Absence, Disappearance, and Obfuscation: Contouring the US

Anime Market through the Nonpresences in Crunchyroll's Yaoi

Catalog

K. T. Wong

The Velvet Light Trap, Number 86, Fall 2020, pp. 3-15 (Article)

Published by University of Texas Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/765110

[ Access provided at 10 Jun 2023 20:14 GMT with no institutional affiliation ]

 ABSENCE, DISAPPEARANCE,
AND OBFUSCATION
Contouring the US Anime Market through
the Nonpresences in Crunchyroll’s Yaoi Catalog
BY K. T. WONG

ABSTRACT
This article uncovers how the distribution of yaoi anime in the United States, in the
specific context of streaming services, could be affected by and is reflective of shift-
ing market conditions. Specifically, I study how a selection of yaoi anime are com-
pletely or partially withheld from circulation on Crunchyroll due to licensing issues
and censorship, creating what I call “nonpresences” in Crunchyroll’s yaoi catalog.
Through translating these nonpresences into readable information, I illuminate how
Crunchyroll as a niche distributor is affected by the disruptive presence of conglom-
erates, the impermanence of streaming licenses, and the constraints of industry
regulation.

I
N O C TO B E R 2 0 1 8 , C R U N C H Y R O L L , A U S - B AS E D V I D E O S T R E A M I N G S E RV I C E T H AT F O C U S E S O N

