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Anime

Amazon Launches Anime Channel for $5 Per Month, Its First Branded Subscription Channel (variety.com) 114

Posted by msmash from the anime-fans,-rejoice dept.
Todd Spangler, writing for Variety: Amazon is rolling out its first branded on-demand subscription service for Amazon Channels: Anime Strike, offering more than 1,000 series episodes and movies ranging from classic titles to current shows broadcast on Japanese TV. The Anime Strike channel is available to U.S. Amazon Prime members for $4.99 per month after a seven-day free trial, the newest addition to the lineup of around 100 services now available in Amazon Channels. Amazon has struck exclusive U.S. streaming deals for several series on Anime Strike, including "Scum's Wish," "Onihei," "The Great Passage," "Vivid Strike!," "Crayon-Shin Chan Gaiden: Alien vs. Shinnosuke," and "Chi's Sweet Adventure."
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Amazon Launches Anime Channel for $5 Per Month, Its First Branded Subscription Channel More

Amazon Launches Anime Channel for $5 Per Month, Its First Branded Subscription Channel

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  • The list sucks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Thursday January 12, 2017 @11:47AM (#53654237) Homepage Journal

    Most of it is moe, slice of life, and fanservice garbage.

    Stick with Crunchyroll or just go watch the shit for free on animefreak.tv as the Amazon list is a valueless waste of time.

    • Re:The list sucks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by djinn6 ( 1868030 ) on Thursday January 12, 2017 @12:14PM (#53654441)
      They did license a bunch of other anime with non-exclusive contracts, like Rurouni Kenshin and Mushi-shi. Their library is obviously much smaller than Crunchyroll's since they just started, but Amazon has a lot of money and things might change after a few seasons.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        The list of worthwhile licensed stuff is still very slim, and it's old to boot. And I bet that list will remain slim once helicopter mommy catches her kid suddenly watching Vampire Hunter D fully uncensored and complains.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lgw ( 121541 )

          There's very little fanservice in the top-tier stuff these days, really this century (it was different in the 90s). I'm sure someone will come up with an exception, but for the most part the worthwhile stuff won't offend the puritans too much. But yeah, the list is very slim and mostly old.

    • If they can change Amazon Streaming Anime from "Where Anime Goes to Die" to "Where I spend 15 bucks to watch a season" it will be worth it. Because I'm not buying Prime to watch Anime.
    • Yeah, I'm not seeing anything in the list that says to me "Here is something you can't get with existing services." I don't mind coughing up $5 a month,-if- it's something I'm going to use. Amazon needs to make that use case to me, because I'm just not convinced that I should either a) replace my Crunchyroll sub with this service, or b) augment my Crunchyroll sub with this.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Falos ( 2905315 )
      >Your taste a shit.
      Your taste a shit.

      Now let's do it again but with sports. I'll pretend to like one, for the sake of educating.

    • Who uses such dodgy websites when you can get everything properly remuxed from a single IRC channel?

  • Shouldn't that be attempt 437 after you've already tried everything people might actually pay for?

    P.S. Where is sneaky pete?
    • I think they can afford to take a few risks, what with The Grand Tour pulling down a few million prime subscriptions by itself.
      • Which is the next issue I have with this. I pay for Amazon's content already. I don't have an issue with some third party content costing a premium but I already pay for access to any of the actual Amazon content.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are plenty of people who like anime, I myself wasn't big on it but have since really started to enjoy it. There is much more imagination used in the storyline and with sci-fi tv series being significant lacking, I find it works great to fill that hole. If you have netflix check out "Ajin" and see what you think.

    • Shouldn't that be attempt 437 after you've already tried everything people might actually pay for?

      Kids have a lot of disposable income, still. Cosmetic DLC proves this. I think this is actually a pretty safe bet.

  • 1,000 episodes? Is 2/3 of the content One Piece? There are some really long running anime series, so if the selection is 1,000 movies and episodes, your options are
    1) Only newer or shorter run series
    2) Only select episodes of a large variety of series
    3) The whole run of just a few series

    • They could have only two shows - One Piece and Naruto - and hit that number.

      • Absolutely. Warn me when they have One Piece at least, available on the same-day as in Japan. You want to make people pay for it ? At least propose something better than what fansubs do for free.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tsotha ( 720379 )

        Sazae-san has almost 7500 episodes. I think 1000 episodes only gets you into the late '70s.

        IMO the best anime have just two or three seasons. They tell a story and finish it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      $5/month for what has to be an incredibly thin selection with only 1,000 titles is just not a good deal. Maybe if they were financing a bunch of their own series this would make sense, but as is there are much better options out there for Anime fans.

      • $5/month for what has to be an incredibly thin selection with only 1,000 titles is just not a good deal. Maybe if they were financing a bunch of their own series this would make sense, but as is there are much better options out there for Anime fans.

        Their current selection is thin - but with their exclusive contract with Fuji to distribute shows from the noitaminA block... there's quite a few hotly anticipated shows that Amazon is going to be the sole legal source for.

  • They didn't just relicense Crunchyroll (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This is probably driven by Amazon.co.jp and not the American branch, which doesn't about what they can license for Prime.

  • Stiff competition. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It will be interesting to see if they can manage to pull people away from Netflix and Crunchyroll. Playing shows uncensored would be a good start, as both other services seem to only play censored versions.

    • It will be interesting to see if they can manage to pull people away from Netflix and Crunchyroll.

