EDIT: Well this blew up in ways I never expected! Thanks everyone, yes, *including the folks who disagree with me.* I'm trying to put together a larger pinned comment for Frequently Asked Questions and such, but for now I just want to say that I'm sorry for the straight up insults at the end, and anyone who felt I was mocking them for wanting a simple way to support the industry. I have no ill-will towards you just because you sub to any of these services. After-all, how do you think I research these videos and get all these screenshots of the services? 🤡 I do think there are many better ways to give targeted support, but I don't want to be just another hater who uses false and outdated information. Anyway. I thought many times of replacing that "stupidity and laziness" line with "ignorance" but I didn't want to do anything to compromise the rawness of the first take. I also just get really frustrated at people's insistence that those who don't subscribe to these services don't deserve to watch the same shows even if they dump far more money than the sub costs into the industry in other ways; that's what the "mockery" was really about. On the flip side, I see so many who are terrified to, or don't understand how to watch incredible shows simply because they're unlicensed, and that's frankly just depressing every time I see it in threads and forums around the net. I see now that many people just don't their options, and don't understand these things are happening, and I realize that in my anger I didn't represent myself properly on some points. It's easy to forget how deeply invested I am in this. And yet, I see so many great comments from both people who agree and disagree with me... so, once again, thank you all. Also! Those asking for a guide on how to use alternate sources safely need only click on the first end screen video. There's a guide on "idiot-proofing" your computer, and some of my preferred software in the second half of that video. (Crunchyroll Is Killing Media Ownership) There are also lots of comments below each video discussing methods I didn't know about and the like. As for finding the actual websites, many of them recently went down, but it's really easy to just use google to find reddit threads on how to.. well.. I'm pretty sure you know what keywords to put into the google search lol. Just add reddit at the end and you should see some of the threads you're looking for pop up pretty quickly. Truth be told, nothing is more important than you "idiot-proofing" your computer, and understanding how to find these websites for yourself (it's surprisingly easy once you try, I promise.) The problem with just giving you a website isn't just that loose lips sink ships, it's also that these websites just disappear sometimes, or change extensions, get replaced by clone sites, etc. So PLEASE, watch that video, "idiot-proof" your computer, and learn how to find and use the resources you're looking for. You have far more options than you realize. Give a man a fish, or teach a man to fish and all that... I promise you'll thank me later. OG Pin: When all else fails, another Crunchyroll hate post! 💀 Well I was always gonna end up making this rant in some form at some point, and with recent events this seemed like the best time to get it on out. I hope my two month old weaboo rage is to your taste. 🙏 More actual anime discussion and memes coming soon!
So, if you're going to hatepost about crunchyroll are you going to speak of or link any of these alternative anime sources? No? You say its better, and I'd be inclined to believe that. It's self-evident. But if you want to actually help people who might want to jump ship, why not take the extra couple minites to pad your watch time and explain all these magnificent sites and features you go on an on about? Is it perhaps because they're not as great as you say? Because crunchyroll's anti-consumer practices have rendered most of these places riddled with viruses and nigh unusable? Is it because 90% of them are foreign sites with no accessibility for English speakers, let alone for non english speakers or people from countries outside the US? Is it because torrents these days can and will fill your computer with malware? Is it because torrents are now auto-detected by ISPs, giving them full license to throttle your internet speed? Or that the global surveillance state has advance so far that if you dare to torrent anywhere in Europe, you're likely to be found, fined, and/or jailed? Look, you can dump on crunchyroll all you want, because you're right. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, post something usefull to go along with it. Otherwise, if you're unwilling to help, and insist on "No normies allowed" then shut your keg hole. WE ALL KNOW already that they suck, we get it, everyone who actually gives two shits is WELL AWARE. The only people unironically defending crunchy at this point are just straight up bought and paid for. So BE the change instead of just ego posting about "WhY nObOdY CaReS, cRuNcHyRoLl BaD, yOu GuYs R sO DuM, mE SmArT, iNdIe GoOd cRuNcHy BaD, mE nO LiKe."
@@purplefrank9717I am sorry about that. I've been trying to work on a large pinned comment addressing common questions and trying to reply to people individually but it's been a very busy work week, I'm not used to this level of YT attention, and I'm frankly mentally exhausted. For the record though, there's a reason I put the other Crunchyroll video on the end screen. It contains a guide (in the second half) on idiot-proofing your computer, an explanation of what software I personally use on my PC and phone, and some tips on how to find sites such as the ones you're asking about. There are two reasons these sites aren't included in the videos themselves, one of which I only appreciate in hindsight. A. Fear. I'm terrified of bringing the wrong attention to these sites. While I believe that the only truly illegal part of these sites is the actual back end server stuff, which is hosted elsewhere and can always be replaced, I don't truly understand its legal precedent and would never want to be the reason another one of these sites goes down. B. Dated information. As many have already reported, many of these sites were recently forcefully shut down. (This is allegedly over the recent seasonal anime leaks, but the real reason is uncertain. AsarathaHS has a great video breaking this down.) These sites also switch extensions frequently to avoid trouble. If I had included these in the videos, they would have immediately been rendered useless, or even worse: potentially dangerous as copycat sites begin to emerge. As I mentioned in my other video, there are many guides on reddit for where to stream anime for free, and they're as close as a Google search for the exact keywords you're imagining and the word reddit. The thing is, because these sites change over time, frequently swapping extensions, the most important knowledge I can give you is actually how to find them, and how to make your computer as safe as possible. I hope you understand, I'm not just trying to be cryptic or gatekeep for no reason. As for my current go to site? A "riddle" for you. *Hi* do you love *Anime* *to* ? You might also check some of the comments below, wink wink, nudge nudge. Just remember, many pirates believe that loose lips sink ships, and that's probably not wholly unwarranted, so try to understand people's reluctance. Personally, I tend to default to casting streams from my phone to my TV using Web Video Caster. It has basically all the features I could hope for built in. The premium version is very cheap and will allow you to block ads and such as well. The only downside is subtitles have been overlapping recently during "talking over each other" scenes and the like. I hope this is fixed eventually but the only other issue I've found otherwise is that it can't access Crunchyroll streams even when you're logged in. HiDive does not have this problem with the 3rd party app. The optimal setup for me is probably running an HDMI from my GPU to my TV, but that's not convenient to say the least haha. Other setups have been discussed in the comments under both videos as well. Once again, for the love of God watch my other guide and make sure your setup is safe before you use anything unofficial. Nothing is more important than fully idiot-proofing your setup, whether you're visiting dangerous sites or not. I don't want to be the cause of someone else's trouble. 😵💫 And as always, I repeatedly encourage people to support the industry, and more importantly the artists and producers, in the ways that they feel comfortable with. Perhaps some will consider this hypocrisy, but I'm actually subbed to both Crunchyroll and HiDive myself currently. It's the only way I feel comfortable researching these videos and reporting accurate and up to date facts about the services. But I spend way more money collecting Blu-Rays, like not even close. Your favorite method of support may be something else. Hell, it may be Crunchyroll if you decide it provides you with the value you want. I don't blame anyone for their choice, as livid as I may have been when I recorded this video haha. I hope this has been helpful.
Never forget. The last time Crunchyroll talked about how they wanted to support the industry, they took all that money and put it into High Guardian Spice.
Edit: so it seems the answer is yes people did actually watch it, and it was bad, fair enough I had no inclination to watch it when it came out nor have any inclination now; my memory of the whole thing was vague at best and the only thing I recalled was some interview about the team being all women. Still yeah, I'll admit I was wrong, lesson learned. Just wondering, did anyone actually watch High Guardian Spice? Like is that a thing anyone actually watched to judge on its own merits or lack there of? Or is just one of those things conservatives get mad about because it's "too woke"? The "too woke" in question being something along the lines of: *a gay person exists in the show* , *a trans woman exists in the show* or *the show says "feminism good"* , or any combination of the above.
@@orderofdusk2382 I did, it's an overhated show that is ok, suffering from being rushed in production (half the time of a standard production) and having half the standard budget while operated mostly by newcomers in the industry. Same story happened with Onyx Equinox. The author, Raye, is still very active online if you ever want to know more.
@@orderofdusk2382 not sure in what rock have you been but.. there are SEVERAL channels that arent even right leaning that watched the show and roasted the shit out of it. not even "woke" people liked that shit. that's how bad it was. steven universe was left leaning but it still had a big fandom cause it wasn't absolute garbage. that thing couldnt even please the people they tried to pander.
@@orderofdusk2382 Considering you don’t even know why no one watched High Guardian Spice, it’s fair to say this wasn’t a “conservatives just throwing a hissy fit over gay people” kind of situation, not that that ever happened as most conservative media figures don’t even watch anime
as an illegal anime streaming site THAT STOLE from other fansubbers to sell the same fansubs to people, think about that, EVEN WORSE than a normal piracy site
@@danielalmeida7382 pirate sites DON'T force you to pay to watch the episode, it's true that they do gain money from you watching it through ads (if u don't got an adblocker) but crunchyroll used to STEAL FANS SUS and RESELL THEM like it was a licensed thing
@@danielalmeida7382 if I remember correctly, the pirates being praised are the ones who provide cheaper or free ripped content from disliked providers like Crunchyroll; it isn't indiscriminate.
It might be cool if there were a Steam-like platform. Makers upload the product. Consumers buy the product, use the product. Money goes to the makers and the platform takes a modest cut.
@@pbrown7501if only Valve could get into the media business. Imagine buying whole series in Steam sales and being able to stream them on anything. No subscription.
Crunchyroll is proof you NEED piracy in media to force companies to innovate and do better to ensure a quality service, and product. If anything the more companies do this the more people push back which is always good
Usually these functions are a product of fair competition, but since they practically monopolized the market, they don't need to make improvements to have a good profit. Hopefully, torrents or some other streaming services can be enought of a rivalry for crunchyroll to be concerned about and to make steps to being better, or else nothing will really change
Well, its still a price problem for me. I'm not willing to spend $50 on 12 22m episodes of questionable subtitle quality, and thats IF I had a DVD drive. It may be time to hit the torrent sites and download my favorite series and save them to a NAS computer.
The comment sections on some of the pirate sites are like 50% of the enjoyment you get from watching the anime. Watching an episode of your favorite show and seeing a guy named ratf***er420 drop the funniest comment ever is amazing.
This was nearly a decade ago but I'll never forget when I was watching Noragami on some obscure pirate website and the only comment was "fucking mr. steal yo girl fuck this guy"
i remember one time i tried watching pokemon (the 90s version) someone made like a 500 word rant of how he is tired of watching mainstream anime and yet he gave everyone in the website a very in depth guide how to watch the anime without fillers
I recently use disqus comments and it genuinely warms my heart that there's a comment section where we talk about the anime/episode we watched and our thoughts about it, pros and cons. My recent disqus visit was from Mayonaka punch episode 4 where the show kinda left the comedy aspect for a sec to show us Fu's super sad backstory and seeing others in the comments feeling the same way makes me happy. And of course there are funny comments here in there dropped by "big_black_dong69" which makes the experience better
I tried it ONLY because they had an app for the fire stick and I would be able to watch Anime on my TV. It kept crashing. I ended up downloading an app (since firestick is android based) and have a much better experience with no crashing and guess what... ITS FREE!
Bro, my wifi is absolutely terrible, and one time, I was watching animes on Crunchyroll with my sister. It was absolutely impossible, we got so much buffering that I decided to go see if the quest of the One Piece would be better... and it was, it was so much better. No buffering, and we could watch in 1080p, something I thought impossible with my Wi-Fi. I was paying a subscription for Crunchy but illegals and free alternative was so much better...
That's how I cancelled my subscription after one month. The first episode was still loading by the time I had caught up with the latest episode on a piracy site. By the way Crunchyroll didn't have the latest episodes either for some reason.
You're very welcome! If I remember correctly they opened their Patreon after kickstarting a portion of the funding for Little Witch Academia. I really hope more of my favorite studios go open up to this in time, but Studio Trigger will certainly do! 😁
The straw that broke my back was when the English mob psycho voice actor attempted to get crunchyroll to come to the table and negotiate a union rate for his work. With absolute silence crunchyroll turned around and offered the role to a non-union actor. The icing on the cake that instilled the hate for crunchyroll in me, was during the cancellation of my subscription they have the gall to put "support the industry"as one last ditch morality jab to try and keep you paying, when they themselves will not pay. They will pay as little as possible, with no respect to the work and the dedication and the love that goes into making their product. So yes f*** Crunchyroll.
@@KonkaBass yeah, I remember this now that you mention it. It was very enlightening that they refused to even have the discussion. And I also really do hate the moral panic so many have over this topic. I know I was very aggressive and "short" with said topic in the video but it really stems from years of frustration with how the topic is handled by those "white knighting" for Crunchyroll online. It doesn't matter how much you support the industry outside of these subs, many subscribers treat you as if you're destroying the industry personally unless you sub to a service that you feel is actively damaging the industry. Had no idea about the unsubscribe message though, that's bonkers with the company themselves guilt tripping you haha.
This is why I cancelled my Crunchyroll subscription. I feel like a scumbag pirating anime like Pretty Cure nowadays, but it's better than supporting those disgusting scumbags.
I hate it when a company guilt trips me into staying on their services. I haven't used Crunchy in 3 years and I have no regrets no matter how much of a pos they call me for not giving them money.
@@aaaah540 if you can't support the anime officially, you can always try buying merch directing from the studios/artists themselves or from sources that given them a fair cut
Be careful from what series you buy merch from, because if it’s from a show Crunchyroll helped produce, they will still make money from that merch sale, even if you buy from Japan.