anime, announced that it has over two million paid subscribers globally, in addition to its forty
million registered (but nonpaying) users.1 More impressive, Crunchyroll has doubled its pay-
ing user base in less than two years, since it reportedly aggregated more than one million paid
subscribers in February 2017.2 In truth, Crunchyroll’s revenue numbers pale in comparison to
those of streaming giants such as Netflix, which boasts over sixty million subscribers in the United
States alone as of April 2019.3 But for a video streaming service that focuses solely on a niche
medium, this is a significant achievement that indicates the transnational popularity of anime.
In fact, Crunchyroll was one of the top ten US subscription video services in 2016, based on the
number of subscribers in the country, according to the market research company Parks Associ-
ates.4 Hence, it can be said that Crunchyroll is the equivalent of Netflix in the anime industry and
thus represents a central distribution avenue for anime in the United States.
Given the abundance of content circulating through various digital platforms today, content
producers struggle to get their products to stand out among the sea of competitors, exacerbated
by platforms with open-upload policies such as YouTube. Aymar Jean Christian observes that
“fear of YouTube’s fast pace and openness” in regard to amateur programming during the site’s
early years prompted legacy media companies to create anti-YouTube sites, among which Hulu
emerged as “the most visible ‘YouTube killer.’”5 Hulu’s modest success as a curated streaming
service for professional content even inspired independent sites “to replicate its walled-garden
model.”6 Importantly, Hulu was a pioneer in anime streaming and the go-to site with a huge
back catalog of anime, but it has since repositioned itself as a provider of mainstream content
and only retains the more popular anime titles.7 But Hulu’s validation of anime’s profitability as
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© 2020 by the University of Texas Press NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 3
 streaming content surely paved the way for the emergence
of anime-only streaming services, including Crunchyroll.
Crunchyroll’s business approach as a streaming media
platform that focuses on only anime, at the expense of
general content, is akin to that of cult TV, a mode of pro-
duction that risks “the potential sacrifice of mass audience
through textual and genre markers to address a very specific
audience, one that is notoriously loyal and dedicated in its
fandom,” as described by M. J. Clarke.8 The emergence of
such niche-targeting business models can be traced back to
the proliferation of television networks and channels in the
2000s. “Instead of needing to design programming likely
to be least objectionable to the entire family, broadcast
networks—and particularly cable channels—increasingly
developed programming that might be most satisfying to
specific audience members,” Amanda Lotz explains.9 In
fact, given that US general streaming services are likely to
pick up only more mainstream anime titles, Crunchyroll is
an especially important distribution channel for anime of
niche subgenres such as yaoi, a genre of male homosexual
narratives mainly produced by and for women. At the time
of this writing, Netflix has yet to license or produce any yaoi
anime despite its aggressive investment in Japanese anime
studios as part of its original content strategy since 2017.10
This article examines how the transnational distribution
of yaoi anime from Japan to the United States, in the specific
context of streaming services, can be affected by and is simul-
taneously reflective of the shifting market conditions vital to
the anime industries of both nations. Ramon Lobato notes
that given their power to determine which films will reach
an audience, distributors have the power to “shape public
culture by circulating or withholding texts which have the
potential to become part of shared imaginaries, discourses
and dreams.”11 Lobato’s statement implies that “withhold-
ing” is a process as important as “circulating” in distribution
studies. On this premise, in contrast with most distribution
scholarship, which centers on what gets circulated, I propose
to study how a selection of yaoi anime are completely or
partially withheld from circulation on Crunchyroll, creating
what I call “nonpresences” in Crunchyroll’s yaoi catalog. Such
nonpresences can be subdivided into three types, namely
absence, disappearance, and obfuscation. I aim to uncover
the particular hurdles encountered by titles within the genre,
as a result of their queerness, in their transnational travels
through a globalized market dominated by conglomerates.
4 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NUMBER 86 FALL 2020
Investopedia defines a conglomerate as “a corporation
made up of a number of different, seemingly unrelated
businesses” and further delineates that “taking part in many
different businesses helps a conglomerate’s parent company
cut back the risks from being in a single market.”12 In other
words, anime streaming is not the main avenue through
which conglomerates, including those studied in this article,
generate their revenues. Nevertheless, the overall market
leverage of these conglomerates is so far-reaching that the
shifting conditions in the US anime streaming market can
often be traced back to the actions of these conglomerates,
as this article will attempt to prove. Notably, Crunchyroll
became a subsidiary of WarnerMedia in 2018, which sig-
nifies the streaming service’s complete acquisition by a
conglomerate.13
TRANSNATIONAL QUEERNESS: YAOI ANIME
AS LGBT MEDIA IN THE UNITED STATES
Most scholarship on the yaoi genre tends to focus on the
medium of manga, especially in the Japanese context, and
little analysis has been conducted on yaoi anime. Yaoi narra-
tives emerged in Japan in the early 1970s mainly in the form
of manga and have since become a prevalent genre in con-
temporary Japanese popular media, as observed by Kazumi
Nagaike.14 In fact, the popularity of the yaoi genre extended
beyond Japan in recent years as a result of the transnational
movements of cultural products enabled by globalization.
Dru Pagliassotti, in a study of the strategies adopted by US
publishers to market yaoi manga to US audiences, states that
yaoi manga “has enjoyed widespread popularity across Asia
and is now replicating that popularity in Anglo-European
countries,” including the United States.15 Within journalistic
publications in the United States, the genre is alternatively
referred to as “shonen-ai” or “boys’ love.”16 While these terms
are often used interchangeably, “yaoi” has emerged as the
blanket term for the genre in the United States, as remarked
by Robert Ito in a 2004 report.17 Given the popularity of
the term “yaoi” within the United States and the focus of
my project on the US streaming market, this article will
similarly adopt “yaoi” as the umbrella term that denotes all
works associated with the genre.
In this article, I seek to expand the breadth of research on
yaoi media, as well as the broader queer media, by studying
yaoi anime in the US context from the perspective of industry
studies, using distribution as an analytical lens. In alignment
with Michel Foucault’s aim in The Archaeology of Knowledge,
my project is “an attempt to define a particular site by the
exteriority of its vicinity . . . this blank space from which
[one] speak[s].”18 Because a blank space—or in the context
of this paper a nonpresence—cannot be defined on its own,
I endeavor to contour its exterior by studying records that
contain discourses pertinent to its formation. In particular,
I examine press releases as well as reports from trade presses
and mainstream publications to uncover the significant but
not always apparent influences of conglomerates such as
Amazon and Netflix on the formation of the nonpresences I
suggest. In addition, I analyze Crunchyroll’s forum user posts
in relation to content accessibility via the platform. In her
analysis of the niche streaming service Mubi that caters to
cinephiles, Jennifer Hessler studies the content of the Mubi
social forums as paratexts of online film consumption to
reveal “not only responses to the films themselves but also
manifestations of the way Mubi’s commercial model interacts
with the site’s cinephilic culture.”19 Similarly, I examine the
posts on Crunchyroll’s forum as paratexts of the yaoi anime
analyzed in this article, specifically for the second and third
case studies, to demonstrate the reactions of the site’s users
to Crunchyroll’s failure to make these queer titles accessible
to them.
While yaoi anime possesses medium specificities unique
to its Japanese origin, parallels can be drawn between yaoi
anime and US-produced queer media to better understand
how the former is being distributed and marketed in the
