On August 4, Crunchyroll – a division of the Sony Corporation - announced that they had purchased anime eCommerce store Right Stuf International. The purchase will widen Crunchyroll's eCommerce product offerings in home entertainment and manga. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Right Stuf confirmed on their website that they will continue to sell products from various anime companies with the exception of "erotica products". The website address will remain the same for the time being.This is the second major acquisition Crunchyroll has made in the past couple of years, with their acquisition of Funimation having been cleared in the past year. Right Stuf International is one of the most well-known eCommerce sites that deals almost exclusively with anime, manga, JPop, and figurines, so there are obviously a lot of questions from fans about what will (and what will not) be changing in the near future.
What will Happen with Adult Products?
One of the products Right Stuf International is known for is its ‘adult products.’ This usually comes in the form of erotica or hentai. In the past, the website made it so that people had to have an account and un-filter the searches to be able to search for the products. One of the first decisions to be made is that adults-only content will no longer be sold on the store. Almost immediately the site was scrubbed of such products (including Right Stuf’s own steelbook release of Interspecies Reviewers, which they released after Funimation famously pulled the series from Funimation Now after three episodes for violating their "codes and standards").
To handle adult material, a new website called EroAnimeStore.com is being established, and all future orders of adult content can be made there (though the site currently only has a mission statement posted and no actual listings). Despite the promise to honor existing deals with partners, not all of Right Stuf’s partners were consulted, and the CEO of FAKKU made it publicly known how blindsided his company felt by the news:
Regardless, all current adult orders will be fulfilled, and the new site will be launching in the near future, so fans of those types of products will have to keep an eye on that.
Will Crunchyroll’s Store Shut Down (And what Happens to their Discounts)?
There has been no announcement on what will happen to the Crunchyroll store, but it’s hard to imagine that Right Stuf won’t be incorporated into the main website in some way or another. Questions about whether Crunchyroll subscriber discounts will carry over to Right Stuf discounts (or if Right Stuf’s Got Anime? members will be able to use their discount on Crunchyroll) are also unknown.
Chances are one service will be decided upon and users of the discontinued one will automatically be transferred to the new service. Officially speaking though, the official word is that both the Right Stuf International and Crunchyroll stores will continue to operate separately “for the moment.”
What Happens to Nozomi Entertainment Anime Licenses?
Nozomi Entertainment – the Right Stuf division that has released anime like Emma and the various Gundam series – is currently in a state of limbo. It remains to be seen if Crunchyroll uses their company to dub and release future anime or if the division simply goes away. As for their anime, Crunchyroll is “evaluating their contracts” in regards to how they will release them. This means they must look over their contracts and see what rights they have in how the series is distributed or even if they are allowed to stream the properties at all (some Japanese companies have a “change of ownership” clause, in which licenses revert back to the original rights' holder if a company ends up being acquired).
For what its worth, the Nozomi Entertainment Twitter account tweeted about the news when it hit:
Is There Anything Else to Know?
With the acquisition of Right Stuf International, CEO Shawn Kleckner and his team will be joining Cruncyroll’s Emerging Business organization, which is led by Terry Li. Speaking on the acquisition Kleckner said:
For 35 years, Right Stuf’s mission has been to connect anime fans with the products they love. Joining forces with Crunchyroll allows us to accelerate and scale this effort more than ever before. There has never been a more exciting time to be an anime fan than today!
Otherwise, no other announcements were made. The company did promise that “more information would come,” but for the time being the biggest immediate change was removing the adult content from the website. Fans will have to stay tuned to see what other announcements are made in regards to the store, Nozomi Entertainment brand, and which discount service Crunchyroll ultimately decides to stick with.