Hi, You know, it has been a long journey since Aniwave (9Anime) first appeared. Creating better products that provide an improved user experience and fostering competition to drive the market to enhance products is something we are very happy about. Now that everything has improved… it is also time for us to say goodbye...It is difficult to part with something we have invested so much effort and passion into, but it is something we need to do. Thank you for standing by and supporting us throughout this time! Every game must have an end...and life is about experiences. Every mistake teaches us lessons that help us grow. If possible, please use legal paid services. It’s something we should do to show our respect for creators and content producers. Good bye! this message broke my heart 💔💔💔
im sure CR is in some way, if not a massive way, responsible for the takedown of aniwave and i will never forgive them for that. i would rather stop watching anime all together than support CR
My favorite Crunchyroll story was when I tried to upgrade my premium membership to a premium*er* membership (can't remember what the tiers were actually called, I just wanted to get the offline viewing that should rightfully be available to everyone) and customer support straight up told me, NOPE, can't do that. Gotta wait four months for your existing subscription to expire to upgrade it, or else you need to just make an entirely new account. I feel like even EA or Comcast wouldn't fall down at THAT hurdle. EDIT: this was in January of '23, sounds like they changed it since then.
@@Egavans They fixed this, I was able to upgrade and it calculated to me a price from how much days is into the end of subscription. Just find it in the menu.
"I WANT TO PAY YOU MORE MONEY! WHY WONT YOU LET ME?!" kinda vibe, like this is stupid on their part, more money ? nah we re doing it just because we want to
Mine was that I couldn't sign up with my email. I had to make an email that didn't exist to sign up which means I can't verify my account. Now I then tried to log into the email address that it created which I can't bc it doesn't use my crunchyroll password. It took me over an hour to figure out the email thing.
The reviews and comments made the website feel like it was bustling with life. With it gone, it just feels like a empty super mall in the zombie apocalypse.
@@megamario3696 RUclips has some anime channels (legal and free, just subscribe or be a Member* if you want premium I think). One of them being Muse (and I subscribe to Muse Asia). *edit typo from Mer to Member 😂
Agreed. I miss reading comments about references and scenes I didn't quite get. I really don't like dropping links because I don't want to bring the wrong attention, and these sites change occasionally so just leaving a link floating around could lead to people clicking on sites that have been shutdown or worse, replaced by dangerous clone sites. It's pretty easy to find them though, I would just google search "(insert the thing that you're trying to do)" and "reddit" and you should see some threads pop up with recommendations. You might also lurk through some of the comments left by other people haha. BUT before you use any such site, I always recommend watching my guide on "idiot-proofing" your PC. It's in the second half of my "Crunchyroll Is Killing Media Ownership" video. The more layers of protection on your PC, the better. As always, I DO encourage supporting the industry. I just much rather educate people on other options to buy and support, many of which I also bring up in the aforementioned video. Methods I didn't think about then could include the Studio Trigger Patreon, and the "Animator Dormitory" Patreon. There are also apparently Fanbox accounts and Amazon Wishlists for certain individual staff, but I need to research this further as I'm quite ignorant about those last two options.
The biggest reason I don't feel a thing from not using crunchyroll is because most of my favourite shows are just not available on their anyway. Hell most of my favourite shows are impossible to watch legally in the first place
They had a chance to bring Eureka 7 over to crunchyroll from funimation but just let the license go to limbo but brought over the aurgably worst Eureka 7 AO and the money scam hi evolution movies
The removal of the comments pissed me SO fucking much I sent them an email complaining, at first I thought it was a BUG, there have to be some other ways to make their operation annoying, there has to be some way to make them pay for this kind of shit, the day RUclips removes all the comments will be the time to cease some means of production
I liked comments, cuz the top one was usually the timestamp for ep start, and whether there was after credit scenes. And crunchy rarely puts the skip intro/outro buttons. Maybe on 3 episodes on a 12 ep season. And I like dub. But I can never tell when dub episodes drop, because they don't let yoi specify english, so every new dub anime they spam is just another language you can't even guess at from the symbols. Even when I used CR, before I clicked on anything, I opened a pirate site, and checked to see which of those 25 new dubs were english. Oh. 2. Okay.
Bro I miss the comment section because if I’m watching a new anime and if it’s mid ppl in the comments will say so. Like why would they remove it it makes zero sense
@@sdmofficial1506 that's just it the peasantry are meant to consume not question if the slop is worth the energy to bite much like how youtube got rid of the dislike well tried to because we downvoted crappy corporate shlock and rotten tomatoes decided to fuck with their scoring system to basically let the big studios buy false legitimacy of review
The idea of using legal services to "support the industry" is so asinine to me. I could shell out my money into a bureaucratic nightmare ball where it goes to a useless service, their useless side projects, the licensers, and finally gets divvied into miniscule pieces for the actual studios to lap up; or I could just buy a shirt/figure/etc of a targeted anime that I actually like and want to see more of.
I'm not the type of person who buy merchandise. I don't trying to downplay people who are it's just ain't something that interest me. But even than why would I buy merchandise for every side anime I watching between the main things that I like which are battle shonen. BTY buying the manga is probably the best option to support, but I see it as much inferior option than reading it online so it's merchandise for me.
If I had a guarantee that the actual _creators_ of these IPs were being compensated with my money, I'd happily have gone the official route. Japanese animators in particular are paid like trash, especially considering the work ethic of often demanded of them. There's just no excuse for such successful companies to treat their employees marginally better than slaves.
@@trajectoryunown yes, but then all options how I can support them in Central Europe are limited on the streaming. As from interviews, they don't expand much to this region because they think it's full of pirates (yes, because even when we have EU rights to all the content available in the Union, we still feel like a 3rd world country) Okay, finally we're getting serious about streaming the series, but why when I want to buy the movie/series can't I? Like Funanimation, many people around the world were sad because it ended, it was never available here when Crunchyroll was, WTF is this?!
While that's true you won't buy merch of every anime you ever watched. I personally don't want to buy much, because I don't need it and I need place for it, which I would rather use for different stuff. So I would rather be able to support the creators or the studio directly. But Crunchyroll doesn't do the best job at this sadly
@@janinasaam that's a problem with Japan's anime industry, it's their fault we can't properly support then and they have to outsource their streamming to countries other than japan. Also I don't even want to support any studio because they exploit their animators and pay then poorly
I was born in Latin America and grew up watching anime the illegal way, and then when I moved to the US and had my own money to pay for the legal streaming platforms, the first thing I thought was "how are the pirated version so much better?" and just went back to those lmao
at least in my country, crunchyroll dosent even have: hunter x hunter , FMA , hajime no ippo , yuyu hakusho, weathering with you, bleach , soul eater, your name , the original dragon ball, dbz and even death note.
Whenever someone posts about an epic anime being available on crunchyroll, it's not in my region. Also I can watch some series which are a continuation of an older one, but they don't have the original which would provide the context.
@@adamhallgat3298Experienced this with Baki on Netflix. They have the adaptations for the 2nd and 3rd arcs, but not the 1st arc and nothing anywhere indicating that the series just called "Baki" is actually the continuation of the series and not the beginning like you would expect. I watched half of Baki before realizing that I was missing a ton of context.
I have the U.S server for crunchyroll. Some anime I can’t even find in my region either. Like this one time I was going see if they had Bleach and it didn’t show up in the search results.
I vote for bringing back physical media with reasonable prices. That was the best and highest quality way to enjoying it. Streaming has been a disaster for customer’s rights and enjoyment.
Yeah but the japs are addicted to selling individual volume discs for $50 - $100 each. I want to own Frieren on disc, but A: the dub isn’t included, and B: it’s like $600 for the lot. You have to wait like three years while the money train from the super fans trails off and they decide to release a complete collection.
I feel you, I really miss the countless SAVE Editions and cheap "no special features" type releases which used to come regularly. I've found that today the most reasonable prices for physical anime releases are still almost always found in UK/EU imports though, and they tend to have the same dubs/subs and all anyway lol. You need a region free Blu-Ray player to take advantage of this but it's so worth it to me, especially to avoid buying those ludicrous Aniplex releases! The only scary thing is of course that Sony/Crunchy is definitely squeezing their way into those markets as well. Personally I have a pretty large collection already, but my current goal is to simply have ALL of my favorites available in one physical release or another. Who knows how long they'll be available and even semi-reasonably priced after-all; I can't believe some of my random old purchases that now cost $100+ and are only available second-hand. I don't want go full paranoia or encourage people to spend money they don't have on such things, but I really have to wonder if physical releases will be thought of like genuine collector's items eventually. Researching the effect of Crunchyroll and streaming on physical releases and media ownership just felt really eye-opening for me.
@@FramingTheNarrative it’s even worse for people not in NA or Europe. I’ve got to look for region 4 DVDs, which puts imports out of the question. I scour the 2nd hand market instead. Shoulda bought Boogiepop Phantom when I saw it in store, man. BDs are less bad, since we share region B, but it’s expensive to import from the UK. Is it not possible for a company to make DVDs on demand, to whatever region and language the buyer is looking for?
Even Funimation's old website had a comment section. That CR couldn't even be bothered is disgraceful. Piracy is a moral obligation at this point. Buy straight from the Japanese source and move on.
It’s not that they never had a comment section instead it’s that they removed it in July of this year (after July 7th, 2024 to be exact). I didn’t comment all that much but for them to nuke it (apparently over some negative comments about something) is asinine. That tells me they’d rather get rid of features than to regulate or moderate them
Buying original JP anime is super expensive, though. It can cost HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for a SINGLE anime. That's why many pirates will support the creators by buying merch instead.
I remember the first time I used crunchyroll, I was actually worried that I went to some legacy server or something with how outdated the UI looked, and I refused to believe that it was supposed to be the up-to-date #1 (legal) anime streaming site
I'm so pissed that all the main websites got axed last week. I don't want to support crunchyroll but I also don't want anymore of the janky websites. I hope some new polished sites come up because I'm suffering. I've just swapped to reading manga because all my favorite sites are still up.
whenever I use Crunchyroll it auto adjust quality to the worst despite having auto adjust off, unwatchable garbage that is too scared to buffer for a minute
Same. What bothers me much more though is the way the audio bitrate drops as well. It gets quiet and tinny sounding, really distracting. I really wish companies had never started with this "only a certain cache should ever be available to one user at once" thing but it was probably inevitable. I still remember when I could buffer an entire movie before starting, feelsoldman lol.
Lol I just picked up the standard GKids release myself. I'm still probably gonna get the Platinum DVD set at some point though. A used DVD set is the only way to get the OG dub and Fly Me To The Moon sadly.
@@Sovek86 I have no more hdmi ports on my tv. That woulds also require me to boot a pc every single time I watch anime and have a keyboard + mouse lying around next to my couch
-They load faster -They have playspeed options -Shows are complete, and have sub and dub options -They have comment sections -They have watchtogether features -They have subtitles that actually make grammatical sense -Functional Search Page -They have shows that paid sites don't -No region restrictions -Older shows have better quality -Subs and dubs can be used at the same time -Never crashes -Animators don't get paid either way
- No, they don't. If anything, Crunchyroll is one of the slower streaming services - Bare minimum you see even in pirate websites? - Bare minimun - Even pirate websites do - Valid - The subtitles are absolute trash. Not worth mentioning. Not only do they often mistranslate or change the meaning of things, they're often rushed and flat out wrong and never corrected. I've seen ridiculous mistakes. Not to mention they don't put half the effort fansubs do with fonts and giving context to cultural differences behind certain jokes and lines - Wow, a functional search page. That's not particularly special lol - They may have, but still doesn't beat just pirating those shows - Yes, there are region restrictions - That's certainly not thanks to Crunchyroll. Studios release blu-rays with better quality and that's what gets on streaming services like Netflix and Crunchyroll, but it's nothing notable or special anymore - Not a high bar - Bare minimum - Exactly. This makes it even less interesting
It used to really piss me off when Crunchyroll had other language dubs listed as other seasons. Despite being a subscription service their sites features have always been Ass, which is funny because Funimation which they bought out had better features on their site.
@@madeliner1682 I just find funny how someone claims Funimation had better features when they quite literally had less features, and pretty much everyone that used both services thinks the same.
As soon as Funimation merged into Crunchyroll, I was just like, “Guess it’s time to never pay again!” I used to at least SOMETIMES pay for a month of Funimation here and there. It was SO MUCH BETTER for finding dubs and stuff. And news/announcements. I mean, I still think KissAnime was the best “library” before it was shut down… but for the titles Funi had? It was pretty good.
cn and toonami are far worse. toonami is dissapearing from most countries (last piece of anime I was ever able to watch on toonami was mob psycho 100 in like,2021?),cn can very well be named ttgo channel, and hbo max (the service that owns both channels) is mass canceling copious amount of shows,leaving no way to legally watch those,just for the sake of marking them as tax-write offs and salvage some money before the inevitable bankruptcy day comes (warner discovery has a debt that increases by approximately $10 billion USD per year)
The only official one I used was vrv. I did buy the paid version cause the ads were so annoying but I liked everything being in spot and was easy to navigate. Stopped watching anime altogether for a time and when I came back I found out vrv was shut down so I've been on the high seas ever since
Bruh, that's next level lol. I'll have to check out the player! Reading the comments on these Crunchy videos makes me feel like my viewing setup is totally basic 💀
@@FramingTheNarrative mpv is kind of a pain to work with. SMPlayer is a more user-friendly front-end for it. I hear mpv has a higher quality picture, but for "tormenting" specifically, I'd advise VLC. It's solid across all platforms, has a simple UI, is compatible with practically every video and audio format you can imagine, also has support streams, and is generally slam-packed with a lot of extra features. And the big thing, if you get a video that doesn't finish downloading, *VLC will play incomplete or corrupt files* instead of just saying it's corrupted or can't be played.
It's odd, I actually used crunchy roll back in the day because it was more reliable than piracy. It had a free service that I didn't mind using because it was legal and had a consistent translation. I even bought a full years subscription when they did the sale on black Friday because it was a cause worth supporting. Despite that, somehow they have disappointed me time and time again. I slipped back to using it for free because the service was just terrible. Censorship made me more likely to go for other options and eventually I abandoned it altogether once they threatened to end the free service. The traditional "buy merch" option we had was always good and we'd've kept with that if there was no other option. Why is the other option getting worse as time goes on?