US context. In her analysis of the implications of online
consumption habits for feminist and LGBT media in the
United States, Candace Moore notes that the launch of
the online delivery system Wolfe on Demand by one of the
leading US LGBT film distributors, Wolfe Video, “extends
Wolfe’s market substantially, as it reaches an international
audience through the Internet.”20 Digital distribution is a
game changer for queer media, including yaoi anime, as it
enables niche content to reach an international audience
without having to fight for shelf space in video stores, which
are usually reserved for mainstream media. That said, yaoi
anime should not be conflated with queer media made for an
LGBT audience. Rather, it aligns more with gay media that
targets heterosexual women. Noting that the adoption of
a rebranding strategy deemed “gaystreaming” by the LGBT
cable channel Logo coincided with the shuttering of gay
and lesbian bookstores and bars across the United States,
Eve Ng ponders “the extent to which the shrinking of such
spaces marginalizes some LGBT subjects even as others are
integrated into the mainstream.”21 Given that most yaoi
anime are based on manga created by and for heterosexual
women, not unlike Logo’s “gaystream” content, yaoi often
deviates from the lived realities of LGBT people and feeds
into the constructions of homonormativity.22
In what follows, I first begin with a brief historical
overview of yaoi anime production in order to delineate
the importance of the OVA (original video animation, also
known as OAV, or original animation video) format to the
proliferation of yaoi anime in the 1990s at a time when the
yaoi genre was still deemed unsuitable for a TV audience in
Japan. Importantly, I also outline the reasons for the lack of
yaoi OVAs in the catalogs of US streaming services despite
the fact that the OVA format was and still is a dominant
output of the genre. Subsequently, through a series of case
studies of three unique yaoi television anime—namely
Hitorijime My Hero, Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, and Super Lovers, each
of which illustrates one of the three types of nonpresences
I proposed earlier—I illuminate how Crunchyroll, as both a
business entity and a streaming platform, is affected by the
changing conditions of a competitive US streaming market
heavily influenced by conglomerates such as Netflix and
Amazon. I hope to demonstrate how a close study of the
circumstances that lead to the three types of nonpresences
in Crunchyroll’s yaoi catalog can reveal how the US anime
streaming market is shaped by the disruptive presence of
conglomerates, the impermanence of streaming licenses,
and the constraints imposed by industry regulation.
OVA: THE EXCLUSION OF
AN IMPORTANT YAOI ANIME FORMAT
FROM STREAMING PLATFORMS
The rise of the straight-to-video OVA format, inaugurated by
the release of Dallos in December 1983, contributed to the
expansion of anime beyond a medium for children by allow-
ing the inclusion of more adult-oriented content, including
yaoi, as a commercial format that could “bypass the television
distribution market and thus avoid [Japanese] broadcaster-
led content requirements.”23 In fact, the OVA format led to
the proliferation of pornographic anime, famously associated
with the “tits and tentacle” genre exemplified by Legend of
NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 5
 the Overfiend, a fifteen-episode OVA series released from
1987 to 1996 (excluding its 2002 remake) and hailed by
Jonathan Clements as the most influential anime title in the
English-speaking anime market after the anime film Akira in
the 1990s.24 Similarly, the OVA format also enabled a surge
in yaoi anime productions in the 1990s despite the idea that
“many anime producers still considered the [yaoi] genre to
be marginal enough that they did not aim to develop multi-
episode series” at the time.25
It was not until 2000 that the first yaoi television anime
would be made: the thirteen-episode Gravitation was adapted
from the manga by Maki Murakami and produced by Studio
Deen, one of the major animation studios in Japan.26 In fact,
the transnational appeal of Gravitation is attested by the fact
that it was licensed and released physically in the United
States by Right Stuf International in 2004. In a retrospective
written in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of
Right Stuf published on the company’s website in 2007, Lisa
Marie notes that “although a few OVAs (Fake, Kizuna) had
already made their way to American shores, most US compa-
nies were still wary as to whether shonen-ai and yaoi would
sell. The huge success of the Gravitation TV series slammed
open the door and shonen-ai and yaoi products flooded into
the market. The popularity of Gravitation eventually spawned
the creation of Right Stuf ’s first plush toys (versions of
Kumagoro and Ryuichi), and was the impetus for our first
merchandise deal with Great Eastern.”27 Lisa Marie’s state-
ment implies that Gravitation was the first yaoi title to have
attained a level of popularity in the United States sufficient
to enable Right Stuf to exploit “the streamability of [its]
content to entice consumers into subsequent transactions”
involving ancillary products such as licensed toys and video
games, a tactic Clarke calls “tentpole TV.”28
It is perhaps not incidental that the television anime Grav-
itation was preceded by a two-episode OVA series released
in Japan in 1999; the success of these OVAs in Japan likely
paved the way for the production of the manga’s television
adaptation a year later.29 In fact, many historically important
yaoi anime were made in the form of OVAs prior to the re-
lease of the Gravitation television anime, and OVAs continue
to be a major output of yaoi anime thereafter. Despite the
importance of the OVA format in establishing yaoi anime
culture, the majority of yaoi OVAs are unavailable on legal US
streaming services, including Crunchyroll.30 The lack of yaoi
OVAs licensed for legal US streaming services is attributable
6 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NUMBER 86 FALL 2020
to two main reasons: first, the sexually explicit content in
most of these titles; and, second, the unsuitability of these
short adaptations for the binge-watching culture entrenched
in the viewing habits of digital streaming service subscribers.
To elaborate on the second point, OVAs are less profitable
for streaming services because of their shorter run times,
which means less audience engagement. Kevin McDonald
observes that “television programming was a bargain in that
Netflix paid less for more hours of content . . . one in which
viewers were likely to be more engaged in both a quantitative
and qualitative sense.”31 Similarly, it makes more business
sense for Crunchyroll to license television anime, which make
up the majority of its catalog, for better return on invest-
ment. But such a strategy limits the number of yaoi anime
Crunchyroll can acquire.
Despite the significance of Crunchyroll as a distribution
channel for anime in the United States, yaoi titles are scant
amidst the huge catalog offered by the company. Crunchy-
roll’s US library currently offers more than one thousand
anime titles, and less than a dozen of them are what could
be categorized as yaoi titles.32 While the low number of yaoi
titles is indicative of the nicheness of yaoi as a genre, the issue
is further compounded by Crunchyroll’s focus on television
anime as opposed to OVAs, given the comparatively few yaoi
television anime available. It was not until after Gravitation
had proven the commercial viability of made-for-television
yaoi anime in 2000 that fans could expect to see more con-
sistent productions of yaoi television anime (see table 1).
Since the broadcast of Gravitation in 2000, only thirteen
unique yaoi television anime titles (not counting the sequel
seasons as separate titles) have been produced as of 2019.
To clarify, yaoi anime in the context of this article refers to
anime that feature explicit same-sex romantic or sexual re-
lationships between male protagonists. Hence, table 1 does
not include television anime with implied romantic interests
between male characters, such as Descendants of Darkness or
Banana Fish. In analyzing various companies’ categorization
of films under the label LGBT since the 1990s, Bryan Wuest
has underscored how the label does not reflect any essential
attribute of a media commodity but rather an industrial strat-
egy of encouraging efficient product consumption.33 In ac-
cordance with Wuest’s view that LGBT content in media texts
is a component “activable as a focus of meaning . . . through
industrial positioning,” the rationale behind my selection of
full-length, made-for-television anime (with run times of
Table 1. Yaoi television anime on Crunchyroll in 2019
JAPANESE MAIN JAPANESE US AVAILABILITY
YAOI TELEVISION ANIME BROADCAST DATE PUBLISHER ON CRUNCHYROLL

