Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Crunchyroll and Game Show Network (GSN) have teamed to launch the Crunchyroll 24-hour anime streaming service. The new FAST channel will be available in the U.S. on Amazon Freevee, LG Channels, the Roku Channel and Vizio’s WatchFree+. Crunchyroll has been delivering East Asian content to U.S. audiences since 2006. In 2016 it partnered with Funimation, which also specialized in Japanese content. Sony acquired Funimation in 2017 and Crunchyroll in 2021, merging the two last year.

As of 2022 Crunchyroll combined “subs, dubs, simulcasts, library, music, movies and manga,” amassing more than 10 million paid subscribers. That primed the pump for an all-anime FAST platform.

The new Crunchyroll channel “is a joint collaboration between Crunchyroll and corporate cousin Game Show Network” that “will feature a lineup of older shows, dubbed in English — while new and premium anime content will remain on Crunchyroll’s subscription and ad-supported VOD services,” reports Variety.

Deadline says the “linear-style” FAST scheduling will aim for an “anime-curious audience.” Crunchyroll is “styled more like an introductory course, with future plans to schedule ‘other promotional, genre and theme programming blocks’ to better help viewers ‘sample the wide range of anime being created from Japan,’” adds Gizmodo.

IGN quotes GSN EVP of Distribution Tim Carry saying the company is “thrilled by the massive response from our platform partners for this channel, which is a testament to Crunchyroll’s brand and library.”

“Crunchyroll, LLC is an independently operated joint venture between U.S.-based Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Japan’s Aniplex, a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Inc., both subsidiaries of Tokyo-based Sony Group,” according to Deadline. In 2019 Sony also acquired AT&T’s 42 percent investment in the GSN cable network, becoming its sole owner.