I absolutely hate Sentai/hidive. They a) lock themselves to the US, so the rest of the world can't use them without a vpn (+more expensive app overall), and b) their platform sucks, it's like going back in time to flash players that you can't move 10s back without it crashing. c) they buy the exclusive rights to specific great series (like OshinoKo) but since they only stream in the US, that licence is lost for the rest of the world. If that's your idea of competition, no wonder Crunchy can do whatever it wants.
@@ripgitssac-fao7524 it used to work here in LATAM a few years ago, but then they said they'd only provide services to English speaking countries basically. Financially, I can understand that's their largest market, but the problem is the license belongs to them and no one can use it
The problem is, the only way I know to trust a pirating site for Movies, Anime, Manga, etc. is if a friend who I know is experienced in this stuff sends me the link. Other than that, I am OUT.
That's strange... Maybe it's OS specific then? I'm on a Google phone and I recently noticed I'm able to screenshot without the blackout screen. I'm sorry for getting your hopes up either way 🥲
Yeah, not on google play's one either. Unless your version is different somehow, it seems the blocker IS still there... which I guess further proves the point.
5:00 I live in the UK and can confidently say that’s silly. The US is a much bigger market and should be getting stuff earlier and cheaper or at the same price.
The only reason I even use Crunchy is because somebody shares it with me for free. But even with shows they got, with the dub and sub I want, I’m contemplating on just watching it on another site. It bothers me SO much that they removed comments. Like Crunchy was bare bones minimum of features before that, but somehow they got worse.
I watched Animelab, then Funimation, now crunchyroll. I give up, Animelab was awesome, Funimation was less cool, and crunchyroll has 7x unskippable ads. Idc how great bocchi is I couldnt keep doing that.
@@KipNinjogu Huh. Don't recall that happening to me. And you can't skip those? Though that's still not as bad as 3-4 in the middle of episodes per normal ad supported.
@@drndn 7 30 second unskippable ads is a bit much. I get that might be whats paying for the anime stuff but I ain't gonna sit for 3 seperate breaks each doing 7 minutes of straight ads for a 24 minute episode. I could watch a TV channel and still get less ads than that.
Just like Gabe Newell used to say with games, also applies to other forms of medium: 'Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.'
Yes but they had to shut down. I was thinking of not getting a Crunchyroll sub but what choice do I have in India where there are fans and various streaming services providing anime but no way of officially buying Bluray or any merch. I dont have a choice that's why I hope crunchyroll listens to the users and make my payment worth a lot more than it is now.
Ngl, Funimation and CR merge is definitely the worst decision sony has ever made, the fact that they even weren't able to merge all the content and leave a ton of animes licences totally abandoned is just crazy, but you know what's even crazier?, the fact that they totally " forgot " to merge all the dubs CC funimation shows did have. Lol Sorry for my English lmao
i cancelled my crunchyroll sub today about 3 hours before watching this for every reason that you listed in this video, i know it's not a lot of people but there are some of us who want to talk about how much of a steaming pile of garbage crunchyroll is!
I was watching overlord and i was 3 episodes away to se 4 and the same day i got hit with a "yOu nEeD PreMuim To w=waTcH thIs" like are you serious then i came back give crunchyroll a second chance and then i dont see any comments and im like what happend? and then i see they deleted comments like Im not burying stupid premuim.
just got crunchyroll, i can barely find most animes I want to watch with my 6 year old. Then I find out that almost all of it is region locked, so i'd have to pay for yet another service, a VPN, to get a bigger fraction of the anime I'm looking for. And STILL most of them are nowhere to be found. Not to mention the sheer lack of audios and subtitles. Wtf
I always hated Crunchyroll. It's the main motive the old Mcanime disappeared. Since then, I've hated them. Also, they spit in your face with their "free trial". For me CR is a big NO. I don't wan't it. Not even free. I wish they would just disappear.
I feel like I could've learned something by this video, but I was distracted trying to keep track of all the insults and how many times "Who cares" was said. I wouldn't be watching if I didn't care!!! Incredible quality video and hopefully you continue to make good content. I might just not be the intended audience.
when he is saying the "who cares" questions, he is making rhetorical questions. he is not literally asking who cares. also, it is pretty normal for him to insult SONY and Crunchyroll higher ups when they are the ones making enjoying his hobby harder and more frustrating.
@@FramingTheNarrative AND HE RESPONDED, PLEASE MAKE A VIDEO AND DONT YAP ABOUT S2 LEAKS OR TRAILERSSS, JUST SONETHING THAT BRESKS DKWN DYNAMICS SCENERY AND SUCH
@@frost_aurora lmao no worries! I'm working on a script about the aesthetic and why I love the unrealistic portrayals of the night, direction and art style stuff basically I do have a first impressions video btw, and I talk about those same style elements just a little bit in "Should Anime Adaptations Change Iconic Scenes?" (Timestamps mark the section.) Anyway, thanks for watching! Hope you're enjoying my stuff so far, this rant was a lot different than my usual tbh 😂🤣
@@drndn And yet somehow other FREE sites are still doing ok. They do the same work as Crunchyroll. No, Crunchyroll got greedy, so they decided to become a paid site. Right now, they are like the case of Star Wars Outlaw. Charging money for cheap crap. If that isn't greed, I don't know what it.
@@foofoo3344 The existence of people doing volunteer work doesn't take away from that people still need paid work to live. Those running Crunchyroll chose to make it their paid job. That's not greedy. If it is, then anyone can call you greedy for insisting on getting paid for whatever work you do for a living instead of doing that for free.
@@drndn OK, that part is logical. But how are you going to rationalize charging for crap service? REMEMBER, they CHARGE USERS but don't even have features THAT FREE SITES provide for FREE.
@@foofoo3344 The features Crunchyroll doesn't have anymore, eg comments, aren't that important, and what they do still have still fully justifies the $10/month that they cost, basically the same price as HiDive, Disney, Prime, etc. They have a huge catalog I like and watch, I have found the streaming quality to be excellent, etc. Fully worth it. And they are legal. Granted, there are free options that are also legal, such as Tubi and RetroCrush, that I also recommend, though that's not what is typically referred to here as "the free alternatives".
I would absolutely pirate anime if I knew any solid pirate options. All the options I used in the past ended up getting shut down or the ads became so bad I couldn't handle it anymore. So if there are any options out there that work well and don't have over bearing ads, then I'd go and watch there. But no one seemingly wants to talk about them.
Unfortunately it's kind of dangerous to publicly mention them cause then they might get taken down. I reccomend an ad blocker and that will open up a ton of options
Torrenting never went away. It was the primary means of watching anime in the post-napster up to the early days of streaming. The only limitation is how much harddrive space you have to store all your favorite shows forever.
I had stopped paying years ago once I started to know my way around anime sites (which really isnt to hard especially these days) and realized that Crunchyroll is just not good. Then when the whole “supporting the industry” thing culminated with them using the money to make High Guardian Spice, it pretty much cemented that I will never go back to them again. Didnt know I could send money to Trigger on Patreon though, I love that studio and I will def be doing that from now on
The only time I actually watched Crunchyroll, I got ads that would have the close button gone faster than it is possible to click before another ad would show up.
Welcome, youtube recommended video, LMAO! I think you have some fair points, but as someone who's just getting into anime, i feel like i just walked into my nearest Warhammer shop and got bombarded by thousands of years of lore by a passionate enjoyer.
Go to the Dollar Store. Get 2 boxes of the Cookie Brownie mix on the baking aisle. Make the recipe to specification, but replace all of the water with whole milk. When mixing the chocolate chip cookie portion add 2 tbsp's of salted caramel syrup, preferably Jordan's Skinny Syrups because there is no way that this sh*t is good for you. If you're really feeling like an animal, you could even add a few white chocolate chips as well. Make sure to stop cooking *JUST BEFORE* the toothpick comes out perfectly clean. Throw some tinfoil on top and let it finish naturally. AND NEXT TIME SAY THANK YOU PROPERLY YOU ANIMAL _"Take a bite. Change your life." - Lao Tsu_
I do miss the early days of Crunchyroll. We even had profiles back then where pics could be posted and some word salad. But recently people did not like some of the promotion of certain genres so I think its only fair to allow people to opt out of stuff they are not interested in. If people were being negative and bombing a page with negative stuff that is just unnecessary (I mean rather than opinions, their personal social norms) they could have just muted those people with community moderators or something. Time outs where you can't type but can read until if you get overly preachy then its just a permanent mute. Bottomline if you don't want to see certain stuff then don't watch it or comment on it. Its not your job to save the world. I happen to not view the naughty stuff there so if I see something I prefer not to see I just click away to another show that doesn't have that. I think they could have done this without ruining it for everyone. Man I miss the reviews section. I gotta say it almost feels like a government losing controls of its people and resorting to extremes like this. I'm considering HiDive for a bit.
@@PhoenicopterusR This is exactly why there's way more value in telling people how to find such sites, and how to "idiot-proof" their hardware, instead of just dropping them a random link.
Yeah them taking away comments is stupid. Also seems like they aren’t even translating on screen text again. I wish Soyny wouldn’t have an almost monopoly on anime streaming.
I'm in the same boat. I usually watch anime on unofficial sites, but in order to watch anime with my mother on the TV, I needed Crunchyroll PLUS the streaming service subscription
Bro, you are the saving grace of the Anime Community. Your entire perspective is coincidentally exactly the way I see Crunchyroll and Anime Streaming in general nowadays. I agree 100% with all that you have said in this video, literally thousands more do as well. Your explanation on Crunchyroll vs Free Alternatives and, how Crunchyroll is worse and not worth the money, is extremely well done. Why should I pay for a premium service when, a free alternative offers more then the premium service never did? "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates" - Gabe Newell. I stand by this quote everyday because of how truthful this is in today's modern world with media streaming services everywhere. Until these greedy anime streaming companies quit their bullshit and, give the community what they're asking for, piracy will be the better option. Adding onto that, a couple of days ago, 3 or so Free Anime Streaming sites were shutdown, a targeted attack against those free sites. I am very saddened and angry hearing the news, knowing that those awesome streaming sites aren't coming back. I have payed my respects to those sites for offering a unparalleled user experience. It's no wonder why those sites were taken down, they were so much more popular then the shitty "premium" streaming sites/services. Even so, I agree that people are too ignorant to choose the better streaming service that deserves the users and praise, etc. Quit throwing away your money to these greedy scummy companies, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU, ONLY ABOUT THE MONEY. Y'all are basically blind like, it's obvious now through this video. Because you keep on giving your money to these companies, they turn back and spit in your face and are like, "We have tons of money, let's do whatever the hell we want with it". Alright, you want to donate actual money to these studios? Then find a way to do it directly to the studio, be it Patreon or something else. It's not wrong to donate directly to them and continue watching on a free site. Same goes for any and all manga that you read, donate directly to the author/artist and then, continue reading that manga to your hearts content. This is all common knowledge you guys c'mon, let's be adults here, not kids. Anyways, rant over, I hope at least someone actually understands this and, doesn't comment something utterly stupid because, if so, you will be ignored. If you aren't mature enough to understand the situation, don't bother commenting. Thank you to whoever read my whole comment.
The thing to consider though is that those free anime sites don't do the proper licensing and business formalities that an entity, like Crunchyroll, spends a good chunk of money on in order to have an anime as a part of their library. Yes, Crunchyroll may not offer the best user experience when compared to the free alternatives but they are one of the few options available that allows someone to watch Anime in a "legal" and convenient way. For me, I'm willing to pay the price for the convenience since it's nice not having to set up ad blockers, finding non-removed free streaming sites, doing workarounds to get the anime to stream, and have my anime library in one centralized location. In order for a site like Crunchyroll to be convenient and accessible, that comes at a price that those free anime sites don't pay. You can say those at Crunchyroll are greedy but they are paying for the licensing, which isn't cheap, in order to legally host anime for people to watch. It also costs money for them to negotiate with studios on when and how they upload the content. I would be more supportive of those free anime sites if they were paying for the licensing themselves and hosting the anime on the site for free for people to watch. However, they pirate the content and upload it into their platform for other people to watch for free. It may be a better experience but the developers did not do their due diligence to legally obtain the anime and post it on their site hence they get taken down. I bet you would say that "while those free sites don't pay for licensing directly. Those free sites allow more people to watch anime resulting in more people to support the studio/artist indirectly by buying merch, supporting them on patreon, etc. So in the end, they help studios/artiste more than greedy corporations like Crunchyroll". The problem with that though is that there is no guarantee that the studio/artist will ever receive money from the content they produced that is now being used by those free anime sites. Is it really fair for those studios/artists to trust that viewers will support them if they watch it on those sites? Is it fair for the studios/artists to make content that is being used without permission or compensation because they're being streamed on a site with a " better user experience". All in all, those free sites don't have permission to use the content hence they get taken down no matter how much better the user experience is or how customer friendly they are. It's not fair for the studios/artists to hope they will get paid while others use/view their content for free. You may think watching on a free anime site is more ethical/better. But, you're just hurting the studio/artists who make the content you watch because pirating does not hurt Crunchyroll, it hurts the studio/artists you support no matter if you buy the merch and patreon afterwards.
After I tried free trial for 1 show some years ago, I had a thought of subscribing for something else. Glad that thought left my head. And yes, I remember having some loading issues on trial.
This really is one of the most frustrating parts. Companies would rather get rid of a feature than give the end user the option to turn it on or off. And it's obvious that they were just using the "emergency" to their advantage; they aren't protecting anyone, they're using the perfect excuse to save money while saying that they're protecting people. 🤷♂
its so stupid its impossible to watch one punch man in australia without paying 3.99 n episode so im forced to pirate lots of animes cause of streaming rights
I will say that I've never had any of the problems you listed. I've never been locked out for even a second, I've never had any desire to watch anime at a different speed, I've never had crunchyroll crash on me, screenshot blocking is a side effect of the hardware acceleration setting and can be fixed by temporarily turning that off in your browser if you really need to, I didn't realize anybody actually used the cast feature, the search function searches, etc. It does suck that they got rid of comments and reviews, but a lot of the other stuff is "yeah, who DOES care?"
