Enter the buzzing showfloor at this year’s Anime Expo, and you’ll be met with the towering exhibitor presences of MAPPA, SEGA, Netflix, TOHO Animation, HULU, Viz Media, Aniplex, and more major players in a rapidly popularizing (and globalizing) anime industry. But even among the industry’s recognizable players, Crunchyroll — and its series of showfloor experiences, merchandising, and photo-ops — calls back to the heyday of the convention circuit in a way few others do.
The massive booth features a mass of large screens that deliver trailer takeovers and anime ambiance sequences that act as an environmental backdrop alongside an “Anime Forecast,” a series on interactive screens where fans can browse the company’s catalog of upcoming titles. There’s of course a merch store to pick up collectables, manga, vinyls, clothing, and more, but there’s also the “trash to treasure” dumpster dive experience that introduces you to the characters and story of its upcoming graffiti-infused anime Gachiakuta as well as the Demon Slayer – Infinity Castle activation setting up the film trilogy’s release.
Inside, attendees move through an immersive set deco recreation of the Infinity Castle before interacting with a motion sensor experience that soars through the alternate dimension via the Crow, and a 3D photo-op that uses swords to simulate the breathing techniques (Water, Flame, Wind, Stone and Thunder) of key characters. This immersive activation helps make Crunchyroll’s floor presence one of the Expo’s biggest and most technologically advanced booths, and it’s every bit a part of the company’s strategy, says president Rahul Purini.
Like the day-long pop-up convention hub Crunchyroll Stage and the Crunchyroll Lounge where onsite deals are made, the booth is a must-have — even if some of Crunchyroll’s competitors have pulled back in certain corners of the convention circuit after launching their own events. “Fans love experiences, and this [booth], that’s what we are creating here. It’s not just some of our store. It is a small amusement park. You can go interact with the characters, or touch the stories and find yourself immersed in that. And we’re trying to do that in places where the fans are already gathered,” he explains.
Crunchyroll’s ongoing lean into the fan space doesn’t stop at the showfloor. Across the July 4 holiday weekend, the media and entertainment company featured a number of panels and screenings, and on Saturday, shared a steady stream of acquisition and trailer announcements. Among them, exclusive footage of Studio KAI’s dark fantasy Sentenced to Be a Hero, which sees criminals sentenced to heroism/service in a penal military unit waging war against a demon king’s army, and the news that Studio Pierrot’s Black Clover will return for an all-new season only on Crunchyroll, alongside a teaser trailer, key visual, a message from the manga’s creator Yuki Tabata celebrating the anime’s return and manga’s 10th anniversary.
Other news included a trailer for the newly announced anime adaptation of Daemons of the Shadow Realm based on a manga created by Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist); confirmation of Re:ZERO – Starting Life in Another World season four streaming exclusively on Crunchyroll in 2026; and a two-minute first-look at the upcoming third season of Studio Bind’s Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation; the October 2025 premiere of action comedy Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider and January 2026 drop of romantic comedy You and I Are Polar Opposites. Classroom of the Elite fans will get a follow-up to season three, titled Classroom of the Elite 2nd Year, and the game Classroom of the Elite – Merge Puzzle Special Exam, playable for the first time outside of Japan via Crunchyroll’s Game Vault, with Hiroyuki SAWANO LIVE [nZk]008 set to join Crunchyroll’s library of over 100 full-length concerts later this summer.
Ahead of Saturday’s panel, The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Purini about the company’s presence at the con and its current season, what he’s most excited about in this moment of anime expansion, what challenges remain for those bringing the medium to western audiences, and key growth areas for the company.
You’ve brought so much to the convention this weekend. What are you most excited about in terms of your slate?
Our July season is among one of the biggest seasons that we’ve ever had. The volume, the breadth and the depth of content that we are able to bring to fans around the world, and the diversity of the content, is one thing we’re really excited about. There are shows for every kind of anime fan. There’s a show that premiered over the weekend, Lord of Mysteries, which is a Chinese animation show — there’s not a lot of that. But the biggest anime show in Japan, Gachiakuta, which we are featuring here, is a show that I’m really excited about. It is from our partners at [Japanese publisher] Kodansha, and it is one of those shows where, if you watch the trailer, you’re hooked. This kind of breadth and depth of show not only makes this season really, really compelling, it also talks to where we Crunchyroll are as a company. We have the single largest library of anime content anywhere. We have something for every fan, every genre, and we are adding a ton every quarter. That speaks to the value proposition for the anime fan when they come to Crunchyroll.
You worked at Funimation before heading up Crunchyroll, so you understand what the lift of making anime accessible to U.S. audiences was in those early days before places like Hulu and Netflix were also doing it. What was the biggest challenge then and what’s the biggest challenge now in terms of bringing this content to audiences?
Early on, the biggest challenge Crunchyroll and other companies that were serving this fan base solved was accessibility. There was anime fandom around the world, but it was hard to get your hands on it, even as your peers in Japan were watching and enjoying it [sooner]. That was the biggest thing that most companies, including Crunchyroll and Funimation, solved. When the shows are happening in Japan, bring them globally, subtitle them so it becomes accessible. In the case of Funimation, innovate to even dub it during the season. We call it the simuldub, where now dubs are available one episode at a time within two to four weeks. But those were the initial challenges: accessibility, getting the shows from Japan and making them available to fans so they weren’t waiting for 15 to 18 months for a DVD release or for some TV channel to pick up a show.
