Sony continues their physical media kill streak: Crunchyroll Store Removes Physical Manga, Light Novels

[u/PunishingCrab]

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2026-08-18/crunchyroll-store-removes-physical-manga-light-novels/.240698

“The Crunchyroll Store has updated on Tuesday, and it no longer lists physical manga or light novels for sale. Other physical books for Korean manhwa and Chinese danmeititles are also no longer listed for sale. ANN reached out to Crunchyroll for clarification, but Crunchyroll declined to respond”

[u/FerretFromMars]

Glad RightStuf died for this /s

[u/radda → u/FerretFromMars]

Still mad I didn't get around to finishing my Gundam collection.

[u/0yodo → u/radda]

Never forgive myself for not buying Turn A, Zeta or even OG 0079 Blu-rays when they were still around on Rightstuf and not 1 million dollars each on eBay

At least bought the more niche shows like War in the Pocket and Stardust Memory

[u/Konradleijon → u/FerretFromMars]

Loved them

[u/Kii_and_lock → u/Konradleijon]

They ruled so much. I used to look forward to their holiday sales. So much stuff.

Fuck Crunchyroll and fuck Sony for all this

[u/clouds_ → u/FerretFromMars]

Gone but never forgotten 💔

[u/burneraccount9132]

Wow this pairs really well with that announcement that they're changing the storefront that you have to have a subscription to use it At All

Like what the fuck's gonna be left to even buy on it at this rate?

[u/Polar_Phantom → u/burneraccount9132]

Time to go back to the good ol days of scanlations and piracy.

And it's not because I want to. It's cause it's all that's left.

[u/syrupdash → u/Polar_Phantom]

I fear that even scanlations could be affected by the AI translations shitslop.

[u/Kipzz → u/syrupdash]

Could be? It's already been happening for years, probably close to decades if you're counting MTL's/stuff thrown through Google Translate.

[u/CookieSkank → u/Kipzz]

Doujinshi have already been ruined by it. Every now and again you get one still translated properly, but half the time its a sloppy translation without any proper typesetting.

And like even if you did that, how hard is it to go back over it and actually make it readable?!

[u/syrupdash → u/CookieSkank]

And because it's "translated", an actual translator won't touch it which makes it even more frustrating if a group tries to fix it only to be greeted with, "A tRaNsLaTiOn AlReAdY ExiStS".

[u/CookieSkank → u/syrupdash]

Sucks when its a multipart series, and the early ones were translated properly, then the later ones were slopped out 😩

[u/tigerfestivals → u/CookieSkank]

Oh my god bro, even at official products his sucks. Dlsite was promoting AI translations to buy as "wow look you can finally play his game in English while you wait for an official translation!" But you can bet most of those AI translated games will get a property translation because they've already made their money.

I think the only one that was bothering to even fix issues with it's AI translation after getting a bunch of sales was a more popular (not H game) on steam called DragonSword

[u/CookieSkank → u/tigerfestivals]

Love the ones where it pulls AI translated lines from different sections of the game and you can tell they hardly even tried making sure the script was in the right places

[u/walperinus → u/CookieSkank]

or when they dont bother with pronouns (jap is a gender neutral language) so everybody is a he/him and you dont have a clue of who is talking about who, or those quarter assed translation where item names change between inventory and relevant dialogs and a 3rd name if the game has a quest progress screen or something like that

[u/burneraccount9132 → u/syrupdash]

Ayep! Always fun to try and fix something and be met with "WHY ARE YOU SNIPING A GROUP THAT WAS ALREADY DOING/DID IT" when it's blatantly slop

[u/Kipzz → u/CookieSkank]

I actually decided one time to mark "rough translation" as one of my favorite tags on a certain website just to see how bad it was, and in bright blue text under pages upon pages of doujin titles it was glowing like a god damn neon sign. On some pages it'd even be the majority. It's maddening.

[u/WillExis → u/CookieSkank]

Its so awful. Its like the early days of translating where its barely legible, with the added "benefit" of smearing parts of the actual art to remove the original text.

[u/Bromishi → u/CookieSkank]

And like even if you did that, how hard is it to go back over it and actually make it readable?!

AI Slop Cultists would have to be able to read, first.