How about a site that actually has a decent selection of anime, including older titles and isnt just whatever the normies are watching. I've got co-workers that watch anime and they are all 100% BS animes thats popular and not one of em has ever watched any of the real good ones I've seen such as A Certain Scientific Railgun, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, Girls Und Panzer, Kantai Collection, Oshi no Ko, Spy x Family (oddly enough even though its really popular), Toradora, Haruhi Suzumiya ect ect ect.
The major problem is what people call "enshitification" of the platform. Companies will chip away at features culling everything except the bare basics to cut down on costs. Comments for example had very little problems and was one of the major reasons I stuck with CR since it was fun to read them. For no reason at all they were removed. That's just the user experience end as well. Sony is actively enshitifying and choking the amount of media the west is able to obtain by acquiring other companies and making them worse or getting rid of them entirely. Funimation and RightStuff are two of the major examples, purged having only delivered a fraction of their libraries. The issue primarily lies in the scummy business practices. The people who care are exactly the people who WANT anime to become more available.
I do agree with everything but the Hardware Acceleration. If you use FireFox then it would work with the method you described, however on Crunchyroll mobile (The main reason I still have Crunchyroll) and other browsers like Chrome the screenshot blocker is deliberate and unavoidable.
Here’s my perspective as someone who is an extremely casual anime watcher. I’ve never heard of these problems until this video. And while I’m sure these points matter a lot to an avid watcher to me they simply don’t. I don’t own many streaming services but this is still the cheapest one I do own. I can generally watch sub or dub and have access to all the anime I’m personally interested in in one spot. The few times I’ve tried using free sites they’ve been annoying, either having low quality versions, missing episodes or just not working at all and throwing ads up in my face. Perhaps I haven’t discovered the right free website. But idk from a casual viewers standpoint I like being able to load up the app on my smart tv and watch an episode or two
i pay for crunchyroll because the encoding is better than anything ive seen on pirate sites, only rivaled by (some) torrents, but torrenting is annoying. i also like the compatability between my 3 devices.
That's fair, I can at least understand the specific value you're getting out of it. I think the only site I've seen rival Crunchyroll's bitrate was the original AniMixPlay.. but they didn't get shutdown, they just gave up on maintaining it. So maybe that part's harder than I think 💀
0:52 just be australia where crunchyroll/madmanentertainment/sony own the distribution rights to every piece of japanese anime here and the solution is just to not have a place to watch anything else
they dont really license out everything they own the rights to tho unfortunately. like i remember trying to watch a couple series only to be hit with "anime not licensed in your region", and with it not being available on any other streaming platform i had to use 9anime/aniwave
this is one pretty good video. usually with videos of this title and topic, you'd expect a long rant with windy twitter threads and infinite commentary. but no, this is straight to the point and contains a plethora of jokes, very good and nice. also are you admitting that pirates do it better? fair enough, aniwave was pretty good.
The Mega Fan is 65€/year. My biggest grudge with pirating is the video and audio quality. If I want something at max quality I have to spend 1h finding it (in Spanish subs) and then download it, and god forbid it is anything older than 5 years and a little bit niche. I share the subscription with 3 other people so for 16.25€/year or 1.35€/month I have 90% of what I want to watch at 1080p max audio quality without having to navigate the 7 seas.
As much as I find their platform infuriating, it’s still easier enough to use how I want to use it than piracy to keep me subscribed. I enjoy a lot of the Spanish dubs, and those are a massive pain to track down on the high seas. The blu rays are prohibitively expensive for anime; I could keep my subscription for a year for less than the cost of 3 seasons on disc. Blurays also rarely have non-English dubs, at least not the versions available in the US, so I’m stuck again if I want to watch a Spanish dub. I buy my western media physically, it’s a fraction of the cost of anime, but CR with the occasional sailing expedition for the rare shows I want to watch that they don’t have is the best solution I’ve found for anime.
So happy that I can support Trigger directly! I abandoned Crunchyroll long ago and would love to directly pay Trigger and show support for projects like PSG
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.” “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.” - Gabe Newell, president of Valve.
As someone that agrees that CR is making everything worse, I have to say that you're missing the point of it being convenient. Me and my gf watch anime on Crunchyroll and Netflix because our Playstation has those apps. We don't need to unplug the HDMI, move a personal laptop and a folding table besides the TV, and look for stuff on the internet when we can just turn on the PS and control it with the controller that is on the desk besides the bed. I definitely preferred piracy back in the day when I watched 5+ shows per season, but now that I'm a more casual watcher Crunchyroll is such a better product for me than the hassle of consuming anime by other means. I think that assuming most consumers are using CR due to "supporting anime" and not just because of accessibility for casual viewing is missing the entire point of how CR is continuing to grow day by day
That's fair. I also think I made a big mistake assuming people know about more niche viewing options and will be willing to get over the learning curves on their own. Maybe I should just make a "how to watch anime" video explaining all the options and how to use them in more detail haha. Personally if I'm not using a PC, I usually just cast stuff from my phone to my TV using Web Video Cast (a casting browser app that also supports local files). It's not perfect but I can hard-set my resolution, it's extremely convenient given you know good sites to cast from, and it has basically all the features and customization I could ever want. I can even use it with the HiDive website, though Crunchyroll somehow seems to completely block its access even when logged in. The only real issues are it no longer seems capable of separating subtitle sources, so they overlap if multiple characters are talking. (You can customize subtitle format and FX so this doesn't bother me outside of extremely dialogue heavy shows.) And the playback speed options don't provide audio as clean as the same options on PC. Other than that I can't imagine a much better app for watching anime, far more feature rich than any official app I've tried.
@@FramingTheNarrative interesting. I'd have to check if our TV has an option to do video cast as well (considering it's still an older model) but that's a smart workaround
There are also options for TV boxes with the similar functionality with something like ChromeOS. Yeah, you won't get games, but if your TV has 2 HDMI ports, you can switch between PS and box easily. And boxes are quite cheap, I guess within 100-300$ USD you can find something for a long time with decent audio\video quality. And the box can support all other stuff as well. Pirating is nowadays the option, because there are too much platforms which provides quite a small experience, so if you have favorite shows from different companies it's gonna cost a lot. And that is why piracy seems better - you have everything in one place (or two as mostly anime and movies\animation are in different places anyway).
as long as its the only option for me to watch anime on mobile without being inconvenient, riddled with ads and a danger to my private information, i'll have to keep supporting these bastards at sony.
There are entire subreddits devoted to teaching you what sites to use to stay safe, and if you don't like ads then get an ad blocker. Honestly even if your not pirating anime you should have an ad blocker imo. As for being inconvenient idk what your talking about. It's the same level of convenience to type in 9anime into Google as it is to type crunchyroll.
Piracy is not a pricing but a service issue - the founder of Steam. P*rate anime sites are better because they're lead by normal people and fans, not capitalistic share holders. Even in Japan, the animation industry has become a share holding contest - No, you are NOT supporting the animators by paying... All of the money goes right to share holders. Artists have been trying to tell the community for years about the absolute scam that is paid anime sites. Anime breaks records in revenue every year as an industry, yet animator salaries only go lower and lower. Many animators are subjected to unpaid overtime, not sent home, get extremely ill due to not being able to feed themselves, etc. If anything, we shouldn't support the stock market known as the "Japanese Animation Industry". All your money is getting crunched by higher ups, not being given to actual creators!
EDIT: Well this blew up in ways I never expected! Thanks everyone, yes, *including the folks who disagree with me.* I'm trying to put together a larger pinned comment for Frequently Asked Questions and such, but for now I just want to say that I'm sorry for the straight up insults at the end, and anyone who felt I was mocking them for wanting a simple way to support the industry. I have no ill-will towards you just because you sub to any of these services. After-all, how do you think I research these videos and get all these screenshots of the services? 🤡 I do think there are many better ways to give targeted support, but I don't want to be just another hater who uses false and outdated information. Anyway. I thought many times of replacing that "stupidity and laziness" line with "ignorance" but I didn't want to do anything to compromise the rawness of the first take. I also just get really frustrated at people's insistence that those who don't subscribe to these services don't deserve to watch the same shows even if they dump far more money than the sub costs into the industry in other ways; that's what the "mockery" was really about. On the flip side, I see so many who are terrified to, or don't understand how to watch incredible shows simply because they're unlicensed, and that's frankly just depressing every time I see it in threads and forums around the net. I see now that many people just don't their options, and don't understand these things are happening, and I realize that in my anger I didn't represent myself properly on some points. It's easy to forget how deeply invested I am in this. And yet, I see so many great comments from both people who agree and disagree with me... so, once again, thank you all.
Also! Those asking for a guide on how to use alternate sources safely need only click on the first end screen video. There's a guide on "idiot-proofing" your computer, and some of my preferred software in the second half of that video. (Crunchyroll Is Killing Media Ownership) There are also lots of comments below each video discussing methods I didn't know about and the like. As for finding the actual websites, many of them recently went down, but it's really easy to just use google to find reddit threads on how to.. well.. I'm pretty sure you know what keywords to put into the google search lol. Just add reddit at the end and you should see some of the threads you're looking for pop up pretty quickly.
Truth be told, nothing is more important than you "idiot-proofing" your computer, and understanding how to find these websites for yourself (it's surprisingly easy once you try, I promise.) The problem with just giving you a website isn't just that loose lips sink ships, it's also that these websites just disappear sometimes, or change extensions, get replaced by clone sites, etc. So PLEASE, watch that video, "idiot-proof" your computer, and learn how to find and use the resources you're looking for. You have far more options than you realize. Give a man a fish, or teach a man to fish and all that... I promise you'll thank me later.
OG Pin: When all else fails, another Crunchyroll hate post! 💀 Well I was always gonna end up making this rant in some form at some point, and with recent events this seemed like the best time to get it on out. I hope my two month old weaboo rage is to your taste. 🙏 More actual anime discussion and memes coming soon!
Respect for this video
the site i used to watch anime got taken down
So, if you're going to hatepost about crunchyroll are you going to speak of or link any of these alternative anime sources? No?
You say its better, and I'd be inclined to believe that. It's self-evident. But if you want to actually help people who might want to jump ship, why not take the extra couple minites to pad your watch time and explain all these magnificent sites and features you go on an on about?
Is it perhaps because they're not as great as you say? Because crunchyroll's anti-consumer practices have rendered most of these places riddled with viruses and nigh unusable? Is it because 90% of them are foreign sites with no accessibility for English speakers, let alone for non english speakers or people from countries outside the US? Is it because torrents these days can and will fill your computer with malware? Is it because torrents are now auto-detected by ISPs, giving them full license to throttle your internet speed? Or that the global surveillance state has advance so far that if you dare to torrent anywhere in Europe, you're likely to be found, fined, and/or jailed?
Look, you can dump on crunchyroll all you want, because you're right. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, post something usefull to go along with it. Otherwise, if you're unwilling to help, and insist on "No normies allowed" then shut your keg hole. WE ALL KNOW already that they suck, we get it, everyone who actually gives two shits is WELL AWARE. The only people unironically defending crunchy at this point are just straight up bought and paid for. So BE the change instead of just ego posting about "WhY nObOdY CaReS, cRuNcHyRoLl BaD, yOu GuYs R sO DuM, mE SmArT, iNdIe GoOd cRuNcHy BaD, mE nO LiKe."
"The Worst Way To Watch Anime" you obviously haven't been on Hidive in a while
@@purplefrank9717I am sorry about that. I've been trying to work on a large pinned comment addressing common questions and trying to reply to people individually but it's been a very busy work week, I'm not used to this level of YT attention, and I'm frankly mentally exhausted. For the record though, there's a reason I put the other Crunchyroll video on the end screen. It contains a guide (in the second half) on idiot-proofing your computer, an explanation of what software I personally use on my PC and phone, and some tips on how to find sites such as the ones you're asking about.
There are two reasons these sites aren't included in the videos themselves, one of which I only appreciate in hindsight.
A. Fear. I'm terrified of bringing the wrong attention to these sites. While I believe that the only truly illegal part of these sites is the actual back end server stuff, which is hosted elsewhere and can always be replaced, I don't truly understand its legal precedent and would never want to be the reason another one of these sites goes down.
B. Dated information. As many have already reported, many of these sites were recently forcefully shut down. (This is allegedly over the recent seasonal anime leaks, but the real reason is uncertain. AsarathaHS has a great video breaking this down.) These sites also switch extensions frequently to avoid trouble. If I had included these in the videos, they would have immediately been rendered useless, or even worse: potentially dangerous as copycat sites begin to emerge.
As I mentioned in my other video, there are many guides on reddit for where to stream anime for free, and they're as close as a Google search for the exact keywords you're imagining and the word reddit. The thing is, because these sites change over time, frequently swapping extensions, the most important knowledge I can give you is actually how to find them, and how to make your computer as safe as possible. I hope you understand, I'm not just trying to be cryptic or gatekeep for no reason. As for my current go to site? A "riddle" for you. *Hi* do you love *Anime* *to* ? You might also check some of the comments below, wink wink, nudge nudge. Just remember, many pirates believe that loose lips sink ships, and that's probably not wholly unwarranted, so try to understand people's reluctance. Personally, I tend to default to casting streams from my phone to my TV using Web Video Caster. It has basically all the features I could hope for built in. The premium version is very cheap and will allow you to block ads and such as well. The only downside is subtitles have been overlapping recently during "talking over each other" scenes and the like. I hope this is fixed eventually but the only other issue I've found otherwise is that it can't access Crunchyroll streams even when you're logged in. HiDive does not have this problem with the 3rd party app. The optimal setup for me is probably running an HDMI from my GPU to my TV, but that's not convenient to say the least haha. Other setups have been discussed in the comments under both videos as well.
