Funimation - Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer)
Funimation Productions, LLC (commonly known as Funimation) is an American company that provides foreign entertainment, most notably anime. The company headquarters is based in Flower Mound, Texas. Funimation is currently owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a division of Sony’s Japanese conglomerate.
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 licenses are My Hero Academia or Dragon Ball Z, which had a successful run on the Toonami block of Cartoon Network from 1998 to 2003 and has been re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray several times 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 financings from Daniel Cocanougher and his family, who sold their own milling company and became investors of the company. Fukunaga and his uncle, a producer at Toei, had reached an agreement 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 created and brought Dragon Ball Z to the United States, which found great success. FUNimation Productions was eventually sold to Navarre Corporation on May 11, 2005 and was renamed to 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 SVOD (Subscription Video on Demand) Crunchyroll (now owned by AT&T) on November 9, 2018, two years after the partnership began. In a note sent to the company’s staff, the president of Funimation, Gen Fukunaga, said the decision was made as a result of the purchase by Sony Pictures Television and the additional investments that the company was making in the business to make Funimation a global brand of anime. After the separation, many of Funimation’s titles that were shared on Crunchyroll as a 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, who was once a senior executive at Crunchyroll, had become the new general manager of Funimation.
Demon Slayer in Funimation
The company 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 to stream on FunimationNow, as well as Hulu and Crunchyroll beginning on 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 the Weekly 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 movie to the anime adaptation titled Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slayer) Mugen Train is also scheduled to release in 2020.
On December 27th, 2019, the very end of the decade, Funimation announced a poll that allowed fans to vote and pick their favorite anime of 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.
Episodes list
Episode 1: Cruelty (April 6th, 2019)
Episode 2: Trainer Sakonji Urokodaki (April 13th, 2019)
Episode 3: Sabito and Makomo (April 20th, 2019)
Episode 4: Final Selection (April 27th, 2019)
Episode 5: My Own Steel (May 4th, 2019)
Episode 6: Swordsman Accompanying a Demon (May 11th, 2019)
Episode 7: Muzan Kibutsuji (May 18th, 2019)
Episode 8: The Smell of Enchanting (May 25th, 2019)
Episode 9: Temari Demon and Arrow Demon (June 1st, 2019)
Episode 10: Together Forever (June 8th, 2019)
Episode 11: Tsuzumi Mansion (June 15th, 2019)
Episode 12: The Boar Bares its Fangs, Zenitsu Sleeps (June 22nd, 2019)
Episode 13: Something More Important than Life (June 29th, 2019)
Episode 14: The House with the Wisteria Family Crest (July 6th, 2019)
Episode 15: Mount Natagumo (July 13th, 2019)
Episode 16: Letting Someone Else Go First (July 20th, 2019)
Episode 17: You Must Master a Single Thing (July 27th, 2019)
Episode 18: A Forged Bond (August 3rd, 2019)
Episode 19: Hinokami (August 10th, 2019)
Episode 20: Pretend Family (August 17th, 2019)
Episode 21: Against Corps Rules (August 24th, 2019)
Episode 22: Master of the Mansion (August 31st, 2019)
Episode 23: Hashira Meeting (September 7th, 2019)
Episode 24: Rehabilitation Training (September 14th, 2019)
Episode 25: Tsuguko, Kanao Tsuyuri (September 21st, 2019)
Episode 26: New Mission (September 28th, 2019)