County Rule's parent never really stopped playing in that space. There's been a lot written about them as a kind of a content arms dealer. Do you see you guys expanding that strategy or how robust is that strategy for you guys already?
Yeah, Like, like you said, it is back in work, but it is something that we've been doing for a long time, right. We want to we want to attract fans, meet fans where they are, and attract them into our ecosystem from that touch point. So we've been doing this for a while. Like I mentioned, we've licensed content to streaming services and OTT platforms as well as linear networks as well, because if as fans experience that anime, we know that they will come to us for a deeper experience.
It continues to be a very strategic and intentional approach for us, We do look at how much content at what window and when to license and how that would then allow us to connect with a new group of fans and how to bring them back into our ecosystem. So it is a priority, is something that we do very intentionally in a strategic way.
Yeah, what do you think of this trend of these live action adaptations of anime? I mean Netflix is really leaning into this. Their Cowboy Bebop adaptation was, shall we say, not a great success, but One Piece has really taken off for them.
You know.
Is is that another opportunity to just draw in more, more, more people into the anime tent. What do you think about that?
Yeah, Like, look, anime has great, great stories, and I think live action is another great medium to bring those stories and to a much wider audience. So yeah, we think it's great that broader fan bases get to enjoy these stories in whatever format and so and it also helps anime. So we saw like when like you mentioned, Netflix released their One Piece live action, a lot of
fans came to Country Roll to watch the One Piece anime. Right, and we know the popular the original series, the merchandise up One Piece all had a halo effect from that. So I think it's good for the IP, it's good for the ecosystem that these live action shows are made and not successful and enjoyed by fans.
More from Corunchry Role President Rahul Parini. After this break, and we're back with Crunchy Role President Rahul Parini. We've touched on this a bit, but I'd just like to get a little bit more of your thoughts about you know, obviously it's a very challenging environment for streaming right now and for the media business at large. But you know, you guys have really had a big success story of the last couple of years. You know, you've expanded your
subscriber base, you've expanded to different businesses. A Goldman Sachs analyst last year estimated that I believe by twenty twenty eight, crunchy Roll will account for thirty six percent of all profit at Sony's Picture segment, which is very impressive. You know, what do you attribute that success to and can you talk at all about you know, how profitable the business.
Is As you said, like there's been the entertainment business has been going through a disruption for a while now. Between that and the pandemic, there have been a lot
of external pressures. But one thing about anime is while we saw some disruption during the pandemic to the production side of anime, given that most of this production happens in Japan, the disruption wasn't for a long time and it wasn't very impactful, right Like, so shows continue to get produced, and on our side, we very quickly figured out how to continue to localize and dub shows even
during the pandemic, So I think that was helpful. So we had content coming through even those through the pandemic period that we were able to make available to our fans.
And during that time there was also adoption and move towards streaming a lot within within the audience and within consumers, and so those all all have helped the growth of anime in general, right But at the same time, I think to our discussion earlier, our approach or flywheel approach has helped us stay focused on this or serving this audience and continue to build deep, long relationships with them,
and that has also helped helped our growth. So we just announced that we crossed thirteen million paying subscribers globally, and that has only that's been a strong growth for us last year. We are part of Sunny Pictures Entertainment. We don't release our financials separately, but I can tell tell you that we've been profitable and continue to be profitable. So and all of that is I think all based on our singular focus on serving this fan base and our differentiated flywheel strategy. Yeah.
So speaking of that flywheel strategy, we focused a lot on streaming. But I don't want to neglect your theatrical business. You know, anime films have really formed one of the few consistent bright spots in the post COVID theatrical landscape. I know, his Funnimation was behind the Demon Slayer Moogan Train film, which was a big success story in twenty twenty one. You know, Boy and the Heron, which you guys didn't release, but that was, you know, a pretty
big success story recently. Did you guys been for that film.
By the way, Yeah, So The Boy and Hearn is a Jibili studios. It's a Miyazaki film film. We did actually release the movie in Australia because we had a relation. We have had a long relationship with Jibli Studios in Australia. But they have partner in other world, in other parts of the world that they work with and have worked with for a long time, so they continue to work with those partners in other regions.
Yeah, yeah, I was just curious. But you know, I think we've talked a lot about how passionate the fan base is. Are there any other factors that you think you can attribute the success of anime films at the box office too?
Yeah. Like I said earlier, fans love to watch their favorite shows and favorite characters on a big screen with their friends and with their family. It's an experience, it's an event for them. Anime it just looks. Those visuals look amazing on a big screen, and so I think
that's a big part of it. The other part of it is, like you mentioned, there have been some amazing movies that have come out recently, whether it be from whether it be originals from Masters like Shinkai's Suzume or Mayazaki Is The Boy and the Hern but also from theatrical releases from major ip like Demon Slayer and so great movies an amazing experience on a big screen. Also, with our priority has been making these experiences, making them actually an experience and an event for fans, not just
another movie at the theaters. Right has also made these something that are very attractive to fans. And finally, I would say like, look, we have long relationship with fans around the world. We have over one hundred and sixty million fans in our community that we have a very close relationship that we are talking to every day in social media and other various channels. So when we have these movies, we get to tell them directly that these movies are coming to theaters and encourage them to go
watch these movies. That gives us an advantage, that gives the medium an advantage because we are able to tell a lot of people about these movies and help them go to the theaters and watch these movies. So all of those factors I think have helped in making anime
movies as success at theaters. Like we have ten out of the top twenty anime releases in the U from a box office perspective our country, all releases, and I think all of those factors into why anime movies have been successful at theaters.