Once again, for the love of God watch my other guide and make sure your setup is safe before you use anything unofficial. Nothing is more important than fully idiot-proofing your setup, whether you're visiting dangerous sites or not. I don't want to be the cause of someone else's trouble. 😵💫
And as always, I repeatedly encourage people to support the industry, and more importantly the artists and producers, in the ways that they feel comfortable with. Perhaps some will consider this hypocrisy, but I'm actually subbed to both Crunchyroll and HiDive myself currently. It's the only way I feel comfortable researching these videos and reporting accurate and up to date facts about the services. But I spend way more money collecting Blu-Rays, like not even close. Your favorite method of support may be something else. Hell, it may be Crunchyroll if you decide it provides you with the value you want. I don't blame anyone for their choice, as livid as I may have been when I recorded this video haha. I hope this has been helpful.
Never forget. The last time Crunchyroll talked about how they wanted to support the industry, they took all that money and put it into High Guardian Spice.
Edit: so it seems the answer is yes people did actually watch it, and it was bad, fair enough I had no inclination to watch it when it came out nor have any inclination now; my memory of the whole thing was vague at best and the only thing I recalled was some interview about the team being all women.
Still yeah, I'll admit I was wrong, lesson learned.
Just wondering, did anyone actually watch High Guardian Spice?
Like is that a thing anyone actually watched to judge on its own merits or lack there of?
Or is just one of those things conservatives get mad about because it's "too woke"?
The "too woke" in question being something along the lines of: *a gay person exists in the show* , *a trans woman exists in the show* or *the show says "feminism good"* , or any combination of the above.
@@orderofdusk2382 I did, it's an overhated show that is ok, suffering from being rushed in production (half the time of a standard production) and having half the standard budget while operated mostly by newcomers in the industry. Same story happened with Onyx Equinox.
The author, Raye, is still very active online if you ever want to know more.
@@andreyfisher7068 that is ok? come on now its like saying Concord is a okay game. lmao
@@orderofdusk2382 not sure in what rock have you been but.. there are SEVERAL channels that arent even right leaning that watched the show and roasted the shit out of it. not even "woke" people liked that shit. that's how bad it was. steven universe was left leaning but it still had a big fandom cause it wasn't absolute garbage. that thing couldnt even please the people they tried to pander.
@@orderofdusk2382
Considering you don’t even know why no one watched High Guardian Spice, it’s fair to say this wasn’t a “conservatives just throwing a hissy fit over gay people” kind of situation, not that that ever happened as most conservative media figures don’t even watch anime
Reminder: Crunchyroll began it's life as an illegal anime streaming site.
That shit's been shady from the start.
as an illegal anime streaming site THAT STOLE from other fansubbers to sell the same fansubs to people, think about that, EVEN WORSE than a normal piracy site
It comes full circle, albeit hypocritical for them being this was
@@petobirliterally every pirate sites still does this, yet people worship them…
There’s a reason why fansubbers hate pirate sites
@@danielalmeida7382 pirate sites DON'T force you to pay to watch the episode, it's true that they do gain money from you watching it through ads (if u don't got an adblocker) but crunchyroll used to STEAL FANS SUS and RESELL THEM like it was a licensed thing
@@danielalmeida7382 if I remember correctly, the pirates being praised are the ones who provide cheaper or free ripped content from disliked providers like Crunchyroll; it isn't indiscriminate.
If all japanese animators opens a patreon or something like that and we donate directly to them, it would be better that using crunchy
I agree. Especially with the power of the USD compared to the Yen. We could send much more value overseas if they had donation services available.
It might be cool if there were a Steam-like platform.
Makers upload the product. Consumers buy the product, use the product. Money goes to the makers and the platform takes a modest cut.
@@pbrown7501if only Valve could get into the media business. Imagine buying whole series in Steam sales and being able to stream them on anything. No subscription.
Well, animation is only one part of the process. That's why animes are produced by committees of companies sharing the risks and responsibilities.
I believe Trigger is doing that but mostly for art and livestreams, but idk about other studios though
Crunchyroll is proof you NEED piracy in media to force companies to innovate and do better to ensure a quality service, and product. If anything the more companies do this the more people push back which is always good
Sometimes we need villains to give heroes reason and meaning of why.
Usually these functions are a product of fair competition, but since they practically monopolized the market, they don't need to make improvements to have a good profit. Hopefully, torrents or some other streaming services can be enought of a rivalry for crunchyroll to be concerned about and to make steps to being better, or else nothing will really change
Piracy is not going to bring back comments. Piracy never stopped
That & more competition
Ironically, Crunchyroll itself started out as a piracy site.
"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,"
Odd how the guy selling a distribution network thinks the solution to all problems is... a distribution network.
Well, its still a price problem for me. I'm not willing to spend $50 on 12 22m episodes of questionable subtitle quality, and thats IF I had a DVD drive. It may be time to hit the torrent sites and download my favorite series and save them to a NAS computer.
@@Sovek86 Do that. can recommend
@@BTrain-is8ch He was sort of right, at least for that particular type of product. Anime is a bit different though.
@@BTrain-is8ch Point being? He was talking about his own industry, that's how expertise works.
The comment sections on some of the pirate sites are like 50% of the enjoyment you get from watching the anime. Watching an episode of your favorite show and seeing a guy named ratf***er420 drop the funniest comment ever is amazing.
This was nearly a decade ago but I'll never forget when I was watching Noragami on some obscure pirate website and the only comment was "fucking mr. steal yo girl fuck this guy"
i remember one time i tried watching pokemon (the 90s version) someone made like a 500 word rant of how he is tired of watching mainstream anime and yet he gave everyone in the website a very in depth guide how to watch the anime without fillers
I recently use disqus comments and it genuinely warms my heart that there's a comment section where we talk about the anime/episode we watched and our thoughts about it, pros and cons. My recent disqus visit was from Mayonaka punch episode 4 where the show kinda left the comedy aspect for a sec to show us Fu's super sad backstory and seeing others in the comments feeling the same way makes me happy. And of course there are funny comments here in there dropped by "big_black_dong69" which makes the experience better
@ratfucker420 you have been summoned
Nah not really lol. It's mostly just cringe and people arguing or spoiling.
Tried Crunchyroll once, got so much buffering I thought I was back in 2003
I tried it once from Europe. Everything regional restricted.
I tried it ONLY because they had an app for the fire stick and I would be able to watch Anime on my TV.
It kept crashing. I ended up downloading an app (since firestick is android based) and have a much better experience with no crashing and guess what... ITS FREE!
Bro, my wifi is absolutely terrible, and one time, I was watching animes on Crunchyroll with my sister. It was absolutely impossible, we got so much buffering that I decided to go see if the quest of the One Piece would be better... and it was, it was so much better. No buffering, and we could watch in 1080p, something I thought impossible with my Wi-Fi. I was paying a subscription for Crunchy but illegals and free alternative was so much better...
Nah if you were back in 2003 it would still be free
That's how I cancelled my subscription after one month. The first episode was still loading by the time I had caught up with the latest episode on a piracy site. By the way Crunchyroll didn't have the latest episodes either for some reason.
Thumbs up just for letting me know that I can support a studio directly. That is what I've wanted.
You're very welcome! If I remember correctly they opened their Patreon after kickstarting a portion of the funding for Little Witch Academia. I really hope more of my favorite studios go open up to this in time, but Studio Trigger will certainly do! 😁
@@FramingTheNarrative could you provide lists of studios with patreons? or other ways to support the industry
@@jordybanany881use Google bro
The straw that broke my back was when the English mob psycho voice actor attempted to get crunchyroll to come to the table and negotiate a union rate for his work. With absolute silence crunchyroll turned around and offered the role to a non-union actor. The icing on the cake that instilled the hate for crunchyroll in me, was during the cancellation of my subscription they have the gall to put "support the industry"as one last ditch morality jab to try and keep you paying, when they themselves will not pay. They will pay as little as possible, with no respect to the work and the dedication and the love that goes into making their product. So yes f*** Crunchyroll.
@@KonkaBass yeah, I remember this now that you mention it. It was very enlightening that they refused to even have the discussion.
And I also really do hate the moral panic so many have over this topic. I know I was very aggressive and "short" with said topic in the video but it really stems from years of frustration with how the topic is handled by those "white knighting" for Crunchyroll online. It doesn't matter how much you support the industry outside of these subs, many subscribers treat you as if you're destroying the industry personally unless you sub to a service that you feel is actively damaging the industry. Had no idea about the unsubscribe message though, that's bonkers with the company themselves guilt tripping you haha.
This is why I cancelled my Crunchyroll subscription. I feel like a scumbag pirating anime like Pretty Cure nowadays, but it's better than supporting those disgusting scumbags.
I hate it when a company guilt trips me into staying on their services. I haven't used Crunchy in 3 years and I have no regrets no matter how much of a pos they call me for not giving them money.
@@aaaah540 if you can't support the anime officially, you can always try buying merch directing from the studios/artists themselves or from sources that given them a fair cut
Crunchyroll isn't supporting anime, it's supporting a streaming service. Buying the merch from official sites is actual support
Be careful from what series you buy merch from, because if it’s from a show Crunchyroll helped produce, they will still make money from that merch sale, even if you buy from Japan.
RIP Aniwave
Hi,
You know, it has been a long journey since Aniwave (9Anime) first appeared. Creating better products that provide an improved user experience and fostering competition to drive the market to enhance products is something we are very happy about. Now that everything has improved… it is also time for us to say goodbye...It is difficult to part with something we have invested so much effort and passion into, but it is something we need to do. Thank you for standing by and supporting us throughout this time!
Every game must have an end...and life is about experiences. Every mistake teaches us lessons that help us grow.
If possible, please use legal paid services. It’s something we should do to show our respect for creators and content producers.
Good bye!
this message broke my heart 💔💔💔
im sure CR is in some way, if not a massive way, responsible for the takedown of aniwave and i will never forgive them for that. i would rather stop watching anime all together than support CR
This hurt, I found out today when I decided to get back into a few shows I took a break from only to find that all my bookmarks lead to nothing.
@@deean.art0 what is cr?
@@cinamoonmoon5166Short for Crunchyroll
My favorite Crunchyroll story was when I tried to upgrade my premium membership to a premium*er* membership (can't remember what the tiers were actually called, I just wanted to get the offline viewing that should rightfully be available to everyone) and customer support straight up told me, NOPE, can't do that. Gotta wait four months for your existing subscription to expire to upgrade it, or else you need to just make an entirely new account. I feel like even EA or Comcast wouldn't fall down at THAT hurdle.
EDIT: this was in January of '23, sounds like they changed it since then.
@@Egavans They fixed this, I was able to upgrade and it calculated to me a price from how much days is into the end of subscription. Just find it in the menu.
"I WANT TO PAY YOU MORE MONEY! WHY WONT YOU LET ME?!" kinda vibe, like this is stupid on their part, more money ? nah we re doing it just because we want to
you dont need to do this anymore, this mustve been a long time ago
Not even for money just love of the game
Mine was that I couldn't sign up with my email. I had to make an email that didn't exist to sign up which means I can't verify my account. Now I then tried to log into the email address that it created which I can't bc it doesn't use my crunchyroll password. It took me over an hour to figure out the email thing.
I miss the comments so much, every time I finish an episode I cry a little when I scroll down just to be reminded again D:
I liked to read which scenes made people happy, and there were also explanation for stuff I didn't fully understand from the episode.
if you're using cr then there's an extension that adds back comments and even restores some of them lemme know if you want the link to the extension
@@stormierkinji8021link please.
@@stormierkinji8021 please, tell me the link 🥺
@@stormierkinji8021 just tell the name lol
The reviews and comments made the website feel like it was bustling with life. With it gone, it just feels like a empty super mall in the zombie apocalypse.
I also don't know anywhere else to watch anime...
@@megamario3696 RUclips has some anime channels (legal and free, just subscribe or be a Member* if you want premium I think). One of them being Muse (and I subscribe to Muse Asia).
*edit typo from Mer to Member 😂
@@megamario3696Ehem, I would tell you where to watch other (w/co)anime but I’m not sure that’s really possible…. :(((((
Agreed. I miss reading comments about references and scenes I didn't quite get.
I really don't like dropping links because I don't want to bring the wrong attention, and these sites change occasionally so just leaving a link floating around could lead to people clicking on sites that have been shutdown or worse, replaced by dangerous clone sites. It's pretty easy to find them though, I would just google search "(insert the thing that you're trying to do)" and "reddit" and you should see some threads pop up with recommendations. You might also lurk through some of the comments left by other people haha. BUT before you use any such site, I always recommend watching my guide on "idiot-proofing" your PC. It's in the second half of my "Crunchyroll Is Killing Media Ownership" video. The more layers of protection on your PC, the better.
As always, I DO encourage supporting the industry. I just much rather educate people on other options to buy and support, many of which I also bring up in the aforementioned video. Methods I didn't think about then could include the Studio Trigger Patreon, and the "Animator Dormitory" Patreon. There are also apparently Fanbox accounts and Amazon Wishlists for certain individual staff, but I need to research this further as I'm quite ignorant about those last two options.
@megamario3696 You’re on the internet my guy lol. You can find somewhere else to watch if you really want to
Like how the great Gabe Newell said
"Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem"
The biggest reason I don't feel a thing from not using crunchyroll is because most of my favourite shows are just not available on their anyway. Hell most of my favourite shows are impossible to watch legally in the first place
Yeah, like, it's so dumb that it's simply not viable to legally like some shows in a era where every show can be streamed.
They had a chance to bring Eureka 7 over to crunchyroll from funimation but just let the license go to limbo but brought over the aurgably worst Eureka 7 AO and the money scam hi evolution movies
@@therealwildace2025I bought the DVD set of Eureka Seven 2nd hand, no regrets. Just ordered Haibane and Lain on BD too.
