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Funimation - Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer)

Funimation Productions, LLC (commonly referred to as Funimation) is an American company that offers foreign entertainment, particularly anime. The company is headquartered in Flower Mound, Texas. Funimation is currently owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony.

This studio is one of the leading distributors of anime and other entertainment properties in North America, along with Viz Media, Sentai Filmworks, and Aniplex. Some of its most popular franchises include My Hero Academia and Dragon Ball Z , which enjoyed massive success on Cartoon Network's Toonami block from 1998 to 2003 and has been reissued several times on DVD and Blu-ray since then.

History

Funimation was founded on May 9, 1994, by Gen Fukunaga and his wife, Cindy, as FUNimation Productions (FUNimation being a portmanteau of "fun" and "animation"), with funding from Daniel Cocanougher and his family, who sold their own flour milling business and became investors in the company. Fukunaga and his uncle, a producer at Toei, had made a deal to lend the rights to the Dragon Ball series if Fukunaga could raise enough money to purchase them. With the help of the Cocamougher family, Funimation was formed and introduced Dragon Ball Z to the United States, which was a great success. FUNimation Productions was eventually sold to Navarre Corporation on May 11, 2005, and was renamed FUNimation Entertainment.

For several years, Funimation also had a long-term partnership agreement with another anime streaming service known as Crunchyroll . However, Funimation ended its relationship with the subscription video on demand (SVOD) service Crunchyroll (now owned by AT&T) on November 9, 2018, two years after the partnership began. In a memo sent to company staff, Funimation President Gen Fukunaga stated that the decision was made following the purchase by Sony Pictures Television and the additional investments the company was making in the company to establish Funimation as a global anime brand. Following the separation, many Funimation titles that were shared on Crunchyroll as part of the partnership were removed from Crunchyroll's catalog. Funimation was also removed from VRV, another streaming service owned by Crunchyroll. In November 2019, it was announced that Colin Decker, formerly a senior executive at Crunchyroll, had become the new CEO of Funimation.

Demon Slayer in Funimation

Aniplex announced that the anime adaptation of the original Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) manga series written and illustrated by Koyoharu Gotoge would be available for streaming on FunimationNow , as well as Hulu and Crunchyroll starting April 6, 2019. This anime series was released after the great success that the Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) manga achieved worldwide since its first publication in theWeekly Shonen Jump Magazine in 2016.

The Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) anime series currently has a total of 26 episodes that adapt volumes 1 to 7. A sequel film to the anime adaptation titled Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) Mugen Train is also scheduled to be released in 2020.
On December 27, 2019, at the very end of the decade, Funimation announced a poll allowing fans to vote and choose their favorite anime from each genre. In this poll, Demon Slayer was chosen as the "Favorite Anime" of the decade, beating out incredibly popular anime adaptations like Attack on Titan, Hunter x Hunter, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.