American coach Crunkee joins Japan's top CS2 team Ravens

On January 27th, Ravens, one of the few active Japanese teams in the global Counter-Strike 2 scene, announced changes to their lineup ahead of the 2026 season. Alongside a new player, Ravens announced that an American, former NuTorious coach Hunter "Crunkee" O’Neill, has joined the lineup.

This is quite the surprising pickup as Crunkee stands out among a lineup of Japanese and Brazilian-Japanese players, so Dust2.us of course had to ask its native son how he ended up working with a team from one of the lesser-known regions in global Counter-Strike.

Crunkee informed Dust2.us that he actually in fact had previously worked with the Japanese team back in 2025, helping the team after reaching out to star player Yuji "FurtVe" Masahiro Hara and finding out they had no coach. This arrangement lasted for some time before Crunkee joins NuTorious. With Ravens rounding out their roster with addition of "Athan", Crunkee hopes to help Ravens find success as they get back in action.

Regarding communication with the Japanese team, while he studied Japanese for three years in High School, Crunkee admits that his Japanese is a bit rusty, therefore relying on FurtVe who is multilingual in English, Portuguese, and Japanese to communicate with the rest of the team.

In a country where CS2 and PC Gaming are still relatively niche, Ravens have fought to make a name for themselves, with the team recently making the news for attending eXTREMESLAND 2025 where they unfortunately eliminated with a 0-2 record in the group stage.

Ravens are now:

• Kaito "kaito_37" Yamada

• Yuji "FurtVe" Masahiro Hara

• Marcos "MORTAL" Paulo Matsunaga Santos

• Shuma "RIPablo" Ikeda

• "Athan"

• Hunter "Crunkee" O’Neill (Coach)

Raven's first official of the year will be against South Korean team Ataks in the Japanese league BEC Season 2.