      Probably not, as Amazon only carries a fraction of the content. But I suspect a lot of people are in the same boat as me - having cancelled their Funi subscription in wake of last years quasi-merger, adding Strike on top of our Prime subscription doesn't sound like a bad idea.

  • Of this 1000 episodes they offer, how many require you pay an additional fee to watch?

  • eh (Score:2)

    by fubarrr ( 884157 )

    Will there be a Jeff Bezos doin the tentacle thingï¼Y

  • Seems kind of odd. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sims 2 ( 994794 ) on Thursday January 12, 2017 @12:02PM (#53654361)

    Here I thought Prime was their premium offering.
    Now they are adding all these extra frills for just a few dollars more. How long until they start shrinking their prime catalog to make the other services look better?

    I'm pretty sure they already did it once when they added stars by making sure there was no overlap in their catalog.

    Amazon music unlimited:
    Great now I can pay for nearly a whole other prime subscription just for the music that's not on prime and still have less selection than spotify.

    Amazon anime:
    Great! now all the anime will vanish from amazon prime.
    Have to go back to netflix for that then.

    I wonder if amazon will ever update their app so audio stays in sync past the first 10 minutes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Maybe they realized that the yearly subscription thing for Prime was not very popular with consumers, especially the younger kind who like anime and don't want to pay that much up front.

  • I already pay for prime. I also already cannot watch prime video on any device connected to a tv since amazon forces you to use their fire devices.

    If amazon was serious about this shit they would allow their video apps on non fire devices, like AndroidTV.

    • I've been using it for a number of years on a roku

    • I can play it with the Prime app on my iPad and use Airplay to mirror the display on the Apple TV.

    • The Following devices are connected to my TV and have Amazon Prime Installed and able to show Prime Video on the TV:

      • Wii-U
      • Xbox360
      • nVidia Shield Android TV
      • The bloody TV itself (Samsung UHD 65")

      I smell something funny here.

  • I wish we could add some other live channels to our accounts like ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX for a nominal fee.

    • I know right. I knew there was something that was missing on Prime... commercials ... definitely need more of those.

  • Unless it's uncensored (and unedited), has the original Japanese audio and subs, has the original Japanese songs for the intro and outro, and has the complete series and is up to date with the Japanese broadcasts for anything that's still airing, it's going to fail.

    You either have a no interest, a mild interest and just deal with what's already on Netflix / Amazon, or you care a little and you pay for Crunchyroll, or you really care and you download it uncensored, unedited, and poorly-subbed hours after it

    • I've actually been pretty pleased with Crunchyroll's simulcasting of new series. While they don't always have all the ones I want, there's always lots of new stuff with the episodes posted with full subtitles at the same time it goes on the air in Japan (because Crunchyroll gets the episode ahead of time, in order to subtitle it).

      • Exactly. I don't see Amazon beating Crunchyroll in that regard, and I don't see them putting shit out uncensored (Cruncyroll censors). For older stuff they add to pad out their catalog, they'll probably run into the typical issues with licensing the music (I'm not sure how Crunchyroll is in this regard, but I assume Amazon can't beat them).

        • Do you have an example where they censored something? Normally any censoring in CR's streams is because they're showing the same footage that airs on Japanese broadcast TV, and the censoring is done in Japan for those -- with the uncensored version being considered a BD perk. It's a bit of a stretch to blame CR for that.

          The closest example I can think of was that one episode of Girls und Panzer, but even then the scene in question was cut out by the Japanese publisher (and it was, as you mention, for music

  • The More You Know (Score:4, Interesting)

    by CrashNBrn ( 1143981 ) on Thursday January 12, 2017 @12:39PM (#53654635)
    Learn something new every day. Slashdot has an anime icon...
  • More splintering of the market. More titles Crunchyroll can't show. Do Not Want! Amazon and Netflix can die in a fire.

  • wat (Score:1, Troll)

    by blackomegax ( 807080 )
    5 dollars a month ON TOP OF prime? For some of the most vapid trope-filled tripe bullshit on the planet? No. There hasn't been good anime since stand alone complex. I doubt there ever will be again.

  • Time-wise, about $4.50 of that anime $5 is Gogo and Vegetable grunting while powering up for an ineffectual blast Freezer shrugs off.

    • Time-wise, about $4.50 of that anime $5 is Gogo and Vegetable grunting while powering up for an ineffectual blast Freezer shrugs off.

      Wait, there's a DBZ / Big Hero 6 crossover? Do I want to know why she's grunting?

  • What a Rip-Off (Score:3)

    by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Thursday January 12, 2017 @01:25PM (#53654985) Homepage Journal
    So, you fork over good money for Prime, only to have to fork over even more for their "channels" like this? Fuck Amazon and fuck Prime. They should either include this for free with Prime or just have everything sold piecemeal like they do with subscriptions on iTunes and iTunes doesn't cost $100/yr. As far as price/value goes, Netflix has Amazon Prime beat and they have plenty of Anime. In fact, Netflix has been putting out their own Anime for a while now, some of it like the Seven Deadly Sins is actually quite good

  • I got a bad feeling about this. You think your cable bill was high? Just wait until every genera from various providers with varying content costs $5/mo.

  • Dear Amazon: You support practically every major device.

    The Apple TV fits my family's use case the best. I want you to take my money, but I'm only going to do it if I can actually use Amazon Video with it.

    Even if it's a "crippled" version which doesn't allow on-device purchasing and rentals.

    But there's no point in paying for a service I can't use on my device.

    At the end of the day, I only have so many HDMI ports on my TV, and my family doesn't want to deal with the added complexity of an HDMI switch and yet

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