Today, I’m talking with Rahul Purini, the president of Crunchyroll, a streaming service focused entirely on anime — and really, the biggest anime service still going. Rahul has a long history with anime: he spent more than seven years at Funimation, a company that started in the 90s to distribute Dragon Ball Z to US audiences, before getting the top job at Crunchyroll.

Anime might seem like niche content, but it’s not nearly as niche as you might think – our colleagues over at Polygon just ran a huge survey of anime viewers and found that 42% of Gen Z and 25% of millennials watch anime regularly. And Crunchyroll is growing with that audience — like most entertainment providers, the service absolutely exploded during the pandemic, going from 5 million paying subscribers in 2021 to more than 13 million as of last month.

But interestingly Rahul says Crunchyroll’s growth isn’t being driven by more and more people watching anime, but more and more anime fans — especially those watching pirated content — choosing to pay for it.

Links:

Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23845221

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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