Yeah, I know that with those theatrical releases, you guys have spearheaded releases in different territories different markets. Obviously, you've talked about the kind of infrastructure that you guys have in place to get shows subtitled and dubbed very quickly. Can you talk a little bit about what is that process of release, rolling out these films on a global basis? What does that look like. Do you guys oversee all that subtitling and dubbing.
Yeah, so similar to what we do with TV shows. When we bring movies to theaters, we get our assets from our Japanese creators and we actually localize them, so we are subtitling them, we are dubbing them into all the different languages we have to we want to release, and getting the assets ready for a theatrical release. The other thing, as I mentioned, we are part of the
Sony Pictures Entertainment. Sony Pictures, a major Hollywood studio, has been bringing movies to theaters for hundred plus years, so we have access to that experience, expertise, and infrastructure. So we are we partner with our Sony Pictures Entertainment colleagues to distribute these movies domestically and internationally, So we are leveraging the experience and the expertise they have to bring
these movies to theaters, so that's an advantage. So that allows us to take these movies on a wider theatrical release, bring them to more theaters globally, bring them to a lot more large format screens globally, and a lot more countries than we can ourselves. So all of those are a priority for us, and we are leaning into bring more movies to more countries and more fans globally.
Yeah. Yeah, we spoke earlier about, you know, disruption in the industry. Another big disruptor that you know everybody seems to be talking about constantly is AI. I'm curious to get your thoughts on what the potential impact of AI might be on the anime industry. I think, you know, it's easy to see applications for stuff like subtitling and dubbing and that kind of thing. Can you talk about what the impact of that might look like.
Yeah, Like, like you said, AI is going to be a huge impact across the various industries. Our partners in Japan are experimenting and looking into what that means for anime production. But anime is a very is hand drawn still, and it's a very age old traditional creative process. So I'm sure there will be impact, but it is early days to understand what the impact would be on the production side of anime. Like you said, we are also looking to see what role AI could play in a
lot of different worthless within our organization. Subtitling is an area where we've been experimenting and we think that there is a role for AI to play as we look at speech speech to text, so we think it could help us bring shows to fans quicker, bring in more languages. Again,
like I said, we are in early experimentation. On the other side, on the dubbing side, I think that the AI technology, we don't believe the air technology is there yet in terms of being able to put into dubbing, because the dubbing process itself is a very creative process. Given that it is we're not just translating and dubbing, we're adapting the script because you have to localize for the local culture, local humor, you have to synchronize the lip laps to the language because we don't get to
go back and reanimate the shows. So again, we don't think the technology is there yet, but we're also experimenting with AI in other ways. As I mentioned earlier. Discovery is a big issue, just as much in anime as
it is in other general entertainment shows. There is a lot of content and trying to connect audience with the right content that they would like to watch at the right time is a big is an important priority for us, and we believe AI and generative AI could play a role, so we're testing and experimenting there as well.
Yeah, just quickly, I'd like to talk just a little bit more about and again this is something we've kind of touched on, but just other expansion opportunities that you see for the larger Crunchy Roll Flywheel.
Yeah, like I said, sword and theatrical our big touch points with our fans and they continue to grow for us. But we are serving fans in various other ways that they like to exhibit their anime fandom. An example would be games. There's anime fans love to play games. There is a huge overlap between the gaming audience and the anime audience, so we are bringing anime games to our
fans globally. We just launched our new free to play game one punch Man World, last week, but we also announced late last year launching a new subscription benefit for our subscribers called Crunchy Role Game Volt where we make free to play games available for our subscribers of our Mega and Ultimate here. So that's another important priority. We want to make sure that we are bringing amazing games for our fans across the board. We also, like I said,
e commerce is a priority. Uh. Fans love to show their fandom by collecting memorabilia, figures, or apparel that they can wear and show off their fandom, and so we're continuing to grow our e commerce reach both here in US and also internationally. Events is another big thing. Fans like to gather in a place and celebrate their fandom, meet other fans, learn about new shows coming, meet creators from Japan. So we are going to be attending and
meeting fans at more events globally. We are also bringing an Countyl Anime Award to Tokyo again this year that will be on March second. That is a way for us to be able to connect anime fans globally with creators in Japan. And I love anime fans to recognize and celebrate their favorite shows from the past year. So yeah, again, various touch points across the Flywheel that we believe are going to be important for fans, and we're continuing to invest and grow those channels.
Yeah, I know, Studio Ghibli opened a theme park in Japan a few years ago. Is that our theme parks anything you guys are thinking about at all?
We don't have theme parks, but some of our IP are at theme parks, So we're always looking at opportunities where we can take some of the IP that's popular at country Hall and make them available for fans to enjoy at theme parks worldwide. Cool.
One final fun question for any of our listeners who may be looking to get into anime, can you recommend maybe two or three titles that they might enjoy just as a starting point.
Yeah. Like I said, there is a show for every fan. If you like certain shows in general entertainment, I'm sure there are shows that you will enjoy in an anime that are similar or similar of genres. Just to suggest a show, for example, there is a show that I'm watching right now that is really popular with fans that is started in January. It's a show called Solo Leveling. It's based on a Korean manva that we are actually producing with our Sonique colleagues and a production company an Applex.
It's a it's a really it's a really well made show. It's really cool. It's about five episodes, and I would highly recommend that show for anybody that wants to get into anime. Great visuals, great stories. But again, there are a lot of other shows you mentioned. Demon Slayer, Demonslayer is a is an amazing show. In new season from Demon Slayer is going to be out soon, so I would highly recommend fans go catch up on the previous shows,
previous seasons of Demon's Layer. Yeah, and a lot of some classics, so your Dragonball, dragon Ball Z, One Piece, Cowboy Bebop or some of the classics that I watched when I was young and getting into anime originally and still are some of my favorite shows.
Great. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you Tyler again, thank you for having time. I really enjoyed this.
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