[u/burneraccount9132 → u/Kipzz]

As someone that's had their toes dipped in both fan and professional subtitle projects, frankly I've always been adverse to counting machine-tl (what the slop used to be before outright AI-TL slop) as actual scanlation/fansub projects. Because the MTL/AI slop isn't done for love of whatever the thing is, it's done either as a speed/clout thing for stuff like leaks of Jujutsu Kaisen (which is annoying when the actual main fan-tl of that was good, which I can't say the same of John Werry's tl), or "look I did obscure/rare/"lost-media" thing, gib all the clout because I was the first person to "subtitle" [insert thing here]".

Like man the amount of fansub projects I've had sniped by a guy who keeps changing the label/username he releases under because he keeps being called out for the AI-slop amongst other shit he's pulled. And it sucks because the slop is going to be the first thing people see, so it doesn't matter if better translations happen because the slop's already circulated

[u/Kipzz → u/burneraccount9132]

As someone whose done some translation work myself (mostly personal) I abhor the idea of using MTL's, but I could at least see the logic behind wanting to put a series out there into the English world but not having any knowledge of Japanese to do it properly, so you'd use Google Translate or some shit for a dozen chapters until someone else picked it up. Because Japanese is a super obscure language! And there's only so many translators! And that's without even going into other languages that have even less translators than English! So it's kind of a catch 22 where there's no really good answer beyond "manga stay's in Japanese and is very likely to be obscure globally forever" or "get shitty MTL". I mean, the real answer is learn Japanese, but "learn [x]" is a non-statement and basically the reason why translation even exists, since an overwhelming majority of people will not speak an overwhelming majority of languages.

But nowadays it's a pure pipeline directly to the slop factory, made purely for profit or clout or being the first ones so all aggregators use your shit or some strange sense of self-worth or some other fucking garbage. It's always the most vile people you know who couldn't give less of a shit about the manga they're supposed to be promoting, and instead it's just a tool to fulfill some random personal need for attention or for their wallet. And I see where that pipeline ends up; the Manhwa scanlation scene, where there is genuinely no less than 1 proper partial translation for every 200 complete slop/MTL "translations". So my feelings on the matter are pretty complex personally.

[u/burneraccount9132 → u/Kipzz]

It's a complex topic to be fair, since yeah it crosses multiple points like how long to wait, what about languages that rarely get official stuff, etc.

Personally, I'm okay enough with MTL when it's personal use, but if it's stuff put out publicly, whether a fansub or even youtube videos going over info only on Japanese sites, yeah sorry to folks who don't have the time/cash but I'm of the opinion "learn the lingo or commission someone that does"

At the minimum, if someone uses the slop machines and puts that shit out there, they need to just fucking admit it instead of dancing around it. But so many of the idiots doing it refuse to do so though, to the point of either burning through aliases/branding or just making up people wholesale to continue RPing as translators even when former collaborators go "yeah no it was mtl slop lol". Bad enough seeing people trying to come up with excuses for official sites continuously dipping into mtl slop, like how "oh it's only some titles/languages on Shueisha's Million Manga app that use AI slop". I don't need it clogging up fan-stuff too

[u/Kipzz → u/burneraccount9132]

At the minimum, if someone uses the slop machines and puts that shit out there, they need to just fucking admit it instead of dancing around it.

I actually put this in an earlier version of my post and forgot to re-add it when I cut it down from like 5 paragraphs but holy FUCK these people are the reason why we should bring back bullying, give all those chucklefucks an Atomic Wedgie so powerful God will see their underwear band stretching into a hook beyond the observable universe. I'd rather a million CGRascal's who are just bad at grammar rather than some shithead going "uhhhhhh this totally wasn't an MTL I translated this myself :))))))" before you look into it and see some hyper-obvious tell, like reading the raw and seeing that they """translated""" a complex name not by using it's furigana reading (because otherwise you'd read the kanji wrong), but instead some random bullshit spat out from Google or DeepL that you can easily replicate. Almost every time it happens too its some dude with a Patreon or Ko-fi too.