Baccano! and Blood + can only be viewed on Pirate sites cause Crunchyroll did shit fuck to get the licensing.
This right here.
The removal of the comments pissed me SO fucking much I sent them an email complaining, at first I thought it was a BUG, there have to be some other ways to make their operation annoying, there has to be some way to make them pay for this kind of shit, the day RUclips removes all the comments will be the time to cease some means of production
Me too. I chatted with CR customer service and they basically told me to go to alternative streaming platforms, so I did.
I liked comments, cuz the top one was usually the timestamp for ep start, and whether there was after credit scenes. And crunchy rarely puts the skip intro/outro buttons. Maybe on 3 episodes on a 12 ep season. And I like dub. But I can never tell when dub episodes drop, because they don't let yoi specify english, so every new dub anime they spam is just another language you can't even guess at from the symbols. Even when I used CR, before I clicked on anything, I opened a pirate site, and checked to see which of those 25 new dubs were english.
Oh. 2.
Okay.
Bro I miss the comment section because if I’m watching a new anime and if it’s mid ppl in the comments will say so. Like why would they remove it it makes zero sense
I missed reading though theire hate comment like in anime planet.
@@sdmofficial1506 that's just it the peasantry are meant to consume not question if the slop is worth the energy to bite much like how youtube got rid of the dislike well tried to because we downvoted crappy corporate shlock and rotten tomatoes decided to fuck with their scoring system to basically let the big studios buy false legitimacy of review
The idea of using legal services to "support the industry" is so asinine to me. I could shell out my money into a bureaucratic nightmare ball where it goes to a useless service, their useless side projects, the licensers, and finally gets divvied into miniscule pieces for the actual studios to lap up; or I could just buy a shirt/figure/etc of a targeted anime that I actually like and want to see more of.
I'm not the type of person who buy merchandise. I don't trying to downplay people who are it's just ain't something that interest me. But even than why would I buy merchandise for every side anime I watching between the main things that I like which are battle shonen.
BTY buying the manga is probably the best option to support, but I see it as much inferior option than reading it online so it's merchandise for me.
If I had a guarantee that the actual _creators_ of these IPs were being compensated with my money, I'd happily have gone the official route.
Japanese animators in particular are paid like trash, especially considering the work ethic of often demanded of them.
There's just no excuse for such successful companies to treat their employees marginally better than slaves.
@@trajectoryunown yes, but then all options how I can support them in Central Europe are limited on the streaming. As from interviews, they don't expand much to this region because they think it's full of pirates (yes, because even when we have EU rights to all the content available in the Union, we still feel like a 3rd world country)
Okay, finally we're getting serious about streaming the series, but why when I want to buy the movie/series can't I? Like Funanimation, many people around the world were sad because it ended, it was never available here when Crunchyroll was, WTF is this?!
While that's true you won't buy merch of every anime you ever watched. I personally don't want to buy much, because I don't need it and I need place for it, which I would rather use for different stuff. So I would rather be able to support the creators or the studio directly. But Crunchyroll doesn't do the best job at this sadly
@@janinasaam that's a problem with Japan's anime industry, it's their fault we can't properly support then and they have to outsource their streamming to countries other than japan. Also I don't even want to support any studio because they exploit their animators and pay then poorly
I was born in Latin America and grew up watching anime the illegal way, and then when I moved to the US and had my own money to pay for the legal streaming platforms, the first thing I thought was "how are the pirated version so much better?" and just went back to those lmao
Yeah it's not even funny how dogshit they are
Yeah the Crunchyroll app is borderline unusable. And if you pay for the tier that allows for downloads, the downloads NEVER work
And you was right to 😅 I don't blame you. You made the right call
because they took advantage of being the only massive mainstream way left to legally watch content,and use it to maximize profit at any costs
You can’t download anime with 1080p resolution with premium subscription. Then I realised pirating is better
*remembered pirating is better. Welcome home.
at least in my country, crunchyroll dosent even have: hunter x hunter , FMA , hajime no ippo , yuyu hakusho, weathering with you, bleach , soul eater, your name , the original dragon ball, dbz and even death note.
In my country hunter x hunter is impossible to watch legally XD
Whenever someone posts about an epic anime being available on crunchyroll, it's not in my region. Also I can watch some series which are a continuation of an older one, but they don't have the original which would provide the context.
@@adamhallgat3298Experienced this with Baki on Netflix. They have the adaptations for the 2nd and 3rd arcs, but not the 1st arc and nothing anywhere indicating that the series just called "Baki" is actually the continuation of the series and not the beginning like you would expect. I watched half of Baki before realizing that I was missing a ton of context.
I have Crunchyroll and most if not all of those are available in the US last I checked
I have the U.S server for crunchyroll. Some anime I can’t even find in my region either. Like this one time I was going see if they had Bleach and it didn’t show up in the search results.
I vote for bringing back physical media with reasonable prices. That was the best and highest quality way to enjoying it. Streaming has been a disaster for customer’s rights and enjoyment.
That's too real 😢
Yeah but the japs are addicted to selling individual volume discs for $50 - $100 each. I want to own Frieren on disc, but A: the dub isn’t included, and B: it’s like $600 for the lot.
You have to wait like three years while the money train from the super fans trails off and they decide to release a complete collection.
I feel you, I really miss the countless SAVE Editions and cheap "no special features" type releases which used to come regularly. I've found that today the most reasonable prices for physical anime releases are still almost always found in UK/EU imports though, and they tend to have the same dubs/subs and all anyway lol. You need a region free Blu-Ray player to take advantage of this but it's so worth it to me, especially to avoid buying those ludicrous Aniplex releases! The only scary thing is of course that Sony/Crunchy is definitely squeezing their way into those markets as well.
Personally I have a pretty large collection already, but my current goal is to simply have ALL of my favorites available in one physical release or another. Who knows how long they'll be available and even semi-reasonably priced after-all; I can't believe some of my random old purchases that now cost $100+ and are only available second-hand. I don't want go full paranoia or encourage people to spend money they don't have on such things, but I really have to wonder if physical releases will be thought of like genuine collector's items eventually. Researching the effect of Crunchyroll and streaming on physical releases and media ownership just felt really eye-opening for me.
@@FramingTheNarrative it’s even worse for people not in NA or Europe. I’ve got to look for region 4 DVDs, which puts imports out of the question. I scour the 2nd hand market instead. Shoulda bought Boogiepop Phantom when I saw it in store, man.
BDs are less bad, since we share region B, but it’s expensive to import from the UK.
Is it not possible for a company to make DVDs on demand, to whatever region and language the buyer is looking for?
@@ScroganThere exist region 0 DVD that can be used everywhere.
Even Funimation's old website had a comment section. That CR couldn't even be bothered is disgraceful.
Piracy is a moral obligation at this point. Buy straight from the Japanese source and move on.
Funny how you mention Funimation’s old website, as if they didn’t also remove comments in the new app.
Funimation nuked the comments section on their site a while before they were consumed by Crunchyroll
It’s not that they never had a comment section instead it’s that they removed it in July of this year (after July 7th, 2024 to be exact). I didn’t comment all that much but for them to nuke it (apparently over some negative comments about something) is asinine.
That tells me they’d rather get rid of features than to regulate or moderate them
Wait - do you support piracy (not paying) or do you support buying directly from Japan?
Buying original JP anime is super expensive, though. It can cost HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS for a SINGLE anime. That's why many pirates will support the creators by buying merch instead.
I am so tired of companies updating experiences by removing features.
The companies just think we're dumb & wouldn't noticed 😂
remember, a good pirate doesn't share the map to his treasure
But a good pirate does say nyaa
But a good pirate says YOHOHOHOHOHO
@@amari_hbnk Gather up all of the crew!
It's time to ship out Bink's brew!
True and let's set sail to the one piece awayyyy....
I remember the first time I used crunchyroll, I was actually worried that I went to some legacy server or something with how outdated the UI looked, and I refused to believe that it was supposed to be the up-to-date #1 (legal) anime streaming site
I'm so pissed that all the main websites got axed last week. I don't want to support crunchyroll but I also don't want anymore of the janky websites.
I hope some new polished sites come up because I'm suffering. I've just swapped to reading manga because all my favorite sites are still up.
Don't give up! Get out your log pose, hoist the Jolly Roger, and keep sailing the Grand Line for your anime!
There are a couple I've seen, go check the subreddit
@@notme8232 gogoanime and yugenanime are still up and running
When all is gone, we can always go back to gogoanime. The GOAT anime site that never left us even if we leave them for a better site like aniwave
I'm on the same boat, I dislike Crunchyroll so much, but getting hacked is not smt I want either 😭
whenever I use Crunchyroll it auto adjust quality to the worst despite having auto adjust off, unwatchable garbage that is too scared to buffer for a minute
Same. What bothers me much more though is the way the audio bitrate drops as well. It gets quiet and tinny sounding, really distracting. I really wish companies had never started with this "only a certain cache should ever be available to one user at once" thing but it was probably inevitable. I still remember when I could buffer an entire movie before starting, feelsoldman lol.
That doesn’t happen to me tho.
If it set the quality at 1080p it doesn’t go down, even if my connection is bad, it’s not like RUclips
@@FramingTheNarrative God forbid you waste even 5MB of bandwidth, LOL.
Can’t believe I starved Anno to death by pirating Evangelion to watch it in its original form 😔 (I’ve spent 146$ on Eva model kits)
Lol I just picked up the standard GKids release myself. I'm still probably gonna get the Platinum DVD set at some point though. A used DVD set is the only way to get the OG dub and Fly Me To The Moon sadly.
@@FramingTheNarrative Still have the original limited VHS that came out in my country many years ago.
@@chaos427 that's awesome! Tbh the only VHS anime I've watched are a few my grandma bought when I was a child xD
Im not defending crunchyroll, but if you're like me, who watches anime on the ps5, theres literally no other option.
Watching on ps5 is crazy
But even if you just watch on a tv there is kinda no other option aswell. Unless you have a laptop or pc nearby.
Yes there is. Router+cheap (like $100 or less) media PC into another HDMI input and bam, no more having to use PS5 to watch stuff.
@@Sovek86 Ah yes to solve the issue of not having any other way of watching ON THE PLAYSTATION, your solution is to WATCH ON A PC
@@Sovek86 I have no more hdmi ports on my tv. That woulds also require me to boot a pc every single time I watch anime and have a keyboard + mouse lying around next to my couch
-They load faster
-They have playspeed options
-Shows are complete, and have sub and dub options
-They have comment sections
-They have watchtogether features
-They have subtitles that actually make grammatical sense
-Functional Search Page
-They have shows that paid sites don't
-No region restrictions
-Older shows have better quality
-Subs and dubs can be used at the same time
-Never crashes
-Animators don't get paid either way
Who is “they”
“They” sound appealing and I’d like to check it out. Cancelled Crunchyroll a couple months ago and been dying to watch something.
for reals, who is this they lol?
O.o Waiting here to find out who "they" is...
- No, they don't. If anything, Crunchyroll is one of the slower streaming services
- Bare minimum you see even in pirate websites?
- Bare minimun
- Even pirate websites do
- Valid
- The subtitles are absolute trash. Not worth mentioning. Not only do they often mistranslate or change the meaning of things, they're often rushed and flat out wrong and never corrected. I've seen ridiculous mistakes. Not to mention they don't put half the effort fansubs do with fonts and giving context to cultural differences behind certain jokes and lines
- Wow, a functional search page. That's not particularly special lol
- They may have, but still doesn't beat just pirating those shows
- Yes, there are region restrictions
- That's certainly not thanks to Crunchyroll. Studios release blu-rays with better quality and that's what gets on streaming services like Netflix and Crunchyroll, but it's nothing notable or special anymore
- Not a high bar
- Bare minimum
- Exactly. This makes it even less interesting
VRV? Viz Media?
It used to really piss me off when Crunchyroll had other language dubs listed as other seasons. Despite being a subscription service their sites features have always been Ass, which is funny because Funimation which they bought out had better features on their site.
Except they fixed the whole dubs = seasons thing a while ago…
@@danielalmeida7382 I know, like I said it used to piss me off when they did that
@danielalmedia7 hell yeah! How dare we complain when they took *years* to put in the bare minimum amount of effort!
@@madeliner1682 I just find funny how someone claims Funimation had better features when they quite literally had less features, and pretty much everyone that used both services thinks the same.
@@danielalmeida7382 no then didnt... i still see it some places.
As soon as Funimation merged into Crunchyroll, I was just like, “Guess it’s time to never pay again!” I used to at least SOMETIMES pay for a month of Funimation here and there. It was SO MUCH BETTER for finding dubs and stuff. And news/announcements.
I mean, I still think KissAnime was the best “library” before it was shut down… but for the titles Funi had? It was pretty good.
Kiss anime was good but 9aniwavs/aniwave that was just shutdown was legendary
"Support the industry" my ass. Majority of the money just goes to some rich persons pocket. So it isn't even fair to use that as a reason
Cartoon Network and Toonami watching Crunchyroll acting like this:
"That boy ain't right."
cn and toonami are far worse. toonami is dissapearing from most countries (last piece of anime I was ever able to watch on toonami was mob psycho 100 in like,2021?),cn can very well be named ttgo channel, and hbo max (the service that owns both channels) is mass canceling copious amount of shows,leaving no way to legally watch those,just for the sake of marking them as tax-write offs and salvage some money before the inevitable bankruptcy day comes (warner discovery has a debt that increases by approximately $10 billion USD per year)
The only official one I used was vrv. I did buy the paid version cause the ads were so annoying but I liked everything being in spot and was easy to navigate. Stopped watching anime altogether for a time and when I came back I found out vrv was shut down so I've been on the high seas ever since
I knew it was bad, but my god. I am glad that stopped paying them years ago
Started tormenting and upscaling my anime in real-time using mpv and never looked back.
