Crunchyroll Faces Cancelation: Why Anime Fans Are Choosing Piracy After Latest Update

And there goes the last streaming service I still paid to access. It was convenient exactly because of the subtitles...

Everything now must flow through my -arr stack.

The zionism thing was the icing on the shit cake. Fuck that genocidal ethnostate, and fuck all genocide enablers.

I cannot seem to find any verification that any of this is happening. An OPs link is dead.

Found this. Apparently they took the post down but here is the archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20251004184506/https://fandomwire.com/crunchyroll-faces-cancelation-why-anime-fans-are-choosing-piracy-after-latest-update/

Ahh good ol' Aegisub. I have great memories of subtitling anime in my late teens before I got a girlfriend and the fansub scene died when Crunchyroll took over.

I was also one of the people helping test Aegisub on Linux (2009-ish), I wasn't a programmer at the time but I remember a dude called 'verm' in the IRC channel who did a bunch of work to make Aegisub stable on Linux. He taught me the difference between little endian and big endian, I guess he was bored that day

And the Spotify ceo just stepped down so he could focus on weapons systems for Israel. The people running all of our media services are Nazis.

Fascism is the natural end stage of capitalism. Plenty of businesses that have no core connection and competency with the military are embedding themselves into the military. For now, most of the US top brass loathe the Trump administration, but eventually they will be replaced by loyalists. We might get a real life Enclave if something isn't done to rid the fascists.

When property is valued over people, piracy is protest. Pirating undermines a system that guards profit while neglecting humanity. Every download is a refusal to accept laws that protect wealth over well-being.

Lol. Crunchy roll was always crap. Watching anime in the raw is torture.

Enshittification, everyone. It comes to everything.

As far as I know we don't even have fansubs anymore, any group nowadays is just a rip of whatever streaming has the anime, current anime if it's not picked up by any streaming will get no subs, the streaming giants were successful and embracing it and enshitifying.

Some groups are still alive:
https://fansubbers.miraheze.org/wiki/List_of_fansub_groups

The problem here is that all these major anime providers are owned by Sony, so you're kinda fucked if you want to boycott them.

Did you read the article - or even the title? This story is about people turning to piracy, not turning to another official source.
You're not fucked if you have The Pirate Bay. :-)

The whole “calling out Israel for genocide means you’re antisemitic” line is so worn out and honestly just exhausting. Israel has spent like 4+ decades trying desperately to associate criticism of israel with antisemitism.

I’ve been boycotting Crunchyroll for years, and I’m not stopping anytime soon.

"Piracy is a human right, collective ownership of the seas, comrades!" — Erik L. Midtsveen

Maybe instead of everyone calling it isreal and palestine, they should say the isreali government and innocent people.
They should say Netanyahu is committing genocide.
Saying israel instead of directly naming the culprits is sort of like when people say antifa. In the case of antifa it makes bad actors able to demonise the word and make it seem like a bad thing, so it can be used to twist peoples minds and make them think its a bad thing.
In the case of this genocide, it dehumanises the people committing the atrocities and diverts blame to the word instead of the people. Which has the effect of people like Netanyahu being able to reassociate the word with the israeli people and the jews.
So it absolutely isnt antisemitic to say israel is committing genocide, but it is unhelpful to divert the blame from the real asshats in charge.
- What makes you think that relabelling Palestinians as 'innocent people' to prevent Netanyahu and his fascists from their Doublethink redirection of genocide to only be relevant to Jews but not Palestinians would work? They would immediately reframe 'innocent people' as Hamas-embedded terrorist supporters - they already do it. The better action is to call out the truth (Israel is committing genocide) and say it loudly as much as possible, one of many benefits is that businesses and artists and people don't actually want to be associated with a genocide and we're seeing that impact daily.
  When people say "Israel is committing genocide" they mean the government of Israel, it is implied. It is silly to extrapolate it to blame for every man woman and child in Israel. Just as it would be silly to pin it down to only Netanyahu when he is the PM of far-right government with thousands of people directly supporting and enabling his actions, and is Israel's longest serving prime minister - voted in multiple times by clear majority in elections, so while only he and his government are accountable to their actions, a large swathe of Israel is responsible for him being there.
  Just as when people say "the USA has just bombed Iran unprovoked" they clearly mean the current government of the USA has taken this action - not just Trump, and also not some kid playing basketball in Philadelphia.
- Genocide is wildly popular in Israel right now
  "Dubbed the “Sderot cinema” by Israelis online, watching Israel’s bombardment has become a popular pastime; people take turns looking through tower viewers. Some bring popcorn and snacks, and some snap selfies as the thud of airstrikes echo in the distance.
  “When I look at Gaza from here and see buildings still standing, it makes me upset. … I want Israel to continue until it’s all flattened,” Rafael Hemo, an onlooker told CNN."
  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/global-outrage-has-grown-after-two-years-of-bombardment-in-gaza-in-israel-it-is-a-different-story/ar-AA1NSQWj?pc=U531&ei=10
- Netanyahu
  Yes, Netanyahu!

