Yeah, click-bait title. You wish.
Good news for all anime fans: Headquartered in Japan, AnimeLog is a distributing service providing anime overseas legally and for free, and it just launched a few days ago on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsnDtu-g18tDA4miToMOjXQ/community
So what does this mean, exactly? It’s early days and hard to tell but I think within a couple of years companies like Toei and Kodansha can cut the middle-man with mediums like Crunchyroll and FUNimation and have anime broadcasted directly to overseas fans. I’ve only ever paid one month for Crunchyroll: Ridiculously overpriced for a mediocre streaming service where I didn’t feel like I was getting my money’s worth. And FUNimation don’t even offer their services for anyone outside the USA (though correct me if I’m wrong) and I hear it’s even worse, anyway.
Fans over the globe have been pirating anime for decades, and it’s quite frankly a bad joke that they ask us to pay for half-arsed streaming, lie to our faces and claim we’re helping the industry by giving them money (when most of that money goes to them, not Japan), and then use that money to enrich themselves and fund projects which no real weeb has any interest in (High Guardian Spice? Remember that train wreck?). How on Earth do you fuck up so badly that fans feel justified going back to pirating content because at least said pirates just give you what want, do it better, and for free?
This could be the beginning of something really good: Right now certain parasites in the Western industry don’t seem too bothered, probably because this is small and only has old vintage shows. But by the end of 2022 I imagine they’ll start to sweat bullets, depending on how this develops.
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