Bruh, that's next level lol. I'll have to check out the player! Reading the comments on these Crunchy videos makes me feel like my viewing setup is totally basic 💀
Is there any good videos to teach me how to do the same lol.
@@FramingTheNarrative mpv is kind of a pain to work with. SMPlayer is a more user-friendly front-end for it. I hear mpv has a higher quality picture, but for "tormenting" specifically, I'd advise VLC. It's solid across all platforms, has a simple UI, is compatible with practically every video and audio format you can imagine, also has support streams, and is generally slam-packed with a lot of extra features. And the big thing, if you get a video that doesn't finish downloading, *VLC will play incomplete or corrupt files* instead of just saying it's corrupted or can't be played.
@@Satsujiin yeah I’d like to learn that too
Wait you could upscale in real time using MPV?
It's odd, I actually used crunchy roll back in the day because it was more reliable than piracy. It had a free service that I didn't mind using because it was legal and had a consistent translation. I even bought a full years subscription when they did the sale on black Friday because it was a cause worth supporting. Despite that, somehow they have disappointed me time and time again. I slipped back to using it for free because the service was just terrible. Censorship made me more likely to go for other options and eventually I abandoned it altogether once they threatened to end the free service. The traditional "buy merch" option we had was always good and we'd've kept with that if there was no other option. Why is the other option getting worse as time goes on?
like gabe newell (ceo of steam) says: it is only a problem of service. piracy exists because doing it the legal way is often a punishment
They say Pirates have no Morals or are commiting "fraud" heh if I had no morals I would have bought Crunchyroll Premium.
there is nothing morally wrong with stealing from massive corporations.
I absolutely hate Sentai/hidive. They a) lock themselves to the US, so the rest of the world can't use them without a vpn (+more expensive app overall), and b) their platform sucks, it's like going back in time to flash players that you can't move 10s back without it crashing.
c) they buy the exclusive rights to specific great series (like OshinoKo) but since they only stream in the US, that licence is lost for the rest of the world.
If that's your idea of competition, no wonder Crunchy can do whatever it wants.
good thing I'm paying for neither and still getting a better experience
Just to clarify hidive works in Australia so they might be expanding
@@ripgitssac-fao7524no there not. Hidive ended its service in nearly all Europe. Its actually only still Available in English Speaking Countries.
@@ripgitssac-fao7524 it used to work here in LATAM a few years ago, but then they said they'd only provide services to English speaking countries basically.
Financially, I can understand that's their largest market, but the problem is the license belongs to them and no one can use it
HiDive works in Canada, I've had it for awhile now.
The problem is, the only way I know to trust a pirating site for Movies, Anime, Manga, etc. is if a friend who I know is experienced in this stuff sends me the link. Other than that, I am OUT.
A lot of pirate sites don’t require you to download anything
@@theshadowking3198 for your computer to display anything it needs to download it.
There are entire subreddits dedicated to outlining safe ways to sail the seven seas.
I used to relay on a friend of mine as well, after some time I learned my way around
I really hope dubs don't die out because of this I literally cannot watch subed anime because of my eyesight
3:33 fixed? I am not allowed to take screenshots still :,(
That's strange... Maybe it's OS specific then? I'm on a Google phone and I recently noticed I'm able to screenshot without the blackout screen. I'm sorry for getting your hopes up either way 🥲
Yeah, not on google play's one either. Unless your version is different somehow, it seems the blocker IS still there... which I guess further proves the point.
5:00 I live in the UK and can confidently say that’s silly. The US is a much bigger market and should be getting stuff earlier and cheaper or at the same price.
The only reason I even use Crunchy is because somebody shares it with me for free. But even with shows they got, with the dub and sub I want, I’m contemplating on just watching it on another site. It bothers me SO much that they removed comments. Like Crunchy was bare bones minimum of features before that, but somehow they got worse.
I sure love 15 minute ads every time I watch anime unskipable too 😊
I watched Animelab, then Funimation, now crunchyroll. I give up, Animelab was awesome, Funimation was less cool, and crunchyroll has 7x unskippable ads. Idc how great bocchi is I couldnt keep doing that.
If you're getting ads you're not paying for Crunchyroll. Those who pay don't get ads.
@@drndn I’m paying for the subscription and still getting an ad before most episodes
@@KipNinjogu Huh. Don't recall that happening to me. And you can't skip those? Though that's still not as bad as 3-4 in the middle of episodes per normal ad supported.
@@drndn 7 30 second unskippable ads is a bit much. I get that might be whats paying for the anime stuff but I ain't gonna sit for 3 seperate breaks each doing 7 minutes of straight ads for a 24 minute episode. I could watch a TV channel and still get less ads than that.
why use free and have ads what's the point then
"Hmmmm i wish i could watch my favorite anime without paying for a stupid subscription service"
Piracy:
Just like Gabe Newell used to say with games, also applies to other forms of medium: 'Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.'
Aniwave had the best UI in the entire anime sphere
Yes but they had to shut down. I was thinking of not getting a Crunchyroll sub but what choice do I have in India where there are fans and various streaming services providing anime but no way of officially buying Bluray or any merch. I dont have a choice that's why I hope crunchyroll listens to the users and make my payment worth a lot more than it is now.
The worst sin of crunchyroll is not marking filler episodes. LITERALLY EVERY FREE SITE DOES THIS, WTF
Ngl, Funimation and CR merge is definitely the worst decision sony has ever made, the fact that they even weren't able to merge all the content and leave a ton of animes licences totally abandoned is just crazy, but you know what's even crazier?, the fact that they totally " forgot " to merge all the dubs CC funimation shows did have. Lol
Sorry for my English lmao
crunchyroll is weird man how is the all-in one anime service when half the time i have to switch devices to get a video to play
I'll Do what i'll want, cause what i am is free
I
AM
A
PIRATE
Yar har fiddle dee dee!
Yaar har fiddle lee dee
Being a pirate is alright to be
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
i cancelled my crunchyroll sub today about 3 hours before watching this for every reason that you listed in this video, i know it's not a lot of people but there are some of us who want to talk about how much of a steaming pile of garbage crunchyroll is!
It’s not that we want to watch EVERY anime, we just want every episode of the ANIME WE ARE ACTUALLY WATCHING
I was watching overlord and i was 3 episodes away to se 4 and the same day i got hit with a "yOu nEeD PreMuim To w=waTcH thIs" like are you serious then i came back give crunchyroll a second chance and then i dont see any comments and im like what happend? and then i see they deleted comments like Im not burying stupid premuim.
just got crunchyroll, i can barely find most animes I want to watch with my 6 year old.
Then I find out that almost all of it is region locked, so i'd have to pay for yet another service, a VPN, to get a bigger fraction of the anime I'm looking for.
And STILL most of them are nowhere to be found.
Not to mention the sheer lack of audios and subtitles.
Wtf
once they removed comments I just immediately cancelled my subscription and realized pirate sites are way better.
hundreds of anime in my watchlist gone, rip aniwave
I always hated Crunchyroll. It's the main motive the old Mcanime disappeared. Since then, I've hated them. Also, they spit in your face with their "free trial". For me CR is a big NO. I don't wan't it. Not even free. I wish they would just disappear.
Who else got an ad for Crunchyroll before the video?
@@Nekowaii_Girl Oh ffs 😭 I ain't even monetized yet and they're already taking my money 🤣
I feel like I could've learned something by this video, but I was distracted trying to keep track of all the insults and how many times "Who cares" was said.
I wouldn't be watching if I didn't care!!! Incredible quality video and hopefully you continue to make good content. I might just not be the intended audience.
when he is saying the "who cares" questions, he is making rhetorical questions. he is not literally asking who cares. also, it is pretty normal for him to insult SONY and Crunchyroll higher ups when they are the ones making enjoying his hobby harder and more frustrating.
damn, i knew crunchyroll was bad but i didn't know it was THIS bad 💀
As a free watcher i thought crunchyroll was the heaven of anime with every unique feature from every free website thank you for the info
CALL OF THE NIGHT MENTIONED IN A CLIP
@@frost_aurora ITS SO GOOD OMG! Definitely gonna do a dedicated video on it at some point, probably my favorite nightscape aesthetic in anime lol 🌃
@@FramingTheNarrative AND HE RESPONDED, PLEASE MAKE A VIDEO AND DONT YAP ABOUT S2 LEAKS OR TRAILERSSS, JUST SONETHING THAT BRESKS DKWN DYNAMICS SCENERY AND SUCH
@@frost_aurora lmao no worries! I'm working on a script about the aesthetic and why I love the unrealistic portrayals of the night, direction and art style stuff basically
I do have a first impressions video btw, and I talk about those same style elements just a little bit in "Should Anime Adaptations Change Iconic Scenes?" (Timestamps mark the section.)
Anyway, thanks for watching! Hope you're enjoying my stuff so far, this rant was a lot different than my usual tbh 😂🤣
Crunchyroll started out as a free site. But then they got greedy.
Greedy? Do you think wanting to get paid for your work is greedy? You try doing your job while never getting paid for it and see if you like it.
@@drndn And yet somehow other FREE sites are still doing ok. They do the same work as Crunchyroll. No, Crunchyroll got greedy, so they decided to become a paid site. Right now, they are like the case of Star Wars Outlaw. Charging money for cheap crap. If that isn't greed, I don't know what it.
@@foofoo3344 The existence of people doing volunteer work doesn't take away from that people still need paid work to live. Those running Crunchyroll chose to make it their paid job. That's not greedy. If it is, then anyone can call you greedy for insisting on getting paid for whatever work you do for a living instead of doing that for free.
@@drndn OK, that part is logical. But how are you going to rationalize charging for crap service?
REMEMBER, they CHARGE USERS but don't even have features THAT FREE SITES provide for FREE.
@@foofoo3344 The features Crunchyroll doesn't have anymore, eg comments, aren't that important, and what they do still have still fully justifies the $10/month that they cost, basically the same price as HiDive, Disney, Prime, etc. They have a huge catalog I like and watch, I have found the streaming quality to be excellent, etc. Fully worth it. And they are legal. Granted, there are free options that are also legal, such as Tubi and RetroCrush, that I also recommend, though that's not what is typically referred to here as "the free alternatives".
Proud non-user of Crunchyroll. Been free of the illusion that Crunchyroll is a fine streaming service since High Guardian Spice.
I would absolutely pirate anime if I knew any solid pirate options. All the options I used in the past ended up getting shut down or the ads became so bad I couldn't handle it anymore. So if there are any options out there that work well and don't have over bearing ads, then I'd go and watch there. But no one seemingly wants to talk about them.
Unfortunately it's kind of dangerous to publicly mention them cause then they might get taken down. I reccomend an ad blocker and that will open up a ton of options
You gotta download not stream. There are some very reliable sites for finding downloads
DUDE USE AN ADBLOCKER
Torrenting never went away. It was the primary means of watching anime in the post-napster up to the early days of streaming. The only limitation is how much harddrive space you have to store all your favorite shows forever.
@@Pangora2 that´s a veeeeeeeeeeeery low price to pay for not having to basically sell your soul
I had stopped paying years ago once I started to know my way around anime sites (which really isnt to hard especially these days) and realized that Crunchyroll is just not good. Then when the whole “supporting the industry” thing culminated with them using the money to make High Guardian Spice, it pretty much cemented that I will never go back to them again. Didnt know I could send money to Trigger on Patreon though, I love that studio and I will def be doing that from now on
They also helped produce over 100 actual anime since 2015…
@@danielalmeida7382 yea everyone just wants to non stop whine man
probably disabled comments to avoid more deserved hate on high guardian spice
@@nomoredlc593 nothing to do with that show
The only time I actually watched Crunchyroll, I got ads that would have the close button gone faster than it is possible to click before another ad would show up.
Welcome, youtube recommended video, LMAO! I think you have some fair points, but as someone who's just getting into anime, i feel like i just walked into my nearest Warhammer shop and got bombarded by thousands of years of lore by a passionate enjoyer.
hope this blows up. Gotta leave a comment for those algorithm gods...
People still watch anime legally? Couldn't be me
Brownie edges are legit the best part of brownies, so glad someone made this
Go to the Dollar Store. Get 2 boxes of the Cookie Brownie mix on the baking aisle. Make the recipe to specification, but replace all of the water with whole milk. When mixing the chocolate chip cookie portion add 2 tbsp's of salted caramel syrup, preferably Jordan's Skinny Syrups because there is no way that this sh*t is good for you. If you're really feeling like an animal, you could even add a few white chocolate chips as well. Make sure to stop cooking *JUST BEFORE* the toothpick comes out perfectly clean. Throw some tinfoil on top and let it finish naturally. AND NEXT TIME SAY THANK YOU PROPERLY YOU ANIMAL
_"Take a bite. Change your life." - Lao Tsu_
my beloved anix went recently for some reason, next to no ads when ur clicking and a really good roster of animes now all gone
I do miss the early days of Crunchyroll. We even had profiles back then where pics could be posted and some word salad. But recently people did not like some of the promotion of certain genres so I think its only fair to allow people to opt out of stuff they are not interested in. If people were being negative and bombing a page with negative stuff that is just unnecessary (I mean rather than opinions, their personal social norms) they could have just muted those people with community moderators or something. Time outs where you can't type but can read until if you get overly preachy then its just a permanent mute. Bottomline if you don't want to see certain stuff then don't watch it or comment on it. Its not your job to save the world. I happen to not view the naughty stuff there so if I see something I prefer not to see I just click away to another show that doesn't have that.
I think they could have done this without ruining it for everyone.
Man I miss the reviews section.
I gotta say it almost feels like a government losing controls of its people and resorting to extremes like this. I'm considering HiDive for a bit.
crunchyroll users finding pirate websites for the first time is gonna be like humans using an air conditioner for the first time in their life
Except sometimes someone will come by and rip the AC out and you have to find a new unit.
@@PhoenicopterusR This is exactly why there's way more value in telling people how to find such sites, and how to "idiot-proof" their hardware, instead of just dropping them a random link.