Animelab died for this

I would very much like a streaming service that makes it transparent what it actually spends its income on.

Like - a streaming service where i pay $10/month and 90% of that goes to the studios/artists that actually produce the anime? I would take that.

But right now i'm worried that i pay $10/month and 90% of that goes to the shareholders of the streaming provider as "profit" while the studio gets almost nothing.

Yeah... sweet summer child you might not want to read Chokepoint Capitalism. It's closer to 99% for BigContent lawyers and right holders and less than 1% for actual creators.
- Lol, I'm sure it's a good book and Cory Doctorow is well renowned, but I can't help but think: "Defeat Chokepoint Capitalism by buying our book right now!"
Get thee to The Pirate Bay and send your direct donations on the side.
- where would i send them to?

All the streaming services are unethical now, both in pricing and operation. Netflix is maybe the least bad, but I can’t justify the cost for that, either.

Stremio + Torrentio is the way to go.

What happens next is like what happened in the 2000s. People will turn to piracy as legitimate content is no longer feasible, affordable, or ethical. Then the corporate oligarchs will crack down violently to make examples of the people they’ve given no other choice or recourse.

It’s time to eat the rich.

Netflix is training AI on the work of the artists in the animation department. They're absolutely not the least bad, they're all equally terrible.
Netflix charges me, a single guy, for 4 simultaneous streams if I want 4k. So I shared with my parents.
Then they had the audacity to stop people from password sharing or to charge even more if you want to share. I set up an automatic email forward so my parents get every sign in related email.
Stremio + Torrentio is the way to go.
Torrentio has started blocking VPNs.
people they’ve given no other choice or recourse
I don't know, I find I also have the option to not consume media that I can't pay for or justify ethically. For instance, the only streaming service we have a subscription for is The Criterion Channel.
- True. But many people can justify it ethically.
- I'm looking for an ethical anime streaming service rn, and i'd be willing to pay for it (like, $10/month). Any options at all?
  Like, "ethical" means that the money is used to keep the studio running that is producing the anime; not that the money goes to some big banks to profit off anime.
- Even if you make good money, it is still ethically questionable to support predatory practices and financially reward the objectively evil. Piracy is ethically neutral at worst and can easily be interpreted as a net positive, at least where it comes to most media. I deliberately choose to support some obscure stuff with my dollar because I want its creators to succeed and my conscience is clean.
- Good for you, but Oovid opened my eyes to how different our living conditions are.
  Some people may have may many alternatives, some few and some none

Just canceled. Thanks.

I'm doing my part!
My renewal was literally tomorrow too. As these streaming services get worse, I keep on cancelling. Been two years for Prime (literally smashed cancel the day ads were announced) and all i've got left at this point is netflix and spotify.
Netflix pricing almost has me there.
- https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2025-07-31/spotifys-ceo-owns-an-ai-weapons-company-some-musicians-say-its-time-to-leave
- Netflix has been enshityfying and on the capitalist death spiral for YEARS, cancel that shit and spend your money on a VPN and some hard drives...

Fansubs have always been superior.

