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NEWS: Druaga Anime Episode Removed from Crunchyroll for Now

Someone else told me that plenty of people were paying a penny for the downloads as well...

I know the founders of Crunchyroll haven't been all that upfront with their personal identities, but I know that when the Venrock venture capital firm decided to back them, it put one of its own top people, General Partner David Simonoff, on the Crunchyroll board. So that firm, at least, felt that Crunchryoll was legit.

Also, Gonzo and GDH themselves chose the "open pricing" model on Crunchyroll; they announced it in a press release last week. They said it would be a chance for them to test viewer feedback, and so on. So if they pulled Druaga off the site, I doubt that it would be because of that. The only reason I could see them pulling it because of the "open pricing" thing would be if they had had a prior agreement with Crunchyroll that if the average payment went below a certain amount, they would discontinue it. But that was never mentioned in the announcements, so that would have had to be a behind-the-scenes agreement.

My guess would be either incompetent handling of the streaming on Crunchyroll's part, or problems with the mechanism of paying (i.e. the Paypal problem or something like it).

It wouldn't surprise me if the Venrock people didn't leap in and get that straightened out very quickly; they've got an investment that could go down the drain.

I also wonder if all this didn't happen a bit too quickly, once Crunchyroll got the backing from Venrock and almost immediately got the deal with Gonzo. That's a lot of changes to put into effect, awfully quickly. Crunchyroll went from more or less a great big fan-site to an even larger real-life business, almost overnight. There would be colossal glitches even if that happened slowly. I bet they just got overwhelmed.

Yay! Let's hear it for Gonzo's: "who needs professionals when we can just work with a bunch of anonymous kids on the internet who run an illegal file sharing site for profit" strategy! No potential problems in that. Thank god we have brilliant people such as this running the anime industry.

Ah but those kids are Berkeley graduates. Laughing

I don't mind Gonzo trying experiments like that. The same day they announced they were going to cooperate with Crunchyroll, Bandai and FUNimation came out with stiff-lipped statements warning that everyone had better stop with the fansubs or else. I remember thinking, "Human nature and young people being what they are, Bandai and FUNimation had better realize that they're never going to stop that stuff by whacking people over the heads."

I felt that Gonzo was taking the better route, trying to accommodate those fans as much as they could, but still get some profit from it themselves. I still think, ultimately, that that's going to be the way to go.

I don't expect it to work perfectly at the beginning. (What does?) But I think Gonzo's ideas are taking real live human beings into account a lot more than Bandai's and FUNimation's. Even if Crunchyroll might turn out to be less reliable than hoped, and may in fact have to be dumped. It will work eventually, I think.

$0.01 is still too much to pay for Blassreiter. I took advantage of BOST's free episode one download and I still feel like I got ripped off.

Y'hear me GONZO? I want that half-hour of my life back you talentless hacks.

I watched it on YouTube via the legal channel using the highquality url add-in. So the stream itself was fine enough, but I was watching today with my friend between classes and after a few minutes we just turned to each other and agreed that it sucked beyond anything. I don't think I've ever dropped a show so fast.

Given that they left us with the crappy Gyver ripoff that can't decide what it's cannon fodder should be called, I would like to believe this is the 1 cent punishment.

As an anime consumer, here's what I want:

Every anime ever made available in one place on demand, nicely catalogged, with accurate subtitles.

Whether I pay for it with a subscription or by watching commercials does not matter to me. I just want to watch the shows.

Crunchyroll comes close to achieving this and that is why I give them my money. If something better comes along I will go there instead.

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Forum - View topicNEWS: Druaga Anime Episode Removed from Crunchyroll for Now

Forum - View topic
NEWS: Druaga Anime Episode Removed from Crunchyroll for Now