Gravitation October 2000 Aniplex No

Mirage of Blaze January 2002 Aniplex No
Suki na Mono wa Suki Dakara Shōganai!! / Sukisho January 2005 Bandai Visual No
Loveless April 2005 Bandai Visual No
Gakuen Heaven April 2006 NBC Universal Yes
Junjo Romantica April 2008 Kadokawa Yes
Junjo Romantica 2 October 2008 Kadokawa Yes
Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi—The World’s Greatest First Love April 2011 Kadokawa Expired
Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi—The World’s Greatest First Love 2 October 2011 Kadokawa Expired
Love Stage!! July 2014 Kadokawa Yes
Junjo Romantica 3 July 2015 Kadokawa Expired
Super Lovers April 2016 Kadokawa Yes
Yuri!!! on Ice October 2016 TV Asahi Yes
Super Lovers 2 January 2017 Kadokawa Yes
Hitorijime My Hero July 2017 Avex No
DAKAICHI—I’m Being Harassed by the Sexiest Man of the Year October 2018 Aniplex Yes
Given July 2019 Fuji TV Yes

Note: Television anime adaptations of the notable yaoi visual novels Togainu no Chi and Dramatical Murder are not included in this
list because most yaoi elements from the visual novels have been left out of their anime adaptations, such that viewers unfamiliar
with the source materials might not even perceive these anime titles as yaoi texts. Sources: Websites of Crunchyroll, Anime News
Network, and My Anime List.

twenty to twenty-five minutes per episode sans commercials)
for table 1 based on the presence of explicit male same-sex
relationships between the main characters is that these titles
have more visible yaoi genre markers and hence are more
valuable from the perspective of distributors in establishing
yaoi as a discrete genre.34 But the higher visibility of the yaoi
genre markers possessed by these titles may at times inhibit
their distribution due to censorship, which I will discuss later.
I attempt to translate the nonpresences in the yaoi television
anime catalog of Crunchyroll presented in table 1 into illu-
minating market knowledge through critically studying their
formation, starting with the absence of Hitorijime My Hero.
ABSENCE: THE LOSS OF HITORIJIME MY HERO
TO AMAZON’S ANIME STRIKE
Crunchyroll has licensed most yaoi television anime pro-
duced after 2006 except for Hitorijime My Hero, which
constitutes the only permanent absence, the first type of
nonpresence, in Crunchyroll’s post-2006 yaoi catalog. The
unavailability of the four pre-2006 yaoi television titles on
Crunchyroll can be ascribed to their relative age, which makes
it more difficult for US streaming services to acquire their
licenses. The fact that Crunchyroll possesses the streaming
licenses of almost all the yaoi television anime produced after
2006 can be construed as Crunchyroll’s commitment to the
yaoi fan base as well as its ambition to be a one-stop stream-
ing destination for audiences interested in yaoi television
anime. Although a few titles that were once on Crunchyroll
were later taken off the service due to expired licenses, only
one post-2006 yaoi title, Hitorijime My Hero, never made it
into Crunchyroll’s library. This makes Hitorijime My Hero
an interesting case study that represents a disruption to
Crunchyroll’s continuing acquisition of all post-2006 yaoi
television anime. Right before Hitorijime My Hero made
its Japanese premiere in July 2017, Sentai Filmworks an-
nounced that they had acquired the US license for the title
and that it would be available to stream in the United States
exclusively on Amazon’s Anime Strike, with which they had
recently entered into a partnership.35

NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 7

 Anime Strike was a short-lived anime-focused streaming
service launched by Amazon in January 2017.36 The service
was unpopular among anime fans and lambasted for its
double paywall model: at an additional cost of $4.99 per
month, members of the Amazon Prime subscription service,
which provides content and services otherwise unavailable
to regular Amazon users and cost $99 per annum ($119
as of 2019), could access Anime Strike.37 Anime Strike was
shuttered merely one year later in January 2018, and its
catalog was subsequently integrated into Amazon Prime
Video, a general streaming service that existing Amazon
Prime members can access for no additional fee. Moreover,
some anime titles that were once exclusive to Anime Strike,
including Hitorijime My Hero, also appeared on HIDIVE, an
anime streaming service affiliated with Sentai Filmworks,
even before Amazon announced that it would cease the
operation of Anime Strike.38
The permanent absence of Hitorijime My Hero in the yaoi
catalog of Crunchyroll, caused by Amazon’s fleeting venture
into the anime streaming business, also symbolizes the
market value of queer content made primarily for hetero-
sexual female consumers. Curiously, yaoi anime and manga
were initially marketed by US publishers to a gay audience,
as exemplified by the acquisition of the two-episode OVA
Kizuna by the Phoenix-based LGBT film distributor Ariztical
Entertainment, which describes Kizuna as “the first gay male
anime to be released on DVD in the US.”39 Furthermore, in a
review of Kizuna published in a 1997 issue of the prominent
LGBT magazine The Advocate, Cathay Che notes that Kizuna
is “as accessible as the usual gay art house film.”40 It was not
until US publishers realized that yaoi content is meant for
a female demographic that the genre would finally take off
in the United States. In a 2005 article about the immense
popularity of Japanese manga among female readers in
the country, Sarah Glazer notes that the manga version of
Kizuna is “selling strongly at Borders and Barnes and Noble,
and adult women make up the most enthusiastic readers.”41
The marketing of queer content to female consumers also
reveals that female viewers, as compared to gay audiences,
are considered a more palpable and profitable demographic
by content distributors. In her study of the cable channel
Bravo’s gay-themed programming, Katherine Sender ob-
serves that to Bravo executives “gay viewers were harder to
target through conventional advertising venues” and that
“emphasizing Bravo’s courting of the female audience makes
8 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NUMBER 86 FALL 2020
obvious business sense but also avoids thornier questions
about the politics of developing a gay niche channel.”42 Ama-
zon, too, must have been aware of the desirability of yaoi
anime to female viewers prior to its acquisition of Hitorijime
My Hero for Anime Strike along with other popular anime
titles via Sentai Filmworks.
The continued absence of Hitorijime My Hero in the cata-
log of Crunchyroll even after the discontinuation of Anime
Strike signifies how an experimental foray by a conglomerate
into a niche market can do more harm than good to both
consumers and smaller distributors. In addition to creating
a more fragmented market that requires consumers to pay
more subscription fees to an array of services, conglomer-
ates also make it harder for smaller distributors with less
capital to compete for licenses of popular anime. Brian Ige
of Viz Media explains that conglomerates such as Amazon
and Netflix are able to bypass intermediaries and negotiate
their deals directly with the Japanese producers due to their
market leverage, giving them an edge over smaller competi-
tors.43 Moreover, Justin Sevakis of Anime News Network also
opines in response to the shutdown of Anime Strike that
“Amazon did play a huge role in driving up licensing costs
to their current stratospheric levels. Japanese producers are,
no doubt, sad to lose them. Crunchyroll and Funimation . . .
probably not so much.”44 Amazon can afford to splurge on
licensing fees despite the underwhelming performance of
Anime Strike because of its deep pockets from other busi-
ness pursuits.45 On the other hand, these market conditions
forced other anime streaming services to increase their
bidding prices in tandem despite having less in the way of
financial resources.
DISAPPEARANCE: THE TRANSFER OF
SEKAI ICHI HATSUKOI TO FUNIMATION
Having discussed how the absence of Hitorijime My Hero
was brought on by successful bidders gaining exclusivity
for streaming licenses, I turn to two other yaoi anime titles,
whose disappearance from Crunchyroll’s yaoi catalog was
caused by the impermanence of such licensing deals, which
could expire or transfer to another streaming service. The
disappearance, the second type of nonpresence, of seasons
1 and 2 of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi as well as season 3 of Junjo
Romantica in Crunchyroll’s yaoi anime catalog is also indirectly
linked to the tough competition in the streaming market
caused by conglomerates. I use the term “disappearance”
as a descriptor for the move of these yaoi titles away from
Crunchyroll, as they were once in the catalog of Crunchyroll
but were removed later, as opposed to the permanent absence
of Hitorijime My Hero. The origin of said disappearance can
be traced back to a cross-licensing agreement in September
2016 between Crunchyroll and Funimation that would allow
them to share anime licenses with each other across stream-
ing as well as home video and digital distribution.46 Under
this agreement, Crunchyroll users would be able to stream
subtitled versions of Funimation-licensed titles, and sub-
scribers of FunimationNow, Funimation’s streaming service
launched in January 2016 shortly before the partnership,
would have access to English-dubbed Crunchyroll-licensed
titles. While the agreement mostly pertained to new titles
licensed during the span of the partnership, it also allowed
a number of older titles from the catalog of both companies
to be made available on each other’s streaming platforms,
including Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi and Junjo Romantica.
What could have propelled this partnership between the
two leading anime distributors in the United States? Sevakis
suggests that the reason was closely tied to the skyrocket-
ing licensing fees: “Bidding wars between Funimation and
Crunchyroll, as well as occasional violent disruption from
Amazon, Hulu and Netflix[,] have pushed the fees for some
shows well over the US$200,000 per episode mark—$2.6
million for a 13-episode show.”47 By “occasional violent dis-
ruption,” Sevakis refers to the exorbitant bidding prices these
conglomerates offer for a select few popular anime titles. While
the rivalry between Funimation and Crunchyroll doesn’t
help, considering that such disruptions occurred at a time
before Amazon went all-in on anime streaming with Anime
Strike and Netflix became a heavy investor in Japanese anime
studios, the grave effect that conglomerates entering a niche
market had on smaller distributors then becomes clearer.
Crunchyroll and Funimation, ironically, were both ab-
sorbed by conglomerates a few years after they entered into
a partnership. Sony Pictures Television acquired the majority
stake in Funimation in July 2017, and AT&T, the parent com-
pany of WarnerMedia, fully acquired Otter Media, the parent
company of Crunchyroll, in August 2018.48 The acquisition of
Crunchyroll and Funimation by conglomerates, which can be
partly attributed to the higher market share gained by both
companies (making them more desirable to conglomerates)
as a result of their partnership, led to a conflict of interest
between the two parties and the eventual termination of
their partnership in October 2018, initiated by Funimation
as advised by Sony Pictures Television.49 Remarkably, the
partnership between Crunchyroll and Funimation that be-
gan as a strategy to counter the influence of conglomerates
was dissolved due to the interference of conglomerates. As
a result, the two companies no longer share anime licenses,
and numerous titles were removed from Crunchyroll (as well
as from FunimationNow), including seasons 1 and 2 of Sekai
Ichi Hatsukoi and season 3 of Junjo Romantica.50
Whereas the streaming license of season 3 of Junjo Ro-
mantica belongs to and remains with Funimation after the
company split with Crunchyroll, seasons 1 and 2 of Sekai
Ichi Hatsukoi have had a longer history and have played a
more important role as part of Crunchyroll’s yaoi catalog.
Crunchyroll acquired the rights to simulcast both seasons
of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi in 2011.51 More important, Sekai Ichi
Hatsukoi is the first yaoi title licensed by Crunchyroll and
represents a deliberate attempt by the company to appeal to
the yaoi fan base, as indicated by the statement of Michelle
Hwang, Crunchyroll’s brand manager, in a press release: “This
is a really exciting moment for us as we are finally able to
provide a truly wide range of anime for fans and all of their
varied interests in this amazing culture. We hope that with
the addition of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi to our library, our audience
will embrace this as a pivotal step to broadening horizons
and understanding.”52 While Hwang’s statement makes no
direct reference to the yaoi genre or the queer content in
Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, she did make clear the role of the title as
“diversity content” within Crunchyroll’s library, perceived as
a “pivotal step” by the company to broaden the “horizon and
understanding” of its users.
In fact, Crunchyroll did win numerous yaoi fans over
because of its acquisition of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi. Crunchyroll
member cr6zym0nkeyiz started a Crunchyroll forum thread
in April 2016 asking, “Did you get an anime membership
[paid subscription] just for Sekaiichi Hatsukoi?,” to which
other forum users replied affirmatively. When Funimation
terminated its partnership with Crunchyroll in October 2018,
the streaming rights of both seasons of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi were
transferred from Crunchyroll to Funimation, resulting in the
removal of the title from the streaming library of Crunchyroll.
While the removals of anime affected by the partnership
termination were announced publicly, Crunchyroll members
unaware of such changes could still be surprised by the
NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 9
 LGBT category on the site erodes
the perception of queerness as a
viable commercial genre. Further-
more, the fact that most of the
yaoi titles are instead subsumed
under the broader categories of
“shojo” (girls) and “romance,”
both dominated by titles involving
heterosexual romantic narratives,
reveals the site’s recognition of the
target demographic of yaoi anime
as heterosexual women and its
default operational logic as pre-
mised on homonormativity. But
rather than viewing such genre
FIGURE 1. List of genre categories on Crunchyroll’s website, https://www.crunchyroll.com/videos/anime. categorization as Crunchyroll’s
Screenshot by the author. attempt to decrease the market
value of queer content, it should
sudden disappearance of the titles from the streaming service. instead be understood as the streaming service’s strategy to
Crunchyroll member luvbunnyfrmspace expressed puzzle- court the more desirable female demographic. Nevertheless,
ment at the title’s removal in a Crunchyroll forum thread the reduced discoverability and prominence of yaoi titles on
posted in November 2018 titled “Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi—Worlds Crunchyroll’s service due to the lack of their own genre, when
Greatest First Love—Page Is Not Found”: “I was in the middle considered in combination with the abrupt disappearance of
of this anime, I watched it just last night, and now it is gone?” Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi and Junjo Romantica, reveals the precarity
The unceremonious disappearance of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi from of yaoi anime as a part of Crunchyroll’s library because of its
the yaoi library of Crunchyroll is in stark contrast to the queerness.54
historical importance of the title to the streaming service.
The bafflement of luvbunnyfrmspace at the disappearance OBFUSCATION: THE CENSORING OF
of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi is also connected to the difficulty in lo- SUPER LOVERS BY CRUNCHYROLL’S
cating yaoi titles on the streaming service due to the lack of “MATURE” FILTER
a yaoi or LGBT category among its twenty-four main genres.
In most streaming services, “genre” is usually the best avenue Having examined the disappearance of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi
for users to explore the video library, and the same can be said and Junjo Romantica from Crunchyroll’s library, caused by
of Crunchyroll. Besides “genre,” anime titles on Crunchyroll the transience of streaming license ownerships and exac-
are arranged into five other classification systems, including erbated by the lack of a yaoi genre, I turn to my final case
“popular,” “simulcasts,” “updated,” “alphabetical,” and “sea- study: the obfuscation of Super Lovers by the censorship
sons.” But except for “genre,” none of these systems of title policies of Crunchyroll, as dictated by conglomerates that
classification indicate the titles’ type of content. This makes own the platforms on which the Crunchyroll apps run. The
“genre” an important business model for Crunchyroll that third type of nonpresence, obfuscation, is linked to the
influences users’ taste. In his examination of Netflix’s genre simulcast model, which enables the US audience to stream
categorizations, Daniel Smith-Rowsey observes that genres ef- an anime episode shortly after it airs on television in Japan
faced or diminished by Netflix represent “a development that (usually within a few hours). In addition to changing the
threatens these genres’ very existence in an increasingly Netf- viewing habits of the audience, the swift transnational travel
lixed world.” Similarly, given Crunchyroll’s importance as an
53
of anime enabled by the simulcast model also impacts the
anime distributor in the United States, the lack of a yaoi or ways content is delivered through streaming services. In a