My daughter got into anime through friends and I got some street creds by talking about how things used to be. Buying laserdiscs in Japan, subbing them and showing them at conventions. I subbed two episodes of some show I don't remember. Or shipping VHS tapes across continents. My daughter doesn't care, of course. But her friends were impressed. I fear that that was my last hurrah, though. I got nothing else.
Remembers all the fan sub opening/ending Karaoke so I could actually understand songs too. 🥹
- Steins Gate fansubs were amazing.
There are barely any real fansubs left. Most are Crunchyroll, Netflix or Funimation restyled and maybe retimed plus checked if they spent a lot of time on it.
- I'm an old pirate who remembers, and the thing, the raw ingredient missing in this scenario?
  need
  If it didn't exist, if there was no possible way to get a copy of somesuch Gundam episode whatever in english, some dude somewhere would cross the ends of the earth to get it onto the internet. Piracy is motivated entirely by utility and need, it's why music piracy atrophied into almost nothing until Soulseek arrived and streaming prices increased. Supply met demand, and it will again for fansubs.
  If it's needed, someone will meet the need. We did it in 1998, we'll do it next year.
- And that's honestly all that's needed, the official translations are usually perfectly fine. The elaborate typesetting is what makes the fansubs so good.
That‘s how Crunchyroll itself started out if I remember correctly. Now look at it, completely unrecognizable. It‘s exemplary for how things have been progressing or rather regressing this century so far.
Agreed, It very noticeable how bad the subs are. I remember watching an the terminator anime and the subs were atrocious.
https://reddit.com/r/television/comments/1f4cj61/netflixs_wellanimated_terminator_zero_starts/?
- I've been an anime of crunchy roll with those auto ai subs and the main character is called Kun. Holy shit half the time it's censoring itself because it's trying to say something racist, but not always...

Don't forget that Crunchyroll is also owned by Sony, who have basically picked up a monopoly on anime streaming services by buying out all of the competition. Aniplex, Funimation, Crunchyroll, Kadokawa, all under the Sony umbrella.

And still can't offer the full catalog in my country
I hate that some seasons shows are on Netflix, but the rest are only on CR

why not just pirate shit without a noble cause for once? You know - the old fashioned way

Old Fashioned Pirates were poor people treated like shit by their society lashing out at the system of oppression.
- give it a couple of years and it would match just right
Impossible.
Piracy is always noble.
- quiet.
what are the good sources nowadays...been out of the game for awhile and it's to trust any sites promoted on any mainstreamish social networks.
like freemediaheckyeah, old reddit hub...is that still good?
ime every pirate source had 50/50 shot of turning into some virus/scam honeypot shortly after reaching high enough popularity
- I mean, I basically just download anything that's not an executable. So if its a video, audio, pdf, epub, etc... I don't worry about it. Its very rare for an updated system to get infected from a random .mkv.
  I just use (https://fmhy.net/torrenting) one of the torrenting aggregators because its the most comprehensive search, I found an anime that I couldn't find anywhere else because there are dead torrents with no seeders everywhere else I looked.
- nyaa. Just look for a currently active Nyaa torrent site for anime. There's several.
- I just bookmark the piracy megathread/wiki thingy, lemmy/reddit (backup). For streaming, I would probably recommend hydra, it's really all the same but that site has "auto-next" which I prefer. There was one site I used to enjoy that was just better than any streaming platform I've paid for, skip intro, skip credits (would even detect after credit scenes), subtitles in all languages and audio tracks even commentary, quick responsive high quality loading of any media your mind can remember. They went after it hard and I haven't seen a proper iteration since (every clone slowly lost features as they were whack-a-moling).
  For downloading, they're really all crappy (several link hoops to jump through) and hit or miss (for quality and selection you can't beat the ease of a torrent unfortunately). You can find what you want eventually but the difference in hassle is just crazy.
- You can get the Evangellion dub off of internet archive, found that out a couple of days ago cause bored.
- Fmhy ✅
- https://fmhy.lol/ Free Media Heck Yea has loads of free content across tons of topics listed.
- I pretty much just use 1337x.
- no idea, man. I'm just a poser)

Greed kills

So we're banning everything from Israel now?

Yes.
Given how things have been going, it seems an appropriate course of action.
That is the purpose of a boycott yes. Here are some other examples
Abolitionist boycotts of Southern goods over slavery - https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/boycott-sugar-slavery-bds/
Boycotts of German goods over Nazi policies- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_anti-Nazi_boycott
Boycotts of South Africa over Apartheid - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Apartheid_Movement
Ongoing boycott of US goods by Canada over a threatening stance taken by US government- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Canadian_boycott_of_the_United_States
Yes
yes
I don't want to support any company that is either directly or indirectly funding genocide and fascism. It's not complicated.
If you found out that Netflix powered their servers using an orphan grinding machine, would you still subscribe to them?
- So you don’t buy anything that comes from USA, Italy, China, Russia…, or that does business with a company based here? That’s pretty much all of them
Be serious.
- I'm so super mega serious. Seriously. I'll try it more basic, but deadly serious:
  "What going on?
  Me not understand.
  Why hate thing? Is cause ai, or cause Israeli, both? Something else?
  Why do I care who is hitting the keyboard characters to sub a story i already know/love?

Corporations can't stand it a logarithmic graph. They need freaking geometric progressions, and then they do stuff that gets them an anti-logarithmic graph.

