Like everything in the anime industry, Sony (via Crunchyroll) went on a buying spree and in 2022 they got absorbed into CR.
But if I'm understanding Wikipedia correctly, someone relaunched it just this year.
I REALLY hope they start printing Blu-rays again and not just manga. Kazé made some of the best anime blu-rays out there without them being too overpriced.
Unfortunately I doubt it though, since manga is where all the money is.
Their blu-ray releases were seriously the best. A lot of their discs were also "transparent".
I have no clue how they did it since discs work by reflecting light off the underside of the label. They probably used some kind of special coating that would reflect the wavelengths needed by the laser, but let other light through the disc.
Regardless of how they did it, it was cool as hell.
They used to come with a bunch of specials, have properly stylized menus, often featuring some animation and an instrumental of the anime opening or something.
No longer. Around 2020-2022 Crunchyroll bought and dissolved their competing publishers like Manga Entertainment, Funimation and Kazé. Since then the vast majority of Blu-ray releases are Crunchyroll slop, which means the price is high af and it's the laziest blu-ray possible often featuring dead silent menus which were obviously just made with a template and then had its colors changed to match the anime if you're lucky. Exact same as they did with streaming, buy all the competition and take them behind the shed, then crank prices while dropping quality.
The sole exception is AllTheAnime, they still make blu-rays which are at least better than Crunchyroll's. And thank fuck they got Bleach TYBW because I wouldn't want to financially support CR when buying my Bleach blu-rays.
The art of making a decent blu-ray release bascially died 5-ish years ago and it's sad.
I SERIOUSLY don't want blu-ray to die though. I despise what crunchyroll have done to blu-ray releases, but at least they still exist, so it's possible to get a 30+ mbit/s copy of my favorite anime.
If Blu-rays die, most anime would get a 7-ish mbit/s 1080p streaming release with 128-ish kbit audio and that's it, that'd be the highest quality the series would ever be available in.
@quad I kinda wish uhd blu ray didn't fail so hard like it did, now there's basically no chance there would be any actual high quality 4k stuff that's outside of streaming platforms
@norm The DRM sucks, but I think the biggest issue was their unwillingness to ever drop the price. Most consumers don't know how DRM works anyways.
They're still trying to charge like $30 per movie for UHD Blu-ray. Everyone but the snobs would happily chose a $10 DVD or $15 Blu-Ray over a $30 UHD Blu-Ray.
Personally I wouldn't mind UHD Blu-Ray, but the players are still expensive af, besides movies basically zero anime releases in 4K anyways, and hell if i'm paying double or more per disc for it.
@norm From what little I've heard from the AV community the format also sucks. UHD discs apparently like to die faster or not play properly. I don't know how true that is.
But if they're charging twice the price for a format that sometimes doesn't even want to play properly, it's no wonder people don't bother, even the collectors
