Anime/Manga Anime Strike and its effects on legal streaming.

Florges

Florges

The Garden Pokémon
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    So, I'm sure some of you have heard of Crunchyroll/FUNimation's arch nemesis by now.

    For those who do not know, Anime Strike is the marriage between Amazon and Sentai Filmworks. Last season, the service opened with a starting price of $104. Yep, you read that right. You have to have Amazon Prime and then pay an additional $5 a month to keep your subscription. So if you want to watch an anime from Amazon, you have to go through a double paywall.

    This has been taking the community by storm... in the most negative way possible. Last season Amazon had exclusive rights to two anime, one of which being the [in]famous Scum's Wish. Not that many people were bothered by it aside from the fact there was a double paywall. Plus, CrunFuni had the more shows.

    Everything changed when the Spring anime season showed up.

    As it stands, CrunFuni only has these in their lineup currently Attack on Titan, My Hero Academia, Alice to Zoroku, Sakura Quest, The Royal Tutor, Granblue Fantasy, The Laughing Salesman, Boruto, Starmyu, Akashi Records of Bastard Magical Instructor The World Yamizukan, Beserk, The Silver Guardian, and World Food News II.

    Anime Strike currently has Grimoire of Zero, Kabukibo!, Anonymous Noise, Sagrada Reset, and Armed Girl's Machiavellism.

    Eromanga-sensei will be streaming on both sites. Saekano: How to Raise a Boring Girlfiend should as well since the first season was released by Aniplex USA.

    Frame Arm Girls is streaming on the Anime Network.

    There are still at least a dozen series that have not been licensed announced yet, but it's only a matter of time now.

    What are your thoughts on Anime Strike? Do you think it will encourage more piracy now that more anime has been paylocked? Will the anime community ever have just one streaming service to legally watch anime?
     
    It won't encourage piracy, no. More often than not, people use paid streaming services for convenience- legality and supporting the site/the creator(s) usually isn't a part of the decision, and it's rare that someone'll skip out on a show just because it isn't on that thing they're paying for.

    Here, the convenience is (supposedly) being threatened, or the attractiveness of it is, at least, and that will definitely turn people away. That said, the people who pirated anime before are going to be the ones pirating now. While I can see less people paying for these services if the situation escalates, I don't see more people going on to your various illegal streaming sites and viewing that way than before.
     
    What's the video quality like on Anime Strike's service? Recently Crunchyroll has had to respond to a noticed drop in encode quality and looks like it's finally reversing the trend.
    The double paywall is foolish, and they likely just see it as "everyone has Prime anyway" (which they obviously do not). For those people who watch every single show provided it isn't an absolutely terrible deal, but if you're only interested in 1 or 2 shows and don't already have a Prime account you might as well just buy the series for the price. There will be a minor uptick in pirating these streams, but not as big an impact as simply not watching them.

    The only expected immediate reaction would be an uptick in fansubbing against Japanese video source. It's been at a lull recently due to a number of reasons, but fansubs originally came into existence due to a lack of availability. Still piracy, of course.

    An article about the encode situation and encoding in general from a completely-not-dubious source:
    https://medium.com/@Daiz/crunchyrol...e-of-paying-customers-c86c6899033b?swoff=true
     
    I learnt about Anime Strike when I found out that they had exclusive rights to Saekano. From what I read from forums, you had to be a prime member already to be able to subscribe to Anime Strike

    The first episode's subtitles were poorly timed, which was very annoying. If it isn't fixed by the next episode I can't imagine how frustrating it is to pay double to watch this AND experience poor subs.
     
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