Oh, didn't realize this. Had a rolling sub which I never bothered to cancel as I very occasionally watch with mates, but have now cancelled it.

I cancelled it because I forgot I had it a few days ago. This is merely coincidence to me but nice coincidence.
Only piracy will keep you from being complicit.

Funnily enough, i was considering just today whether i should re-open my old Crunchyroll account. But i guess i won't do it now after all. IIRC there's been a streak of bad press about crunchyroll; like, this today isn't the only issue.

fan subs are best

I will forever recognize the Baar Sophia font from the fansubs of Naruto which got me into anime in the first place
- <3 graphic designers unite
Kind of miss how much effort went into fan subs, with notes explaining things that didn't exactly translate without context...
- Not just the notes, but I feel like they put more effort into making sure the text doesn't blend with what is on screen. Instances on Netflix of some shows where there will be white text with a white background, and the text has no drop shadow or black border.
- I can't imagine an anime like detective conan or school rumble without translator notes. They would be unwatchable
- ^ this
To the extent they exist
"keikaku means plan"

Ha fuck… that was my last personal sub… any alternative beside the high seas? I’m seasick…

Honestly, piracy is easier than it ever has been. You can automate torrents or usenet downloads with the arr suite. There’s a bit of a learning curve to get it set up… But once it’s running, it’s basically just “add show to your watchlist” and ~15 minutes later it shows up on your media list with full metadata, subtitles, etc ready to go.
Plenty of people will suggest stremio, which is… Contentious. It works for streaming by downloading a torrent to cache. After you watch it, stremio automatically deletes the cache. So in day to day operation, it uses very little hard drive space and primarily relies on your internet speed and properly seeded torrents. But that latter part is the problem… Since it deletes the cache, it isn’t actually seeding anything in return. If everyone used stremio, nobody would actually be able to use it, because none of the torrents would be seeded. It’s a sort of mass prisoner’s dilemma.
Technically, you can set stremio to keep a rolling cache of {x} size, and it will hold onto the torrents until you start to download something new and it needs that space. But very few people will expect to hit a 1.0 ratio, even with a decently sized cache.
- The whole point is not to do any setup and maintenance just to watch anime… I already have a job where I have to do that and I was hoping that it would pay for the convenience. My passion is watching anime, not setup downloading pipeline for them.
- No one reccomends stremio without real debrid, makes it instant like netflix
The end goal was always to deprive us of alternatives
- There’s always torrents but it was very convenient to just go to crunchy and start something… torrenting and putting it in plex and all… it’s just less convenient
Hidive is probably the last good one, unless something changed in recent times.
HiDive. Until they get the fuckaround bug.

These mutherfuckers forgot where they came from! Time to remind them

Oh they do remember. They fondly remember those early years piggybacking on strangers goodwill before laughing all the way to the bank.
They've been on borrowed time since Sony bought them. Honestly I'm amazed they've lasted this long.

I bailed on CR when they fired their US based IT people and outsourced to the cheapest Eastern Euro country. It wasn't even a purely moral decision. The website was janky in the first place and I knew it wasn't going to get batter at that point.

So non-Americans can’t do a good job, amirite?
- I didn't get that vibe from the parent comment. the reaction was to the motivations of the rich fatcats who aren't happy with the obscene wealth they already have. Not American Exceptionalism.
- especially if they arnt familiar with the tech.

The pirate life is the only life for me.

And it's been working for decades, always getting laughed at by the newest hype but yet again persisting.
Also it turns out companies do it and it wouldn't work otherwise (see ai training)

Well shit. If this goes through I'll have to cancel

https://xcancel.com/sugoilite/status/1973732830334292420?s=46&t=qypRlc3aYixql0uGFrdzNA
Many people noticed that the changes in the subs, they used to translate text in the background for example.
- Oh so it has gone through? Fuck. Time to cancel then

Crunchyroll doesn't even have all of the anime, they neglect a few classic ones. Pricks.

Doesn't even have all the seasons of some animes they have. It's ridiculous copyright rules in different countries. It sucks.

What do you expect, they started as a pirate platform.

I didn't realize they had ever gone legit.

I wouldn't even pirate their content! Let's just hope enough people leave so they can shut down already!!! :-(

Its not their content (unless they make originals I dont know) they are just distributing Japanese content
- I think they've funded a couple of series, although not nearly as many as Netflix has.

Well then, fund an alternative.

MuseAsia
Ani-One
RetroCrush ?