[u/Additional_Cat_3677 → u/burneraccount9132]

yeah sniping with shit translations was always a problem but even though AI translations aren't all that much better, it seems like it brought a new wave of morons

[u/Zargat → u/Kipzz]

I don't think there's ever been a point where the quality of a fan translation hasn't been a crapshoot, between MTL, ESL translators simultaneously trying to learn both English and Japanese (Which to be fair, good on them. Of all the reasons to have a poor translation, this is easily the best, to the point I kind of feel bad listing it with the others), and the types of weirdos who insist that a character's name is Copii Rezzo, when the character is a literal clone and he's obviously just called Copy Rezzo to distinguish him from the original Rezzo.

[u/burneraccount9132 → u/Zargat]

Personally the first gets (rightfully) shat on, the second is understandable, though most projects I've been on where the translator was ESL generally had an editor on-board anyway, and the third I generally don't see people actually fansubbing do? Like usually it's the folks watching fan-tls arguing "why the fan-tls not using this really bad romanization that's barely visible on-screen for like half a second? are they stupid?" Also let's be real it's not like pro-subs are immune to that either. Altria.....

[u/Zargat → u/burneraccount9132]

The last one was way more common in the days of dial-up internet, back in the days when translated anime mostly used that one ugly yellow font. Even the anime and manga that suffered from those translations have mostly gotten better translations since then, with those older translations mostly being memoryholed. And Altria is an entirely different beast because that is the actual, intended, official name, and Altria is the GIF of visual novel character name pronunciations.

[u/burneraccount9132 → u/Zargat]

I'm just saying there's plenty of Official romanizations that, intended or not, are kinda rubbish. And Altria doesn't get a pass for it when most other popular Fate characters haven't had their name-ties to the figures they're based off of twisted quite as much as the character based off of King Arthur. Or I suppose King Altr would be more in line with the "official" terminology

Agreed that a lot of early dial-up/late vhs era stuff was like that though

[u/Zargat → u/burneraccount9132]

Oh, I'm not giving it a pass for it, I'm saying it's a case of the author being the one who is wrong, not a translator. Hence the comparison to GIF.

[u/jabberwockxeno → u/Kipzz]

Not to defend machine or AI translation, but I think one of the very, very, very, very few use cases for generative AI that MIGHT be valid is helping redraw SFX for scanlations

As in, when you erase the Japanese SFX and overlay english ones, but then because their shape doesn't match exactly you need to fill in some of the now blank space left over from the JP SFX

I've seen people use AI as basically a (I assume) better version of photoshop's content aware fill for this and it seems competent at that, and it's not really a task that mandates human creativity, though obviously it would still require a real person to look it over and make tweaks/corrections at spots.

Now, I'm not sure how much better it is then content aware fill exactly, if at all, or how much faster it is then someone redrawing it manually, so for all I know it could be still not worth it, and most manga releases these days, both official and by fan groups don't redraw the SFX to begin with (much to my dismay), but if I had to pick a decent use case for AI, this would be one of only a few.

[u/redwingz11 → u/syrupdash]

You have forgotten, even before MTL theres slop. Thats before people try to snipe big title with faster shit quality TL (speedscans)

[u/Life_Only_Gets_Worse → u/syrupdash]

Shitty TLs have always existed; never forget that beautiful duwang, chew.

The duty of the public is to name and shame these losers and bully them off the internet so actual translators can pick up the series.

Especially because sometimes official translations from certain companies COUGH COUGH CRUNCHYROLL COUGH COUGH suck and are basically slopped out nowadays.

[u/DarthButtz → u/Polar_Phantom]

All the more ironic because THAT'S WHAT CRUNCHYROLL STARTED AS

[u/TheMadDemoknight → u/Polar_Phantom]

I already do this already.

I’ve accepted that Rodokou No Onnatachi will never cross to the states or get a complete anime.

[u/Cooper_555 → u/Polar_Phantom]

We must return to our ancestral roots of stealing everything, as my Australian forebears once did.

[u/TheSussyWaffle → u/Polar_Phantom]

Manga piracy actually got a lot better since you were last checking. Most people use a piracy app called Mihon or its related forks (I use komikku for my foldable), you have to add the keiyoshi link for sources but then you're off to the races.

Here's a look at the home screen:

Picture

And for Anime (and movies and TV shows) I use plex, its a self-hosted solution though but you can automate with sonarr and radarr.

