Fears that Crunchyroll would gut its online store’s offering of manga and anime after placing everything behind a paywall have come true. The new store is lacking physical books and is missing most of the Blu-rays that were previously available, leading to a lot of anger online in the shadow of Crunchyroll owner Sony’s broader move away from disc-based media ahead of the PS6.
On August 18, as spotted by MangaAlerts on social media (via GamesRadar), the Crunchyroll store returned following its previously announced shift to a paywalled marketplace available exclusively to Mega and Ultimate Crunchyroll subscribers. And the place now feels like walking around a GameStop in a dying mall, with most of what people liked gone and what remains being anime-related merch instead of actual manga books or Blu-rays.
Kotaku has contacted Crunchyroll for more information.
According to MagnaAlerts, Crunchyroll has removed or delisted all “manga, light novels, manhwa, & danmei” from the online store. It is unclear if these products will return. Currently on the website, the only store categories you’ll find are New, Accessories, Apparel, Collectibles, Games, Home Entertainment, and Music. Don’t get too excited about games, however, as the only option right now is to buy a Narutro-themed Clue board game.
And as pointed out by GamesRadar, there are only 10 CDs or records for sale under Music and fewer than 400 Blu-ray and DVD anime sets under home entertainment. And music CDs are tossed into that category, too. This is reportedly a much smaller amount of physical anime than what was previously available in the Crunchyroll store. And as reported by MagnaAlerts, it seems the only remaining Blu-ray anime on the site are titles owned or distributed by Sony-owned Funimation, Crunchyroll, and Aniplex.
While it is possible that this is just a temporary situation and that Sony/Crunchyroll will expand the store’s lineup in the coming weeks and months, it’s also easy to see why so many anime fans are looking at this as the next step in what many online gamers and fans see as Sony’s war on physical media. The company would much rather people subscribe and pay a monthly fee to Crunchyroll than buy physical anime collections once.
There’s also a lot of anger directed at Sony for purchasing The Right Stuf International, a popular anime web store, in 2023 and later merging it with Crunchyroll. At the time, people were worried that it could lead to a future in which it would be harder to buy anime, and now, in 2026, that seems to be exactly what’s happening.
Needless to say, Sony isn’t doing well online as people continue to bully and yell at the company and its subsidiaries over its previous announcement that in 2028 it will end production of new physical PlayStation games. That explains why every time Sony posts something online or does a stream, the comments are filled with people calling for a boycott of the company. And this Crunchyroll news ain’t going to help.
