Adult Swim Stops Streaming Blade Runner: Black Lotus, Shenmue, Fena Anime

Toonami co-creator and Adult Swim Senior Vice President, Head of Anime and Action Series Jason DeMarco confirmed on Tuesday on Twitter that Adult Swim stopped streaming the Blade Runner: Black Lotus, Shenmue the Animation, and Fena: Pirate Princess series on its website. DeMarco added that "it's looking like no [season 2] of Shenmue, even though sadly- it did well enough that we were gearing up for [season 2]. Maybe one day…"

Adult Swim also removed the Lazor Wulf and Tigtone series from its website. DeMarco described the removed series as being "written off."

DeMarco said on his tweet that all of the anime series are still available on Crunchyroll (subtitled) and as digital downloads.

Crunchyroll and Adult Swim announced in 2018 their partnership with Alcon Entertainment to produce the Blade Runner: Black Lotus series, which was based on Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to the 1982 Blade Runner film. The series premiered on Crunchyroll and Adult Swim's Toonami block in the United States in November 2021. Adult Swim have worldwide distribution rights to an English-dubbed version of the show outside of Asia, Crunchyroll streams the anime worldwide.

Crunchyroll and Adult Swim also announced their collaboration to produce an anime series adaptation of Yu Suzuki's Shenmue game series in 2020. The anime premiered on February 6 on both Crunchyroll and Adult Swim. Toonami airs the show in North America with an English dub, and Crunchyroll streams the English-subtitled version worldwide outside of Japan and China. The series premiered in Japan in April.

Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Crunchyroll unveiled Fena: Pirate Princess as a "Crunchyroll Original" anime in July 2020, and it premiered on Crunchyroll and Adult Swim's Toonami block in August 2021, ahead of the Japanese premiere. The Production I.G show streamed with Japanese audio and English subtitles on Crunchyroll, and ran with an English dub on Adult Swim. The anime premiered in Japan in October 2021.

AT&T spun off Adult Swim's parent company WarnerMedia, which then merged with Discovery on April 8. The newly merged Warner Bros. Discovery company then took a US$825 million write-down on a wide variety of content. In a write-down, a company declares that an asset has reduced value to limit its tax burden. However, as a result, the company normally cannot earn more revenue from the written-down asset.

Source: Jason DeMarco's Twitter account