Crunchyroll is an American subscription video-on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Sony Group Corporation through a joint venture between Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment Japan's Aniplex. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by East Asian media, including Japanese anime. Founded in 2006 by a group of University of California, Berkeley, graduates,[6] Crunchyroll's distribution channel and partnership program delivers content to over 100 million registered users worldwide. Crunchyroll was a subsidiary of AT&T's Otter Media, and from 2016 to 2018, the company partnered with Funimation, which would eventually merge into its brand in 2022 after Sony acquired Crunchyroll in 2021. Crunchyroll has offices in San Francisco, Culver City, Dallas, New York City, Melbourne, Tokyo, Paris, Roubaix, Berlin, Chișinău, Lausanne, and London, and is a member of The Association of Japanese Animations (AJA). "Crunchyroll-Hime", also known as "Hime", is the official mascot of Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll offers over 1,000 anime shows, more than 200 East Asian dramas to users, and around 80 manga titles such as Crunchyroll Manga, although not all programming is available worldwide due to licensing restrictions. Crunchyroll passed one million paid subscribers in February 2017 and has over 10 million paid subscribers as of 2022. Crunchyroll also releases titles on home video either directly or by having select anime titles released through its distribution partners (Sentai Filmworks, Viz Media, Discotek Media, and its corporate sibling, Aniplex of America in North America; Anime Limited in the United Kingdom).
Hitomi Kisugi, along with her older sister Rui and her younger sister Ai, run a café called "Cat's Eye" in Tokyo. The sisters lead a double life as a trio of highly skilled art thieves, stealing works of art which primarily belonged to their long-missing father, Michael Heinz, who was a famous art collector during the Nazi regime. Hitomi's fiancé is Toshio Utsumi, a clumsy young police officer who is investigating the Cat's Eye case. Despite being a frequent visitor to the café he is unaware of the double life of the girls. Hitomi regularly informs the police in advance about her next job using a signature "Cat's Eye" calling card, and then uses Toshio's research about the security surrounding the target to help plan the job.