The challenges now are somewhat similar, except it’s a global audience. The audience is growing, and when the audience is growing, you need a diverse slate of content to serve that audience. So making sure we have that diverse slate for the audience that’s global, and making it accessible to them — that we’re on all the devices that they want to watch, we have all the payments that they want to use to sign up for it, all the languages that they want to watch it in whether it’s subtitled or dubbed, and making it available when they want to watch it. The second part of that is, given the volume of content, how do we make sure that we find the right content for the right fan at the right time. That discovery piece is the biggest thing that we are trying to solve because there’s so much new content. How do we make fans aware of what’s available, and serve as that connection.
Platforms and streamers who more recently entered the anime market have increasingly found ways to blend it with Western animation or use American audience influences a little more in the visuals and storytelling. Can you talk about how your approach to your content slate is different, and how you tap into this medium that is outside the realm of Western storytelling to deliver for audiences?
There are a few things that are really core to us, what we call our guiding principles. We believe anime is intrinsically connected back to Japan. For anime to be authentically anime, it has to be conceived and created by Japan, and we take that to heart. There is other animation that might be anime-inspired, but it’s not anime unless it has the connection. Second is that anime is a medium. It’s not a genre. There is anime for various kinds of people — there’s action, romance, slice-of-life, sci-fi, fantasy. It’s an art form, and that’s important to understand. One of the ways that I think we have operated and we believe we can successfully serve the anime fan is being singularly focused on that. This is not one genre that we serve the fan. This is our entire existence. So that focus and that clarity of what is authentically anime, and that relationship with partners, that relationship with the fans, and understanding why fans connect with anime, all of those things allow us to be able to serve those creators and fans in the best way.
Crunchryoll is now many things, but first it was largely a content library. Many streamers started that way as well, and then expanded. Where is Crunchyroll in that conversation? How much do you want original content? How do you want to do it?
First, we do not consider ourselves to be a streamer. We consider ourselves to be a media and entertainment company focused on serving the anime fan. The video content is a big part of that fandom but this is much bigger than that. It’s everything from the real-world experiences, the community, the connection, the games, the merchandise, the manga, the music. We’re not interested in being something for everyone. We want to be everything for someone. So that’s number one. In terms of how we think about content, I go back to the amazing storytellers and partners in Japan. We want to work with them all, we want all of their content to be available to consumers, and we will continue to do that. Having said that, the audience around the globe is expanding. To serve them, we need more funding and more diverse content. So we’re doing co-productions, where we go to Japanese partners and help them fund shows by investing in them. This is not distributing, not licensing. We’re actually part of the production committee that’s making these shows.
In addition to that, when we find stories around the world that we think are going to be great, we’re now starting to take the stories back to the Japanese creators and are asking if they’re interested in making anime from this story. Ghost of Tsushima [based on the Sony PlayStation game] is a great example. Solo Leveling is a great example. We took this Korean [title based on the web novel-turned-webtoon], and went back to Japan and said we would love to make an anime. And we got partners like Aniplex and A-1 Pictures excited about it. That’s the third piece. Licensed content will always be the majority of our content because there’s so many great Japanese viewers. We will co-produce content with our Japanese partners to invest and bring shows. But we will also commission shows because we have stories that we think will be great in anime, and we’re taking them back to Japan.
Anime has done some interesting things as it relates to theatrical releases, an area Hollywood has really been having a conversation about the last few years. The recent Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye experience, which put the first three episodes of season two together and screened them like a movie, is one example. Is there anything you think Hollywood can learn about the theatrical space from the anime industry in this current moment?
I’m not sure we’re at a place where we can tell Hollywood what it can learn. They’ve been doing this for a long time. (Laughs) What we have found and learned is that fans like experiences. They want to be able to go sit in a dark theater with friends and family and experience their stories on a big screen and feel that sense of community. So for them, it doesn’t matter if it’s a 90-minute or 120-minute movie, or it’s three episodes put together. To them, it is great stories told in an amazing, creative way on a big screen. That is an interesting insight for us.
What are other growth areas you’re focusing on right now that are represented at AX?
Games. About 18 months ago, we announced this initiative called Crunchyroll Game Vault. If you’re a subscriber of Crunchyroll’s higher tiers — mega or ultimate tier — you get access to games for free. We initially started with a handful of games, and now we’ve scaled that to over 60 that fans and subscribers have access to, to play for free. We’re seeing a lot of traction. Fans come in to play a game and then watch something, and we are seeing a lot of subscribers that have been members for years dive in and play games telling us that they want to upgrade to be able to get access to the games. That is an area where we are really excited because there’s a big overlap between gamers and anime fans.
And we recently announced that we’re going to be bringing a digital manga app to our fans in the U.S. One of the things that fans ask us most is for access to manga, so we see a lot of opportunity to be able to serve fans through it. And obviously, merchandise. Fans are collectors. They want to show off their fandom, and we want to be able to bring these unique collector items — whether it is apparel, figures, home accessories — that they can buy. Another area that we see is theatrical. Demon Slayer is coming up, we are part of Sony Pictures and they’ve been bringing movies to the world for 100-plus years. So we’re really excited about being able to bring movies to fans who want to watch in theaters. We know fans love that.
You mentioned experiences and the exhibitor booth is one giant experience. Why is this such an important corner for Crunchyrull to occupy and are you thinking about ways to go bigger?
We’re very fan-centric, very fan-first in our thinking. The fan sits at the center of everything we do. So we are here to serve this fanbase, and the best way for us to do that is to understand what they want, talk to them, connect with them, build a relationship with them. We don’t know any other way to do this. Our teams put on 100-plus shows worldwide. This is not a few things a year that we do. We are constantly spending time with our fans. In terms of experiences, do we want to do something bigger? Yes, if the opportunity shows up the right way and we can create that authentic experience for fans, we will do that. We’re doing that with videos. We’re doing that with music festivals. At San Diego Comic-Con, we’re going to have an anime music festival. Do we have a ride at a theme park? No. But are we creating experiences that excite? Absolutely.
