Crunchyroll and Adult Swim’s Toonami block are two of the most popular places to watch anime stateside — so it makes sense that they’d want to partner up, big time. The streaming service and cable channel have announced that they’re collaborating to bring more licensed and original anime to TV, solidifying the team as two of the biggest anime distributors stateside.
Adult Swim and Crunchyroll are in a good position to do that. In a news release, the pair report 94 million households and 47 million users reached, respectively. But more obviously, the partnership is a natural move because of the platforms’ shared parent company. Crunchyroll recently joined the WarnerMedia umbrella, which also includes Adult Swim. Just last week, the company announced that it had restructured, grouping its various animation-related brands together. That makes Adult Swim and Crunchyroll live in the same WarnerMedia division now — in simpler terms, they’re neighbors. Very friendly neighbors.
What this means for viewers is that we can expect to see more Crunchyroll-licensed programs appear on Adult Swim, like the recently aired Mob Psycho 100, as well as original series. The first of that is the upcoming Blade Runner anime spinoff, Blade Runner — Black Lotus, which the pair announced was in the works last year. It will stream on Crunchyroll and air on Adult Swim, with Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe at the helm.
Expect more existing properties to inspire Adult Swim and Crunchyroll’s future anime, according to Crunchyroll’s general manager, Joanne Waage.
“The whole goal is to grow the love for the genre, right,” she told Polygon last month, “and there are many ways to do that. One of those ways is by working with content that people know and love that fits within one of the rungs that’s close to and around anime, where we believe there will be a strong crossover.”
Blade Runner fits into that niche, but Waage declined to name others. Time to start pitching your own ideas in the comments.