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from the cover of a TOKYOPOP Sneaks sampler

There were two issues that cropped up on Twitter this past Monday that I wanted to address in posts days after the initial discussions. The first involves Crunchyroll’s subscription-only presentation of Fairy Tail, which I will deal with here. The second – FUNimation’s slip-up involving Strike Witches on its video portal – is a more ideological topic that has a longer history so I’ll write about that after more thought and investigation.

The setup is that Crunchyroll announced Monday they would be simulcasting Fairy Tail, the anime adaptation of Hiro Mashima’s manga premiering this month, and then some who were originally happy about the announcement soon discovered a certain string attached: the content would only be available to paying Members of the site due to “other licensing restrictions”. This bucks against the trend of previous simulcasts where subscribers would get a week of exclusive access to the latest episode (many times in 720p), which would then be viewable by regular users.

Framing an anticipated title as a paid exclusive could be seen as an interesting business move intended to drive subscription sign-ups but that would mean Crunchyroll was entirely responsible for that decision, which I doubt. The main Japanese broadcaster for Fairy Tail is TV Tokyo but each episode will also be shown at the same time on TV Aichi and TV Setouchi. TV Tokyo is also the main broadcaster for other popular shonen titles like Bleach (with TV Osaka), Naruto, Keroro Gunsou, and Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s. So since they are in control of many popular titles, it’s not unusual for them to be cautious about how some are handled in other markets.

[Update 10/12 8:50 AM: gia of Anime Vice made a comment reminding me and everyone else that "TV Tokyo was not awarded the digital broadcast rights for Fairy Tail as they have for other titles. As such, Crunchyroll’s acquisition of the license to broadcast them was the result of TVT going out on a limb to procure them for the site." I should have been more diligent in checking her story on the announcement last Monday.]

If you are an intellectual property owner that wants online exposure for their content but not so much that it would sorely impact potential revenues, there are two main ways to accomplish that: limit access by visitor reputation/region and make that access time-sensitive. For example, many shows on Hulu are limited to the last 5 episodes (time limit) and of course, Hulu is currently region-restricted to the US because of licensing deals for shows on the service (visitor restriction).

In the case of Fairy Tail, the first type is the exclusivity for paying Members. Whether there is the second type is unclear and depends on how you interpret “accessible 30 days thereafter”. It could either mean an episode would become available to general visitors after 30 days on exclusivity to subscribers or it could mean that episodes would start expiring after 30 days. The first interpretation is more possible given CR’s general method of doing simulcasts and since the first episode is currently marked to become available to general users at the same time as subscribers; the latter would probably incense more people than are already angered by this. At least the first episode looks like it will be available to regular visitors when it goes live on Monday morning so those walking the free line can see if they will be missing something by not being a subscriber. [Update 10/12 9:03 AM: It's Monday morning and the debut episode is still for only Premium Members, as previously announced. That information on the info page must be incorrect, then.]
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