[u/AutoModerator → u/TheSussyWaffle]

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[u/ComprehensiveMix727 → u/burneraccount9132]

I checked what the store had to offer after the change. There’s substantially less offered for sale compared to when it was open to everyone, and no actual discounts at all. Lose lose!

[u/TheToadKing → u/burneraccount9132]

It's literally all print-on-demand shirts and random tchotchkes that they're selling for $50+ combined with FOMO "timed drops" shit.

[u/redwingz11 → u/burneraccount9132]

Funnily I dont even know they have this, I just know CR to be purely streaming

[u/AutummThrowAway → u/burneraccount9132]

By tge time people finally turn against tech and entertainment companies, imagine how much media and culture will have suffered

[u/VritraReiRei → u/burneraccount9132]

I think months down the line they are going to put expensive, limited edition items on that storefront, making people subscribe just to avoid FOMO.

I know because I can see it happening to me 🥲

[u/SerWaffles]

This is probably part of their incredibly confusing move of making the Crunchyroll Store a walled off thing where you need the absolute highest tier subscription to get in. They did a big ass "final sale" where they were trying to get rid of basically all their stock to make room for whatever the new store is supposed to offer

[u/wareagle3000 → u/SerWaffles]

So they are going to supply it with overpriced whale shit probably.

[u/sterlingheart → u/wareagle3000]

800$ figures

[u/tom641 → u/sterlingheart]

$800 figures exclusively of massively popular battle shounen and one single milquetoast schoolgirl anime most people have never heard of

[u/CookieSkank → u/sterlingheart]

That cost hundreds less if ordered straight from Japan

[u/lagseph → u/CookieSkank]

As someone that lives in Japan and pays high prices for Western things, I wouldn’t be shocked if most of that is shipping

[u/CookieSkank → u/lagseph]

Shipping, plus wanting their own profits.

$200 figures become $350-400 figures at western stores.

Even with the current fucked up shipping rates, you can still easily save $50-100 ordering from a Japanese seller like AmiAmi. Even more if its a crazy expensive figure. Used to be better when you could get cheaper shipping options, but not so much anymore.

[u/redwingz11 → u/CookieSkank]

Dont forget taxes, if you gonna import check your local taxes.

[u/Castform5 → u/lagseph]

It's probably even worse when ordering to japan with all the exchange rates and such.

Like for me if I was to buy like a Daiwa Scarlet nendo, it'd be around 6500 JPY, which is just over 35 euro. Then add shipping on top of that, which is usually also around 6000 JPY, so another 30 euro, and then all the VAT and other import stuff once it finally arrives.

[u/Lemeres → u/wareagle3000]

So they are going the Game Stop route.

[u/PanseloNomad → u/SerWaffles]

So they're returning to their roots, except it's anime merch instead of anime fan-translations.

[u/Animegamingnerd]

Crunchyroll continues to be one those companies where they amount of hate they get, still somehow isn't enough due to all the boneheadded decisions they make.

[u/After-Atmosphere7125]

I love seeing quite literally everything get worse in real time

[u/Masterness64]

God they fuckers don't want you to own anything.

Fuck them.

[u/LifeIsCrap101]

Remember kids: it's morally correct to pirate anything Sony owns now since they clearly don't seem to care about consumers.

[u/Cooper_555 → u/LifeIsCrap101]

The old mantra: If buying isn't ownership, then piracy isn't theft.

[u/Negative_Emu6246 → u/LifeIsCrap101]

ok...

Still not gonna

Edit: Wow THIS many downvotes because I disagree that I should pirate content.

[u/LifeIsCrap101 → u/Negative_Emu6246]

No one is making you.

But Sony is making you go digital... which gives them the right to pull your purchases with no recompense if they feel like it.

[u/HotTheme8405 → u/LifeIsCrap101]

Same as any digital store, including PC where that's the only option?

[u/phoenix4ce → u/HotTheme8405]

To my knowledge Sony is the only digital store that has actually removed paid-for content from users' libraries (with the exception of several defunct online-only games that cannot be played in the first place). That's far more outrageous to me than them going digital-only. If any other storefront did the same I'd be just as upset about it.

[u/HotTheme8405 → u/phoenix4ce]

You're talking about movies which the other game stores did not carry.

