Right Stuf

» see rightstufanime.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

right stuf was a US-coded product at the cultural layer. it opened on july 31, 1987 in grimes iowa, founded by todd ferson and shawne kleckner. anime in north america was a vhs-import business at that point, and right stuf was one of the first dedicated mail-order outlets that took it seriously. the catalog covered dvds and blu-rays and figurines and manga for the next thirty-six years (close enough).

by the mid 2000s right stuf had grown into the dominant US specialty anime retailer. it ran its own licensing arm too, nozomi entertainment, which picked up older catalog titles that funimation or aniplex did not want. for a small iowa storefront that was a real footprint inside the industry.

sony group corporation acquired right stuf in august 2022 through the same joint venture that already held crunchyroll and funimation. the move stripped the hentai catalog within weeks, which the longtime customer base noticed and complained about loudly. about a year later, in september 2023, crunchyroll announced the right stuf brand would phase out and the store would migrate to crunchyroll store on october 10, 2023.

anime in turkey through the 2000s and 2010s came in through fansubs on irc and bittorrent, then through animax tv, then through crunchyroll once that worked from europe (or whatever it was called). nobody in ankara was paying for dvds imported from iowa. right stuf existed in the same internet i was on, just on a shelf i never walked past.

~ the dossier ~

~ how it actually ended ~

crunchyroll's framing was that right stuf customers would gain access to a larger catalog, "over 30,000 products," through the migration. in fairness, the legacy account hung on until october 25, 2023, after which the right stuf login redirected to crunchyroll store. the customer base was not asked.

the sony arc started in march 2022 when sony pictures completed the funimation purchase and folded it into crunchyroll. the right stuf grab in august 2022 was the second move in the same consolidation. the brand died inside an eighteen-month sony rollup of every north american anime distribution channel that still ran independently.

~ what came after ~

the catalog still exists, sort of, scattered across the crunchyroll store under crunchyroll branding (or whatever it was called). the nozomi entertainment licenses kept moving, though the labeling on the product page no longer says "right stuf." the iowa office shut down with the migration.

in fairness, the loss is not the catalog. it is the independent specialty retailer being absorbed into the streaming platform that was also its licensor. a niche industry that ran on small distributors competing for catalog rights now runs on one corporate parent shipping the dvds, hosting the streams, and licensing the rights. right stuf was the longest-running independent piece of that ecosystem, and it went last.

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