Funimation is shutting down — and taking your digital library with it

Funimation is shutting down on April 2nd, 2024. The anime streaming service will start migrating existing subscribers to Crunchyroll — a move that will not only affect subscription prices, but will also wipe digital libraries.

A support page on Funimation’s website says the service will automatically transfer existing subscribers to Crunchyroll, noting that the transfer “may vary depending on your specific payment platform, subscription type and region.” But the page — unhelpfully — doesn’t say how much subscribers will have to pay following the transition, only that legacy subscribers will see a price increase. You’ll have to check your email to see how much you’ll have to pay.

Screenshot by Emma Roth / The Verge

Since I’m a legacy subscriber, my price is going up. Instead of paying $5.99 per month for the Funimation Premium Plus plan I was grandfathered into, I’ll have to pay $9.99 per month for Crunchyroll’s Mega Fan plan. (For some reason, my email lists my new price as $12.49 Canadian, which is how much Canadian users have to pay for the Mega Fan plan.)

I’m not the only one getting a price increase, either. In a post on X, one user says they’ll see their yearly subscription price go from $54.95 to $99.99. However, the user notes that they were also grandfathered into an older Funimation plan, which is why the price hike is so steep. Another user on the same legacy plan as me will also see the same jump from $5.99 to $9.99 per month. We’ve reached out to Crunchyroll for more clarification about the new prices Funimation subscribers will have to pay but didn’t immediately hear back.

To make matters worse, Crunchyroll won’t support the digital copies redeemed through Funimation. This promotion allowed users to redeem digital copies of a Funimation Blu-ray or DVD they purchased, giving them the ability them to store and view the show or movie through the streaming service. Funimation said users could keep the copies “forever” — but that’s clearly not the case now.

According to Funimation’s support page, Crunchyroll “does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported.” In other words, all those digital copies are going away, too, which is a massive bummer for anyone who purchased — and later sold — eligible DVDs or Blu-rays, hoping to store the digital copies on Funimation forever.

The writing has been on the wall for Funimation for quite some time. When Sony acquired Crunchyroll in 2021, it made plans to combine Crunchyroll and Funimation into a single streaming service. After that, Crunchyroll inherited a huge library of content from Funimation — but Funimation remained online, while still adding episodes of continuing series. We didn’t know when Funimation was going to shut down until now.

If you’re interested in transferring to a Crunchyroll subscription, there are instructions on the support page about how to transfer your watch history and queue. As for myself, I’m likely going to cancel my subscription. The only reason why I kept Funimation was because I’m on a legacy $5.99 per month plan — making it the cheapest ad-free streaming service I have amid rising prices across the entire industry. Sure, Funimation’s playback controls and UI aren’t all that great, but I’ll miss using the app to get my fill of nostalgia from Dragon Ball Z or to catch up with new episodes of My Hero Academia.