I suspect that with the consolidation of players in the anime streaming and merchandise spaces in the west, we will see western values increasingly pushed into the medium, as many voices are unified into fewer bigger ones with increasing financial influence.<p>I'm not particularly excited for this as the big players have already demonstrated themselves to be conservative and censorious when it suits in other areas. I think we're on the edge of the hollywood-ization of the medium. Crunchyroll has already been apparently involved in the production of a bunch of programmes, and was directly responsible for High Guardian Spice, which I think few people have anything nice to say about.
Hmm.<p>A lot of my favorite anime still come in from Hidive / Sentai Filmworks. I really enjoyed "Ya Boy Kongming" for example. And Sentai Filmworks are the current owners of When they Cry (2006) and Fate/Stay (2006).<p>I'm definitely worried about consolidation wiping out the competition. Then again, I hope people can give Hidive / Ya Boy Kongming a try. Its basically an idol anime crossed with Chinese Romance-of-the-Three-Kingdoms / Zhuge Liang as the manager, and my favorite anime this year so far. Give the first episode a try, there's ~3 songs in there. If the songs match your musical tastes, you'll probably enjoy the show. And yes, that's a Liu Bei reference. (Liu Bei visits Zhuge Liang 3 times before the young tactician agrees to join Liu Bei's cause. This parallel's young Eiko's journey as an idol, as she sings three times before Zhuge Liang is convinced to help her). Its actually an excellent mix of subtle Three Kingdoms stories with a good idol anime.<p>Crunchyroll/Funimation merging, and Sony/Aniplex all being involved here is convenient for sure, I like a lot of what they do. But anime has a lot of niches, and one mega-company will inevitably have blind spots over time. Most of my favorites are in Crunchyroll / Funimation and even Aniplex (Ex: Oddtaxi, Madoka, Dragonball Z/Super).
I'm old enough to have ordered anime from their catalog, back when your choices for Anime were driving to a big city that had a specialty store, getting it from a catalog, or copying fansubs on VHS tapes.<p>[edit]<p>I forgot "random anime tapes that got thrown in the children's section of your pre-blockbuster VHS rental store." as another way to find anime.