posted on by Adriana Hazra
© 十日草輔・KADOKAWA刊／アニメ「王様ランキング 勇気の宝箱」製作委員会
Voice actor Marin Miller (Izanami in B: The Beginning) stated in a Twitter thread on Saturday that they will not reprise their role as Kage’s Mom in the English dub of the Ranking of Kings: The Treasure Chest of Courage (Ōsama Ranking: Yūki no Takarabako) anime. Miller stated that they turned down the role because they “didn’t want to experience the loss of [their] job in the future from these illegal, unenforceable articles in their contracts.” Miller had stated on Twitter on June 14 that they “will never be working with Crunchyroll directly again,” adding the company “recently tried to make [them] sign a contract that would have these unenforceable clauses that they used to intimidate the cast and crew and refused AI protections.” Miller stated they would not be reprising their Crunchyroll roles in general.
Ranking of Kings: The Treasure Chest of Courage premiered on April 13, and Crunchyroll began streaming the English dub of the anime on April 27.
The Ranking of Kings anime premiered in October 2021 and ran for two continuous cours (quarters of the year). Funimation and Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan and also streamed an English dub.
Voice actor Laura Post stated on Twitter earlier this month about a mobile game based on Korean creator SIU‘s Tower of God manhwa not featuring reprisals from the television anime adaptation’s English cast. She alleged that Crunchyroll prevented the actors from auditioning for the roles. According to Post, the game developer “approached a studio to begin recording the English localization [and] CR went directly to the client and told them they ‘owned the voice prints’ of the original cast,” and that “they went on to say that the videogame client could legally not use ANY of the cast in the game in *any* capacity. Not even as new characters or different characters than we originally played. We could not even *audition* for new or different characters. We were blacklisted.” Post wrote that Crunchyroll does not own the voice prints. Crunchyroll co-produced the 2020 anime series as part of its “Crunchyroll Original” programming in partnership with Naver Webtoon.
