Along with being one of the biggest platforms to watch anime, Crunchyroll is also a hub to read manga on your phone or computer. While not as big as say, Shonen Jump, it’s managed to stick around for a little over a decade…which makes it tragic irony to reveal that the service is going to be delisted a full month from now.
Last week, the streamer revealed it would be shutting down and delisting the Crunchyroll Manga app on December 11, and notified users of the change a few days ago. The shut down comes not long after Crunchyroll phased out Right Stuf, the 36-year-old anime storefront which Sony acquired in 2022. While a specific reason for the shut down wasn’t given, Crunchyroll called the move part of its “continuous effort to provide fans with the best experiences surrounding their favorite series. And while it hasn’t revealed what (if anything) will take the app’s place, Crunchyroll’s only alternative thus far is just its own store, where users can buy physical manga.
Crunchyroll’s Manga app first released in October 2013 with only a dozen titles under its name, but chapters would release simultaneously with their Japanese release. The service was largely worldwide—China, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan didn’t have access—and featured works from manga publishers such as Kodansha, Kadokawa Shoten, and Futabasha. The service would later hit a snag with Kodansha in 2018 when it removed a majority of the publisher’s catalogue series, with the sole exception being Fairy Tail. Earlier this year, Kodansha went and released its own manga platform K Manga, which is presently exclusive to the US.
[via Anime News Network]
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