Funimation sent shock waves across the anime world when news broke that the company had acquired Crunchyroll in late 2021. Since then, a lot has changed — the two companies have been unified as Crunchyroll, LLC, and the landscape of anime streaming has altered dramatically.
There’s no reason to pay for a Funimation subscription anymore, what with the service discontinuing simulcast anime premieres (which will debut on Crunchyroll from now on), while the back catalog of older Funimation-licensed anime has slowly but surely begun to trickle over to Crunchyroll’s library. Emphasis on “slowly.”
While a majority of the service’s popular titles, such as Dragon Ball Z, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Trigun have made their way over to Crunchyroll since the merger was announced in March, not to mention English dubs of anime including Dr. Stone, Hunter x Hunter, and Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, there’s still a handful of gems in the Funimation library that haven’t yet made the jump. Several of these anime can even be streamed for free with ads on the Funimation site, which means you can still enjoy them even if you don’t have a subscription.
If you’re looking for some older, excellent anime to watch, from The Vision of Escaflowne to Ping Pong the Animation, these are just a few of the best anime you can stream for free on Funimation right now.
The brainchild of Macross co-creator Shōji Kawamori, The Vision of Escaflowne is a fantasy romance isekai set in an alternate dimension where feudal kingdoms pilot gigantic mechanized suits of armor and the power of love can alter the shape of destiny itself. The series follow Hitomi, a Japanese high school student who is transported to the magical world of Gaea after being saved from a dragon by Van
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