@@PhoenicopterusR for real, luckily free ACs are everywhere (for now)
Yeah them taking away comments is stupid. Also seems like they aren’t even translating on screen text again. I wish Soyny wouldn’t have an almost monopoly on anime streaming.
Honestly it sucks that Crunchyroll is the easiest way to watch anime with my mother on the tv.
I'm in the same boat. I usually watch anime on unofficial sites, but in order to watch anime with my mother on the TV, I needed Crunchyroll PLUS the streaming service subscription
Dude same.
You have an android or iPhone if you have android I can help you
Bro, you are the saving grace of the Anime Community. Your entire perspective is coincidentally exactly the way I see Crunchyroll and Anime Streaming in general nowadays. I agree 100% with all that you have said in this video, literally thousands more do as well. Your explanation on Crunchyroll vs Free Alternatives and, how Crunchyroll is worse and not worth the money, is extremely well done.
Why should I pay for a premium service when, a free alternative offers more then the premium service never did? "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates" - Gabe Newell. I stand by this quote everyday because of how truthful this is in today's modern world with media streaming services everywhere.
Until these greedy anime streaming companies quit their bullshit and, give the community what they're asking for, piracy will be the better option. Adding onto that, a couple of days ago, 3 or so Free Anime Streaming sites were shutdown, a targeted attack against those free sites. I am very saddened and angry hearing the news, knowing that those awesome streaming sites aren't coming back. I have payed my respects to those sites for offering a unparalleled user experience. It's no wonder why those sites were taken down, they were so much more popular then the shitty "premium" streaming sites/services.
Even so, I agree that people are too ignorant to choose the better streaming service that deserves the users and praise, etc. Quit throwing away your money to these greedy scummy companies, THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU, ONLY ABOUT THE MONEY. Y'all are basically blind like, it's obvious now through this video. Because you keep on giving your money to these companies, they turn back and spit in your face and are like, "We have tons of money, let's do whatever the hell we want with it".
Alright, you want to donate actual money to these studios? Then find a way to do it directly to the studio, be it Patreon or something else. It's not wrong to donate directly to them and continue watching on a free site. Same goes for any and all manga that you read, donate directly to the author/artist and then, continue reading that manga to your hearts content.
This is all common knowledge you guys c'mon, let's be adults here, not kids.
Anyways, rant over, I hope at least someone actually understands this and, doesn't comment something utterly stupid because, if so, you will be ignored. If you aren't mature enough to understand the situation, don't bother commenting. Thank you to whoever read my whole comment.
The thing to consider though is that those free anime sites don't do the proper licensing and business formalities that an entity, like Crunchyroll, spends a good chunk of money on in order to have an anime as a part of their library. Yes, Crunchyroll may not offer the best user experience when compared to the free alternatives but they are one of the few options available that allows someone to watch Anime in a "legal" and convenient way.
For me, I'm willing to pay the price for the convenience since it's nice not having to set up ad blockers, finding non-removed free streaming sites, doing workarounds to get the anime to stream, and have my anime library in one centralized location. In order for a site like Crunchyroll to be convenient and accessible, that comes at a price that those free anime sites don't pay.
You can say those at Crunchyroll are greedy but they are paying for the licensing, which isn't cheap, in order to legally host anime for people to watch. It also costs money for them to negotiate with studios on when and how they upload the content. I would be more supportive of those free anime sites if they were paying for the licensing themselves and hosting the anime on the site for free for people to watch. However, they pirate the content and upload it into their platform for other people to watch for free. It may be a better experience but the developers did not do their due diligence to legally obtain the anime and post it on their site hence they get taken down.
I bet you would say that "while those free sites don't pay for licensing directly. Those free sites allow more people to watch anime resulting in more people to support the studio/artist indirectly by buying merch, supporting them on patreon, etc. So in the end, they help studios/artiste more than greedy corporations like Crunchyroll". The problem with that though is that there is no guarantee that the studio/artist will ever receive money from the content they produced that is now being used by those free anime sites. Is it really fair for those studios/artists to trust that viewers will support them if they watch it on those sites? Is it fair for the studios/artists to make content that is being used without permission or compensation because they're being streamed on a site with a " better user experience".
All in all, those free sites don't have permission to use the content hence they get taken down no matter how much better the user experience is or how customer friendly they are. It's not fair for the studios/artists to hope they will get paid while others use/view their content for free.
You may think watching on a free anime site is more ethical/better. But, you're just hurting the studio/artists who make the content you watch because pirating does not hurt Crunchyroll, it hurts the studio/artists you support no matter if you buy the merch and patreon afterwards.
After I tried free trial for 1 show some years ago, I had a thought of subscribing for something else. Glad that thought left my head. And yes, I remember having some loading issues on trial.
Censored all of its users instead of adding an option to disable all comments for the you know which crowd
This really is one of the most frustrating parts. Companies would rather get rid of a feature than give the end user the option to turn it on or off. And it's obvious that they were just using the "emergency" to their advantage; they aren't protecting anyone, they're using the perfect excuse to save money while saying that they're protecting people. 🤷♂
@@FramingTheNarrative 100% These soulless pricks use progressive language as a shield for their own dubious actions.
its so stupid its impossible to watch one punch man in australia without paying 3.99 n episode so im forced to pirate lots of animes cause of streaming rights
also sword art online season 1 u can watch 2 n 3 fine but season 1 is to difficult
I will say that I've never had any of the problems you listed. I've never been locked out for even a second, I've never had any desire to watch anime at a different speed, I've never had crunchyroll crash on me, screenshot blocking is a side effect of the hardware acceleration setting and can be fixed by temporarily turning that off in your browser if you really need to, I didn't realize anybody actually used the cast feature, the search function searches, etc. It does suck that they got rid of comments and reviews, but a lot of the other stuff is "yeah, who DOES care?"
Just because you don't use a feature doesn't mean nobody does.
How about a site that actually has a decent selection of anime, including older titles and isnt just whatever the normies are watching. I've got co-workers that watch anime and they are all 100% BS animes thats popular and not one of em has ever watched any of the real good ones I've seen such as A Certain Scientific Railgun, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Sailor Moon, Card Captor Sakura, Girls Und Panzer, Kantai Collection, Oshi no Ko, Spy x Family (oddly enough even though its really popular), Toradora, Haruhi Suzumiya ect ect ect.
i feel the same way
The major problem is what people call "enshitification" of the platform. Companies will chip away at features culling everything except the bare basics to cut down on costs. Comments for example had very little problems and was one of the major reasons I stuck with CR since it was fun to read them. For no reason at all they were removed. That's just the user experience end as well. Sony is actively enshitifying and choking the amount of media the west is able to obtain by acquiring other companies and making them worse or getting rid of them entirely. Funimation and RightStuff are two of the major examples, purged having only delivered a fraction of their libraries. The issue primarily lies in the scummy business practices.
The people who care are exactly the people who WANT anime to become more available.
I do agree with everything but the Hardware Acceleration. If you use FireFox then it would work with the method you described, however on Crunchyroll mobile (The main reason I still have Crunchyroll) and other browsers like Chrome the screenshot blocker is deliberate and unavoidable.
Here’s my perspective as someone who is an extremely casual anime watcher. I’ve never heard of these problems until this video. And while I’m sure these points matter a lot to an avid watcher to me they simply don’t. I don’t own many streaming services but this is still the cheapest one I do own. I can generally watch sub or dub and have access to all the anime I’m personally interested in in one spot. The few times I’ve tried using free sites they’ve been annoying, either having low quality versions, missing episodes or just not working at all and throwing ads up in my face. Perhaps I haven’t discovered the right free website. But idk from a casual viewers standpoint I like being able to load up the app on my smart tv and watch an episode or two
i pay for crunchyroll because the encoding is better than anything ive seen on pirate sites, only rivaled by (some) torrents, but torrenting is annoying. i also like the compatability between my 3 devices.
For that Crunchyroll subscribtion money, you could get any pirate to torrent all the shows for you.
That's fair, I can at least understand the specific value you're getting out of it.
I think the only site I've seen rival Crunchyroll's bitrate was the original AniMixPlay.. but they didn't get shutdown, they just gave up on maintaining it. So maybe that part's harder than I think 💀
I'd recommend streamio (using torrentio), but i also just started so i havent seen the downsides that much.
thats the exact same reasons why i use crunchyroll. and i also share it with 3 other people.
2:25 Hey what’s this from 👀
It's from Oshi No Ko, the Opening song if I remember correctly. 😁
0:52 just be australia where crunchyroll/madmanentertainment/sony own the distribution rights to every piece of japanese anime here and the solution is just to not have a place to watch anything else
they dont really license out everything they own the rights to tho unfortunately. like i remember trying to watch a couple series only to be hit with "anime not licensed in your region", and with it not being available on any other streaming platform i had to use 9anime/aniwave
I stopped using CrunchyRoll soon as they removed comments. Those were the best part honestly.
this is one pretty good video. usually with videos of this title and topic, you'd expect a long rant with windy twitter threads and infinite commentary.
but no, this is straight to the point and contains a plethora of jokes, very good and nice.
also are you admitting that pirates do it better? fair enough, aniwave was pretty good.
What irony of why pirated sites indeed are more usable. What a reccommendation calls out
The Mega Fan is 65€/year. My biggest grudge with pirating is the video and audio quality. If I want something at max quality I have to spend 1h finding it (in Spanish subs) and then download it, and god forbid it is anything older than 5 years and a little bit niche.
I share the subscription with 3 other people so for 16.25€/year or 1.35€/month I have 90% of what I want to watch at 1080p max audio quality without having to navigate the 7 seas.
As much as I find their platform infuriating, it’s still easier enough to use how I want to use it than piracy to keep me subscribed. I enjoy a lot of the Spanish dubs, and those are a massive pain to track down on the high seas. The blu rays are prohibitively expensive for anime; I could keep my subscription for a year for less than the cost of 3 seasons on disc. Blurays also rarely have non-English dubs, at least not the versions available in the US, so I’m stuck again if I want to watch a Spanish dub. I buy my western media physically, it’s a fraction of the cost of anime, but CR with the occasional sailing expedition for the rare shows I want to watch that they don’t have is the best solution I’ve found for anime.
So happy that I can support Trigger directly! I abandoned Crunchyroll long ago and would love to directly pay Trigger and show support for projects like PSG
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.”
“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.”
- Gabe Newell, president of Valve.
also,it is often used as a way for preservation of things that are not possible to legally preserve for copyright reasons
As someone that agrees that CR is making everything worse, I have to say that you're missing the point of it being convenient. Me and my gf watch anime on Crunchyroll and Netflix because our Playstation has those apps.
We don't need to unplug the HDMI, move a personal laptop and a folding table besides the TV, and look for stuff on the internet when we can just turn on the PS and control it with the controller that is on the desk besides the bed.
I definitely preferred piracy back in the day when I watched 5+ shows per season, but now that I'm a more casual watcher Crunchyroll is such a better product for me than the hassle of consuming anime by other means. I think that assuming most consumers are using CR due to "supporting anime" and not just because of accessibility for casual viewing is missing the entire point of how CR is continuing to grow day by day
That's fair. I also think I made a big mistake assuming people know about more niche viewing options and will be willing to get over the learning curves on their own. Maybe I should just make a "how to watch anime" video explaining all the options and how to use them in more detail haha.
Personally if I'm not using a PC, I usually just cast stuff from my phone to my TV using Web Video Cast (a casting browser app that also supports local files). It's not perfect but I can hard-set my resolution, it's extremely convenient given you know good sites to cast from, and it has basically all the features and customization I could ever want. I can even use it with the HiDive website, though Crunchyroll somehow seems to completely block its access even when logged in.
The only real issues are it no longer seems capable of separating subtitle sources, so they overlap if multiple characters are talking. (You can customize subtitle format and FX so this doesn't bother me outside of extremely dialogue heavy shows.) And the playback speed options don't provide audio as clean as the same options on PC. Other than that I can't imagine a much better app for watching anime, far more feature rich than any official app I've tried.
@@FramingTheNarrative interesting. I'd have to check if our TV has an option to do video cast as well (considering it's still an older model) but that's a smart workaround
When you consider the cost of a monthly sub, vs the cost of one HDMI cable I think it would work out in your favor.
There are also options for TV boxes with the similar functionality with something like ChromeOS. Yeah, you won't get games, but if your TV has 2 HDMI ports, you can switch between PS and box easily. And boxes are quite cheap, I guess within 100-300$ USD you can find something for a long time with decent audio\video quality. And the box can support all other stuff as well. Pirating is nowadays the option, because there are too much platforms which provides quite a small experience, so if you have favorite shows from different companies it's gonna cost a lot. And that is why piracy seems better - you have everything in one place (or two as mostly anime and movies\animation are in different places anyway).
as long as its the only option for me to watch anime on mobile without being inconvenient, riddled with ads and a danger to my private information, i'll have to keep supporting these bastards at sony.
Brave browser. If you don't get redirects you should be fine. Just don't download anything.
There are entire subreddits devoted to teaching you what sites to use to stay safe, and if you don't like ads then get an ad blocker. Honestly even if your not pirating anime you should have an ad blocker imo. As for being inconvenient idk what your talking about. It's the same level of convenience to type in 9anime into Google as it is to type crunchyroll.
Piracy is not a pricing but a service issue - the founder of Steam.
P*rate anime sites are better because they're lead by normal people and fans, not capitalistic share holders. Even in Japan, the animation industry has become a share holding contest - No, you are NOT supporting the animators by paying... All of the money goes right to share holders.
Artists have been trying to tell the community for years about the absolute scam that is paid anime sites. Anime breaks records in revenue every year as an industry, yet animator salaries only go lower and lower. Many animators are subjected to unpaid overtime, not sent home, get extremely ill due to not being able to feed themselves, etc.
If anything, we shouldn't support the stock market known as the "Japanese Animation Industry". All your money is getting crunched by higher ups, not being given to actual creators!