10 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NUMBER 86 FALL 2020

simulcast model, the episodes of an anime series are deliv-
ered continually (one per week) to the audience concurrent
with the Japanese broadcast schedule instead of being
released all at once. This means that streaming services like
Crunchyroll are also receiving the episodes from Japan on
an ongoing basis. How far in advance the US distributors
receive the broadcast-ready episodes from their Japanese
publishers can vary from several weeks to several hours
before the episodes’ Japanese airtime and is dependent on
the production schedule; generally, the further into the pro-
duction cycle, the more likely it is for the animation studio to
fall behind schedule and deliver the completed episode closer
to the airtime.55 Another implication of the simulcast model
is that the US distributors will not know the content of the
episodes until they receive the final products (although in
some cases the US distributors are given advance copies of
the script), which can cause problems in content regulation
for streaming services. Such is the case with season 1 of
Super Lovers, the rights to simulcast of which were obtained
by Crunchyroll in April 2016.56
As Crunchyroll only received one episode of Super Lovers
per week while the show was airing in Japan, it was not able
to determine the suitability of the title as a series for audi-
ences of all ages beforehand. This situation subsequently
led to restrictions on the accessibility of the title upon the
appearance of content deemed “mature” by Crunchyroll
midway through its simulcast. On June 2, 2016, the day
after episode 9 of Super Lovers was broadcast in Japan,
Crunchyroll forum member FuzzyGecko started a new
thread titled “Super Lovers! Where’d it go?” to express
bafflement regarding the vanishing of Super Lovers from the
platform: “Logged on this morning to watch the new episode
and the whole series was just gone! Anyone find it suddenly
vanished? Anyone know what happened?” Confirming the
conjectures made by other users who responded to the
thread that the title had been subjected to the restrictions
of Crunchyroll’s “mature content filter,” forum moderator
Shinryou replied:
If we change the maturity setting on a title it is primarily
due to some of our app platform partners having stricter
rules regarding the content offered through apps on their
platform than we apply to our own. Super Lovers was ever
inching closer to the threshold at which we had to make
this adjustment in order to be able to offer it through our
apps. Given the content of episode 9 we had to do this on
short notice before launch and didn’t have the time to send a
notification to all users having [the show] in their queue yet.
Shinryou’s comment implies that the sexual content of
episode 9 was not expected by the staff at Crunchyroll, and
therefore the title was abruptly reclassified as mature to
restrict its accessibility through the “mature content filter”
in order to comply with the stricter third-party content
regulations on platforms on which Crunchyroll apps operate,
such as iPhone and PlayStation, as compared to Crunchyroll’s
internal content policies that apply on its website.
While the predicament faced by FuzzyGecko is akin to
that of fellow Crunchyroll member luvbunnyfrmspace re-
garding Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, the nonpresence of Super Lovers
on Crunchyroll is of a different nature; Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi
was completely removed from Crunchyroll due to a licensing
issue, whereas Super Lovers was made difficult to access by a
filter—a situation best encapsulated by the term “obfusca-
tion”—because its content was deemed too sexually explicit
for younger audiences. To fully comprehend the incident,
it is imperative to first grasp the circumstances that led to
the reclassification of Super Lovers as a mature title before
discussing how it is obfuscated by the “mature content filter.”
The plot of Super Lovers centers on the budding romance
between Haru Kaido and Ren Kaido. While Haru and Ren are
brothers, they are not related by blood; Ren was adopted by
Haru’s biological mother. In episode 9, Ren becomes aware
of his romantic and sexual desires toward Haru. Specifically,
Ren gets an erection from sharing the same bed with Haru,
and Haru ends up masturbating Ren, even though the actual
masturbation scene is not shown.
Yaoi television anime, having to comply with the regula-
tions of television stations, are usually nonexplicit adaptations
that leave out the graphic sex content present in their source
materials. Andrea Wood defines nonexplicit yaoi anime as
“erotically suggestive, but ultimately leaves more to the view-
er’s imagination than it reveals.”57 Such “erotically suggestive”
content in the yaoi genre is a tradition that has grown out of a
need to circumvent Japanese censorship laws, which prohibit
explicit depictions of adult genitals but disregard the general
context of erotic representations. Frederik Schodt observes
that the narrow focus on adult genitals by the censorship
laws has allowed virtually all kinds of sexual scenarios to be
depicted in Japanese erotica, manga in particular, as long as
graphic representations of adult genitals are avoided.58 While
NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 11
 such formalist interpretation of
censorship laws might have suited
the Japanese erotica publishers,
it can lead to complications when
such content travels westward. De-
spite the lack of visual depictions
of genitals in season 1, episode
9, of Super Lovers, the pseudo-
incestuous interaction between
the two adoptive siblings exceeded
the “threshold” set by Crunchyroll
and their business partners, which
compelled Crunchyroll to reclas-
sify the title as “mature” midway
through its simulcast.
The reclassification of Super
FIGURE 2. Results for Super Lovers using Crunchyroll’s search function, https://www.crunchyroll.com
Lovers as “mature” on Crunchyroll /search?from=videos&q=super+lovers. Screenshot by the author.
subjects the title to the restrictions
imposed by the “mature content filter,” which limits the vis- consider the content as mature. We’d risk restrictions or
ibility of the title on Crunchyroll’s website as well as in their removal from the app stores, if we did not flag content
apps on third-party platforms. If an unregistered user tries matching their maturity criteria. We also have our own
to access a mature title through Crunchyroll’s website using maturity flag, for which we are using less strict criteria than
an internet browser, the viewer will stumble on a warning the 3rd parties. Basically, if we set the flag on something,
page that states, “This content may be inappropriate for some the 3rd party flag is already there anyway. Both levels only
people. To view this, please log in to verify you are 18 or older.” affect visibility of titles on apps and in searches.” The only
And to log in, the user needs to have an account registered way for a user to access any mature content through the
with Crunchyroll. That said, when both registered and unreg- Crunchyroll apps is by adjusting the “mature content filter”
istered viewers use the search bar at the top right corner of to “show mature content” in the “video preferences” section
Crunchyroll’s homepage, mature titles, unlike general titles, of “account settings”; otherwise, content deemed mature
will not show up in a drop-down menu that allows viewers to simply will not show up on the app. But the “mature con-
easily access the main page of an anime series to see a listing tent filter” adjustment can only be accessed through the
of all available episodes. Instead, the user must click on the website and not in the app itself. This makes it necessary
search icon, which opens a new page that displays the search for a user to have cross-platform access to Crunchyroll via
results as individual episodes arranged in random order. both its website and app to view mature content on the
It is even more difficult for a user to access mature app. Such restriction is in line with Apple’s guidelines to app
titles through the Crunchyroll apps. As noted in the prior developers: “If your app includes user-generated content
quote from Crunchyroll forum moderator Shinryou, the from a web-based service, it may display incidental mature
platform holders often enforce a stricter set of criteria in ‘NSFW’ content, provided that the content is hidden by
regard to regulating content offered through apps running default and only displayed when the user turns it on via
on their platforms than Crunchyroll would with content your website.”59 All things considered, while the reclas-
on its own website, which is accessible through personal sification of Super Lovers as a mature title did not result
computers. Shinryou further explains the “mature filter” in in its complete removal from Crunchyroll, its subjection
a forum post dated September 16, 2017: “We have 2 levels to the “mature content filter” significantly obfuscates its
for the maturity filter. One is the level at which companies presence for the platform’s users, an issue compounded by
offering our apps on their devices, such as Apple or Sony, the obscurity of the filter.

