Anime Discussion

Tl;Dr: Just so you know, Sony group owns Crunchyroll and Aniplex. They're also one of the companies the two hollywood guilds are striking against.

So to sum up, western anime distribution platforms that produce dubs are often owned by the same film/TV studios (e.g. Sony Pictures) named in the current strikes. English VAs who dub anime also have the same concern as writers and other actors about being replaced by AI.

This should not affect release schedules of shows in Japan, and by extension international releases of movies and shows with Japanese audio, because Japanese writers and actors are not affected by the current strike. But English dubs using union talent could be delayed by the strikes.

Unfortunately, union voice acting productions still make up a minority of the total, and most of that work is still performed in Texas, where companies are allowed to hire both union and non-union talent. So I imagine the impact to release schedules might be minimal, and I have a feeling that the greedy Western studios would sooner just replace their union talent with cheaper non-union scabs rather than miss a release window.

If these practices sound objectionable to you, then you may want to consider canceling your Crunchyroll/Funimation/Hulu/Netflix/Amazon subscriptions so as not to support these poor business practices.