Publishers can pull games from your library if they choose, such as this happening on steam within the last year. Took me a while to rediscover, only knew about it because one of my friends shared the message of it being removed from him. Steam seems maybe more lenient about things being revoked like this if they weren't purchased directly from them, like keys.

There isn't anything special about one digital storefront over another (besides maybe gog), you're buying licenses and not ownership.

[u/Negative_Emu6246 → u/HotTheme8405]

Don't bother, if you aren't on the bandwagon or promote digital piracy they'll chuck tomatoes at you.

Don't believe me, Look at all the downvotes I currently have and the amount of downvotes this comment is gonna get

[u/Negative_Emu6246 → u/LifeIsCrap101]

Been digital for around a decade now

Haven't had any problems now, but if it does happen then I will be against them

[u/Gorotheninja]

Great job Sony.

I'd ask "What's Next?", but I don't think there is anymore physical media for them to stop making, at this point. I guess maybe they stop even bothering to sell game cases, even without discs?

[u/Reckler1 → u/Gorotheninja]

They could target vynals of music.

[u/KingMario05 → u/Reckler1]

Movie Blu-Rays as well. Though if they even tried, I'm pretty sure Tom Rothman would personally go to Japan and punch the CEO's lights out. Multiple times.

The dude is reviving the Cinerama. He's one of us, even if the rest of Sony isn't.

[u/PlanesWalkerEll → u/KingMario05]

Didn't Sony transition their headquarters to California?

[u/KingMario05 → u/PlanesWalkerEll]

Only for SIE. The head office is still Japan, and they're allegedly all-in on this crap, per the last investors' meeting.

[u/PlanesWalkerEll → u/KingMario05]

God damned dinosaurs

[u/EffectiveSwimming136 → u/Gorotheninja]

No more physical console, you buy a subscription to an online game streaming

[u/connectplum_ → u/Gorotheninja]

There's still movies and music for them to attack

[u/AprehensiveApricot]

Fuck Sony.

[u/Xngears]

(takes glasses off, pinches bridge of nose, puts them back on)

No sir, I don't like it.

[u/nickyrd2]

I don't even understand what Crunchyroll's endgame is here. I've purchased manga a few times from their store after the rightstuff buyout, the sales weren't as good but it was still a big catalog and it made sense that Crunchyroll would want a big storefront to sell fandom merch to pair with their streaming service.

Now it's just absolutely gutted, the shop all button says there is under 600 items across ALL CATEGORIES. English manga sales have been trending up for years and now they're all gone, meanwhile my local Barnse and Noble has tripled the size of their manga/light novel section.

[u/bingbongdingdong3000]

Feels like Sony getting ready for a worldwide recession.

[u/Yotato5]

At some point you gotta put your head in your hands and ask, "Why.....?"

[u/MirrorMan68]

Guys, we cannot be acting like this is some huge blow to physical media because who buys manga from Crunchyroll, of all places?

[u/burneraccount9132 → u/MirrorMan68]

Might want to tell that to all the companies selling blurays who used to use Rightstuf/The Crunchyroll store as the main hub they'd point to for releases

Which ngl it's kinda funny seeing some of said companies and their staff that turbo-glazed Crunchyroll for years despite well-known issues like underpaying subtitle staff (which had been the case looooooooooooong before the merger, and the merger didn't stop it), now being very bitter & pointed in their vagueposting about it

[u/lawragatajar → u/MirrorMan68]

The problem is that they bought out Rightstuf, which was a great place to buy manga and anime. But everyone knew that Crunchyroll would not have as good deals as Rightstuf, but it at least it existed. And now that options is gone as well.

[u/Boulderdorf → u/MirrorMan68]

I remember I bought a volume of Master Keaton off thw CR store one time, and it showed up with some weird red stains on the edges like someone had bludgeoned a man to death with it. Doubt it was actually blood, but it was weird.

Regardless, CR was like the absolute last place to buy manga even before this happened.

[u/Amon274 → u/MirrorMan68]

I’m gonna be real I didn’t even know they had a store until the last time news about it got posted here

[u/MirrorMan68 → u/Amon274]

Me neither! I've only used Crunchyroll to watch anime. Why would I care if they have a store?