12 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NUMBER 86 FALL 2020

 CONCLUSION: CONTOURING THE
HOLLOWNESS OF NONPRESENCES
Before I conclude, it is helpful to summarize my findings
thus far. First, I revealed the significant gap in the yaoi anime
catalogs of US streaming services in general due to their ten-
dency to occlude OVAs, a straight-to-video format in which
a significant number of yaoi anime are made. Then, I zeroed
in on the nonpresences in Crunchyroll’s yaoi anime catalog
through three specific case studies. The absence of Hitorijime
My Hero is attributable to Amazon outbidding Crunchyroll
for the title’s streaming license during the conglomerate’s
brief venture into the US anime streaming market via Anime
Strike, which indicates the recognition of the market value
of yaoi content in attracting female audiences. On the other
hand, the disappearance of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi and Junjo Ro-
mantica was caused by the dissolution of the cross-licensing
partnership between Crunchyroll and FunimationNow due
to a conflict of interest that arose after the companies were
bought by two different conglomerates. This incident also
reveals the precarity of yaoi titles on Crunchyroll, wors-
ened by the lack of their own genre on the site. Finally, the
obfuscation of Super Lovers on Crunchyroll’s user interface
through the “mature content filter” is primarily driven by the
stricter content policies enforced by the conglomerates that
own the platforms on which Crunchyroll apps run. In one
way or another, the withholding of these yaoi texts from free
circulation on Crunchyroll is a result of direct and indirect
interferences from conglomerates.
Nonpresences are as important a site of scholarly inves-
tigation as presences within the networks of distribution.
These blank spaces are not vacuums devoid of information
but historical sites that archive data on their exteriors when
they are hollowed out by various industrial processes. In my
attempts to define the contours of the blank spaces embed-
ded within the nonpresences in Crunchyroll’s yaoi anime
catalog, I avoided the pitfall of assigning predefined mean-
ings to industrial processes, because there was not a clear
goal in sight at the starting point. Through piecing together
information step by step during my investigation, I arrived
at a more nuanced understanding of the far-reaching ripples
on the US anime market caused by the actions of distribu-
tors at various points along the distribution chains. Foucault
perceives writing as a process that prepares “a labyrinth into
which [one] can venture.”60 In the same way, nonpresences
are portals into labyrinths in which clear paths are absent,
but much can be gained if the brave scholars who dare to
venture within can successfully contour the exteriority that
contains the hollowness of the labyrinth in which they stand.
About the Author
K. T. WONG is a PhD candidate in the Visual Studies Program at
the University of California, Irvine. His dissertation examines the
various imaginaries of Southeast Asia sparked by the evolution
of gaming practices precipitated by the region’s recent integra-
tion into the globalized, formal video game market. His research
interests center on game studies, media industries studies, and
anime studies.
Notes
I would like to thank Finley Freibert for his thoughtful comments
and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.
1. Rafael Antonio Pineda, “Crunchyroll Surpasses 2 Million
Subscribers,” Anime News Network, October 26, 2018, https://www
.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2018-10-26/crunchyroll
-surpasses-2-million-subscribers/.138374.
2. Todd Spangler, “Crunchyroll Anime Service Tops 1 Mil-
lion Paid Subscribers,” Variety, February 9, 2017, https://variety
.com/2017/digital/news/crunchyroll-anime-1-million-paid-sub
scribers-1201982702.
3. Todd Spangler, “Netflix Posts Record Subscriber Gain in
Q1, Issues Weaker Q2 Growth Forecast,” Variety, April 16, 2019,
https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-q1-2019-earn
ings-1203190870/.
4. “Parks Associates Announces 2016 Update to Top 10 U.S.
Subscription OTT Video Services,” Parks Associates, October 26,
2016, https://www.parksassociates.com/blog/article/pr-10262016.
5. Aymar Jean Christian, Open TV: Innovation beyond Hollywood
and the Rise of Web Television (New York: New York University Press,
2018), 173.
6. Christian, 173.
7. Justin Sevakis, “Where Is All the Anime on Hulu Going?,”
Anime News Network, May 27, 2016, https://www.animenewsnet
work.com/answerman/2016-05-27/.102530.
8. M. J. Clarke, Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network
Serial Production (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 7.
9. Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New
York: New York University Press, 2007), 14.
10. Gavin J. Blair, “How Netflix Is Disrupting, Empowering
Japan’s Anime Industry,” Hollywood Reporter, October 25, 2017,
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-netflix-is-disrup
ting-empowering-japans-anime-industry-1050297.
NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 13
 11. Ramon Lobato, Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping
Informal Film Distribution (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 2.
12. James Chen, “Conglomerate,” Investopedia, last updated June
25, 2019, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conglomerate.asp.
13. The case studies in this article either preceded or occurred
at the point of this acquisition and thus still represent examina-
tions of the impact of conglomerates on smaller business entities.
14. Kazumi Nagaike, Fantasies of Cross-dressing: Japanese Women
Write Male-Male Erotica (Boston: Brill, 2012), 2.
15. Dru Pagliassotti, “GloBLisation and Hybridisation: Pub-
lishers’ Strategies for Bringing Boys’ Love to the United States,”
Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 20 (April
2009): http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue20/pagliassotti.htm.
16. For a historical overview of the genre and its terminology
in Japan, see James Welker, “A Brief History of Shonen’ai, Yaoi,
and Boys Love,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture,
and Community in Japan, ed. Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike,
Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker (Jackson: University Press
of Mississippi, 2015).
17. Robert Ito, “Yearning Japanese in the World of Yaoi Manga:
It’s All about Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys,” Village Voice,
May 19–25, 2004, p. C84.
18. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, translated by
A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Routledge, 1972), 18.
19. Jennifer Hessler, “Quality You Can’t Touch: Mubi Social,
Platform Politics, and the Online Distribution of Art Cinema,”
Velvet Light Trap 82 (Fall 2018): 6.
20. Candace Moore, “Distribution Is Queen,” Cinema Journal
53, no. 1 (Fall 2013): 140.
21. Eve Ng, “A ‘Post-Gay’ Era? Media Gaystreaming, Homonor-
mativity, and the Politics of LGBT Integration,” Communication,
Culture, and Critique 6 (2013): 259.
22. See Lisa Duggan, “The New Homonormativity: The Sexual
Politics of Neoliberalism,” in Materializing Democracy: Toward a Re-
vitalized Cultural Politics, ed. Russ Castronovo and Dana D. Nelson
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 175–94.