I much prefer owned media over subscriptions, but this is perhaps one area where they're actually good. A bad business decision that drives away customers can have a pretty immediate and visible impact on revenue. It's not "hey nobody bought our latest release, blame racism/sexism/wokeness" or whatever other whipping-boy they choose to bury their heads in the sand with, it's "we did a thing and within days to a month people were leaving us."

In many cases, this drives them to actually pay attention to customer reactions. We've seen the same with Disney in regards to Kimmel and I wouldn't be surprised to see recent changes to Gamepass have a similar impact. I hate to say it, but subscriptions like this really do allow customers to vote with their wallets.

Which is also why many are probably going to try to lock more customers in to longer terms, add gimmicks, and generally make it harder to unsubscribe. Kinda like phone companies. We'll likely end up with a "streaming sign-up/connection fee" and offers like "**free Frozen tablet with a two year Disney+ subscription"

** regular price $599, applied as a discount from your regular bill over 24mo

Sub ran out midway last month.

Kodi + Premiumize.me + Otaku for the win. 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

I would never subscribe to Crunchyroll, because they use DRM.

I don't like anime, so this has no bearing on my life. Hot take, I know.

More like useless comment in such a thread.
Why are you commenting on a post you think has nothing to do with you, then?
But let me say this; corporations becoming increasingly emboldened to replace people with AI, disregard accessibility concerns, and make ethically bankrupt purchasing decisions without any consequence is something that perhaps should concern you, regardless of whether the company's output is of relevance to your interests or not.
Hot take, I know.

Have this odd bug where CC is enabled at first on every episode and man, it’s bad. Luckily subs for JP dubs are somewhat decent but I feel bad for anyone who needs closed captioning.

CC is a separate setting from the subtitles. There is a place to turn it off but it's so unintuitive I can never remember it. All it really is, though is dub dialog. There was no attempt at proper closed captioning.
- Yeah I turn the setting off and next time I launch the app, it’s tuned right back on. Works fine on my PC, just not my XB1.
  And the CCs don’t even get the dub dialog right. Names are beyond mangled it looks like they’re trying to run it through a realtime recognition system to do auto captions. It’d be worlds better if they just uploaded the ADR script at that point.

Bro why is everything from israel now bad??

Israeli companies have fuck all to do with the government's decisions

By definition of their country they're supporting their government, through taxes if nothing else.
- I get that, but it's not like it's optional to pay taxes.
- It's not like many of these businesses have much of a choice...
Until their government stops murdering people, Israel needs to be pressured as a whole. Their citizens need to be fed up with it and put a stop to their government, and boycotting them helps.
I'm not 100% on board with @sulgoth@lemmy.world because it gives off some "but you participate in society, interesting" vibes. However, as an American I am all for people from the rest of the world boycotting our products (and this time not because of the health implications!). When Canadians were promoting non-american alternatives I agreed with them so I think we can say fuck companies and still stand with the actual individual people who want peace and everyone to prosper respectfully.
israeli companies cant exist without the approval of the israeli government, so by extension they are supporting them through taxes, and propaganda(good pr). its the same with the CCP, although its more extreme, chinese companies cant exist with the explicit approval of PROC government. Unless its a israeli company thats based in the EU with no ties to Israel, than thats different. theres a reason why canadians dont want to go places even like california, they know its supports trump through taxes.
they are tied to israeli govt as the gov is tied to them, you want to open a business in israel, you would need to get approval from said state.
What a weird thing to say when we are watching a genocide live feed every day fucking think bro lol

If you do not want to support then stop consuming which can not do because everything needed or wanted is all controlled/produced by the same owner class and switching companies means switching between different companies all owned by the same owner class just like news and newspapers

Same scam that is done on elections to give the illusion of choice but the puppet master never changes face just the puppets

No other companies to switch to for baby formula, diapers, bottled or otherwise water, foods by any brand all same owner at the beginning of the chains, all media is all owned at the very top by the same owner class, movies including super hero ones all owned by that same entity, vehicles that move us and products around all owned by the same people even if the countries are different and the names changed at the very very top are the same owner class

Got us plain and simple

Same scam that is done on elections to give the illusion of choice but the puppet master never changes
Fuck off with that 'both sides the same' bullshit. We've very conclusively proven that no, one side is much fucking worse.
- They're both working together to give the illusion of choice.
  There is no 'both' sides when they're all on the team of enriching the ruling class as effectively as possible.
- one side may be worse but the less evil side is still working with the more evil side just like how the DNC went