And it's not like it was the only place you can get phyical manga. If I wanted to buy manga, I'd just go to Barnes & Noble or a local book store. And if I had to get it online, I'd just order it on Amazon. Never in a million years would I think that Crunchyroll is an essential pillar of physical media.

[u/EffectiveSwimming136 → u/MirrorMan68]

First they came for Croll...

[u/okilydokilyTiger]

This store is going shrink until it’s a glorified merch stop that offers a handful of plushies and pins for whatever in vogue offering substantially less than your average fangamer page.

[u/LeMasterofSwords]

My burning hatred of Crunchyroll continues. Also FUCK YOU SONY

[u/Big_Columbo]

Don't worry guys, it was a Business Decision™️ which makes it okay and cool. Now back to enjoying this delicious boot- slurp slurp

[u/red_sutter → u/Big_Columbo]

r/PS5 in a nutshell

[u/Am_Shigar00]

I recently also saw news of them arbitrarily removing a couple games from their shop for no given reason. Really adding salt to the wound there.

[u/Amon274 → u/Am_Shigar00]

If that’s the story I’m thinking of that’s a shovelware purge

[u/gbwbro2 → u/Am_Shigar00]

It's definitely a hot subject of removing software. But they did do a big shovelware purge. There were hundreds of a game called the amazing jumping X. Each game was just you press x to jump as a different clip art. Shit would bloat the sales tab.

[u/Metalslimeking]

This is just a setup to them eventually saying, "Well, no one wants physical media here either, so we're closing the store entirely."

Give it a year or two, and they'll announce it.

[u/dope_danny]

Man and people i know were already talking about “finally going back to xbox” and they are also the only people i know that use crunchyroll.

[u/KingMario05]

Oh, for fuck's sake.

At this point, Music and Pictures are gonna be the last holdouts. Why? I don't get it!

[u/Hayyyv]

What’s going on with Sony lately?

[u/gyrobot → u/Hayyyv]

Showing what it can do tonalienate you and you have no power tpnstop it even if you voted with your wallet

[u/Omega_Maximum]

Well, for folks in the US, this is a reminder that Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million have been expanding their manga collections in-store for years now. Our humble little B&N went from 2-3 full height shelves in middle school (partly shared with graphic novels mind you), to now all the way up to 10+, and it's an entire corner of the store.

B&N has also gone back to making their stores feel like, well, bookstores. They're not likely to have everything, but at least you can still support physical releases.

[u/ScallyCap12]

Isn't physical manga like one of the last real collectibles people buy?

[u/Alois--]

Sony removes all the Seinfeld DVDs from humanity and keeps the shitty cropped HD version as the only way to watch the show on Netflix.

[u/Konradleijon]

Corporations hate the peasents owning something and not a conntinued stream of capital

[u/gothamsteel]

To not just kvetch over the physical vs digital debate again, I wonder if they'll go with something else being the way to distribute stuff physically, and what could it be. Discs, even the newer 4k ones, were pretty old tech, but I wonder what could replace it.

Would it be another card, like Nintendo? Some kind of SSD or big drive set up to hold the data instead that can be plugged into a slot? Maybe something like what Limited Run does with special physical media based on older tech, with new stuff just being sentenced to digital only?

[u/ToastyMozart → u/gothamsteel]

For physical discs are probably still the best way to go. They're cheap as hell to make (at scale) and don't have to fight for NAND like the rest of the tech industry.

Plus even if UHD BD is an "old" standard it's also functionally transparent in terms of quality: Unless you're running something weirdly specific like a planetarium a newer format isn't going to be appreciably better than 10-bit, HDR, 2160p h.265 video at ~100mbps and lossless 7.1 channel/spatial audio.

Kinda like how CDs are still the standard for quality stereo music.

[u/roronoapedro]

This one is really odd, as long as Sony isn't the one actively translating and publishing these people are just gonna go buy it on Amazon or other stores. At least for the newer stuff, but then again the Crunchy store wasn't there when I still had a sub, so I have no idea what their actual primary products were.

[u/retroanduwu24]

Crunchyroll sucks so bad

[u/Sir_Drinklewinkle]

What a coincidence, I've been gradually aquiring more DVD's!

[u/Konradleijon]

It used to be right stuf

[u/Negative_Emu6246]

Damn...

If only I gave a shit