23. Mitsuteru Takahashi and Nobuyuki Tsugata quoted in
Rayna Denison, “Anime’s Distribution Worlds: Formal and Infor-
mal Distribution in the Analogue and Digital Eras,” in Routledge
Handbook of Japanese Media, ed. Fabienne Darling-Wolf (New York:
Routledge, 2018), 407.
24. Helen McCarthy and Jonathan Clements, The Erotic Anime
Movie Guide (New York: Overlook Press, 1999), 58.
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Convergence Culture: Transnational Fandom, Censorship and
Resistance,” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 4, no. 1 (2013): 45.
26. Television anime that feature gay protagonists and focus
on same-sex relationships did not appear until much later, but gay
supporting characters have appeared in television anime since the
1980s, such as Boku Patalliro! (1981). But Boku Patalliro! is a comedic
14 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP NUMBER 86 FALL 2020
anime in which the gayness of its characters, Maraich Juschenfe
and Jack Barbarosa Bancoran, is mainly played for laughs.
27. Lisa Marie, “20 Years of Right Stuf Part 2,” Right Stuf
International, fall 2007, https://www.rightstufanime.com/anime
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28. Clarke, Transmedia Television, 4.
29. Conversely, the Gravitation OVAs were licensed for physi-
cal release in the United States by Right Stuf a year after the US
release of the series’ television adaptation in 2005. That said, the
Gravitation OVAs are unavailable on any US streaming services at
the time of this writing.
30. At the time of this writing, the only yaoi OVA titles available
on Crunchyroll are This Boy Is a Professional Wizard and This Boy
Suffers from Crystallization.
31. Kevin McDonald, “From Online Video Store to Global
Internet TV Network: Netflix and the Future of Home Entertain-
ment,” in The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st
Century, ed. Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey (New York:
Bloomsbury, 2016), 210.
32. According to the catalog on Crunchyroll’s website (https://
www.crunchyroll.com/videos/anime/alpha?group=all), the stream-
ing service offers 1,061 anime titles for the US audience as of June
24, 2019.
33. Bryan Wuest, “A Shelf of One’s Own: A Queer Production
Studies Approach to LGBT Film Distribution and Categorization,”
Journal of Film and Video 70, nos. 3–4 (2018): 29.
34. Wuest, 29.
35. “Sentai Filmworks Licenses ‘Hitorijime My Hero,’” Sentai
Filmworks, June 27, 2017, https://www.sentaifilmworks.com
/news/sentai-filmworks-licenses-hitorijime-my-hero.
36. Todd Spangler, “Amazon Launches Anime Channel for $5 per
Month, Its First Branded Subscription Channel,” Variety, January
12, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/amazon-anime
-channel-subscription-1201958402.
37. Cecilia D’Anastasio, “Amazon Kills Unpopular Anime Strike
Service,” Kotaku, January 5, 2018, https://kotaku.com/amazon
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38. Karen Ressler, “HIDIVE Streams 4 Former Anime Strike-
Exclusive Titles,” Anime News Network, December 27, 2017, https://
www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2017-12-27/hidive-streams
-4-former-anime-strike-exclusive-titles/.125813.
39. “About Us,” Ariztical Entertainment, accessed August 8,
2019, http://www.ariztical.com/corporate/about.html.
40. Cathay Che, “Cartoons Come Out: Kizuna, Volumes 1 and
2,” The Advocate 726, February 4, 1997, p. 66.
41. Sarah Glazer, “Manga for Girls,” New York Times, September
18, 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/books/review
/manga-for-girls.html.
42. Katherine Sender, “Dualcasting: Bravo’s Gay Programming
and the Quest for Women Audiences,” in Cable Visions: Television
beyond Broadcasting, ed. Sarah Banet-Weiser, Cynthia Chris, and
Anthony Freitas (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 308.
43. David Ng, “For the Anime Industry, the Streaming Revo-
lution Is Both a Blessing and a Curse,” Los Angeles Times, July 1,
2017, https://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-anime
-business-20170701-story.html.
44. Justin Sevakis, “Did the Fans Kill Anime Strike?,” Anime
News Network, January 8, 2018, https://www.animenewsnetwork
.com/answerman/2018-01-08/.126161.
45. The bulk of Amazon’s 2017 fourth-quarter earnings, which
amounted to $60.5 billion, came from the company’s cloud comput-
ing business, Amazon Web Services. Troy Wolverton, “Amazon’s
Stock Jumps 6% after Its 4th-Quarter Results Beat the Street’s
Expectations,” Business Insider, February 1, 2018, https://mar
kets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/amazon-fourth-quarter
-2017-earnings-2018-2-1014830581?tl.
46. Todd Spangler, “Crunchyroll, Funimation Reach Deal to
Cross-License Anime Titles,” Variety, September 8, 2016, https://
variety.com/2016/digital/news/crunchyroll-funimation-anime
-cross-license-1201855020.
47. Justin Sevakis, “Why Are Funimation and Crunchyroll Get-
ting Married?,” Anime News Network, September 9, 2016, https://
www.animenewsnetwork.com/answerman/2016-09-09/.106251.
48. “Sony Pictures Television Networks to Acquire Sub-
stantial Majority Stake in Funimation,” Sony Pictures, July
31, 2017, https://www.sonypictures.com/corp/press_releases
/2017/07_17/073117_funimation.html; “AT&T Acquires Full
Ownership of Otter Media,” WarnerMedia, August 7, 2018,
https://www.warnermediagroup.com/newsroom/press-releases
/2018/08/07/att-acquires-full-ownership-of-otter-media.
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Pact with Crunchyroll,” Variety, October 18, 2018, https://variety
.com/2018/digital/news/funimation-ends-crunchyroll-anime
-licensing-deal-sony-1202984211.
50. Karen Ressler, “Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato Anime
Also Removed from Crunchyroll,” Anime News Network, December
11, 2018, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2018-12
-11/star-blazers-space-battleship-yamato-anime-also-removed
-from-crunchyroll/.140538.
51. Despite the fact that the initial Japanese broadcast of Gakuen
Heaven as well as seasons 1 and 2 of Junjo Romantica occurred years
before that of Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, Crunchyroll did not obtain the
streaming licenses of the two former titles until 2016, when the
company was in a cross-licensing partnership with Funimation.
52. “Sekai-Ichi Hatsukoi Set to Simulcast on Crunchyroll,” Anime
News Network, March 31, 2011, https://www.animenewsnetwork
.com/press-release/2011-03-31/sekai-ichi-hatsukoi-set-to-simul
cast-on-crunchyroll.
53. Daniel Smith-Rowsey, “Imaginative Indices and Deceptive
Domains: How Netflix’s Categories and Genres Redefine the Long
Tail,” in Netflix Effect, ed. McDonald and Smith-Rowsey, 65.
54. “Discoverability” refers to “how institutions might ensure
that their content is found by audiences in an era of ever greater
video abundance,” while “prominence” considers “the degree
to which certain kinds of channels and services (and therefore
content) stand out from others in guides, interfaces, and so on.”
David Hesmondhalgh and Amanda Lotz, “Video Screen Interfaces
as New Sites of Media Circulation Power,” International Journal of
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56. “Crunchyroll to Stream ‘SUPER LOVERS’ Anime!,”
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60. Foucault, Archaeology, 19.
NUMBER 86 FALL 2020 THE VELVET LIGHT TRAP 15