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Answerman - Did The Fans Kill Anime Strike?

I don't think Amazon is in charge of those channels. I looked into MHz. It has its own website and separate app and most of its shows are available on Hulu. Pretty sure Acorn and DramaFever are both independent as well. Amazon channels mystify me, because Showtime and HBO are also available as Amazon channels or separate services on separate apps. I'm not sure if Strike and Heero were unique as Amazon run and controlled channels, but I know that most of their other channels are services run by other entities.

Agent355 wrote:

I don't think Amazon is in charge of those channels. I looked into MHz. It has its own website and separate app and most of its shows are available on Hulu. Pretty sure Acorn and DramaFever are both independent as well. Amazon channels mystify me, because Showtime and HBO are also available as Amazon channels or separate services on separate apps. I'm not sure if Strike and Heero were unique as Amazon run and controlled channels, but I know that most of their other channels are services run by other entities.

I do happened to know that Amazon channel MHz is run by Amazon.

Amazon does run it's own channels although you can access some of these services through their own app. But the subscriptions are separate. I had a problem accessing Detective Montalbano (of course) on Amazon channel MHz. I emailed MHZ to let them know and they promptly replied Amazon handles MHz on their channel. The regular MHz app has another service for its app streaming. MHz did notify Amazon of the problem and Montalbano was back in a few hours. MHz may have the content but Amazon subcontracts and is responsible for its stream.

Amazon also let me know that they knew I could not access a show on Drama Fever. As compensation they sent me a $1 credit. That's amazon not DF.

Hulu, as well as Netflix, may have the Acorn shows but the majority of MHz shows are exclusive to them unless you want to pay per episode. I only saw one that had Hulu as an option. I've decided to get rid of Acorn since their catalog hasn't been changing much. And it should be easy, it just one click at Amazon.

MHz Networks is a global media company which specializes in presenting top-quality international television
programming to American audiences

With Anime Strike, Amazon directly licensed some of their anime content for streaming from Japanese networks. Amazon is running a channel for shows MHz Networks has licensed, not licensing foreign shows directly, so it's different in that way. As far as I know, MHz Networks' MHz Choice streaming service and app has the same programming available, whereas no one else has Amazon's Noitamina or Animeism shows.

All Anime Strike content was available in Canada for no extra fee on top of Prime, and Prime costs $79 CAD ($63.60 USD) per year. Or put another way, Canada got all of Anime Strike for $5.30 USD a month with no other cost (no additional paywall).

Despite this, very few people in Canada were watching Anime on Prime Video, so far as I can tell. Most Anime fans that I know have Crunchyroll subscriptions, which at $60 CAD per year ($48.31 USD per year or $4.02 USD per month) is by far the cheapest way to watch anime in the country. Many have Netflix subscriptions. Far less have Prime, and of those who have Prime, most didn't even know they could watch anime on Prime Video.

Amazon made so many mistakes with Anime Strike that failure was almost guaranteed and the only surprise was that they pulled the plug on it so quickly. As a fan of dubs I was disappointed every time a show was announced for Anime Strike and while Netflix is a tad obsessed with binge watching at least they spend the money to properly support it. Amazon on the other hand was half hearted about anime and never even attempted to understand the market.

But I could see why people decided to slip back into piracy for those series if they didn't have an Amazon Prime account. What they should have done is open a separate streaming company for it or buy an existing one and keep it separate from Amazon Video.

While AS did a lot of things (well, most of them) wrong it did do one thing right: weekly episodes (delayed sometimes, but still). Sadly, the curse of Netflix still harms us. But the curse might be lifted soon. Unless you're in the US.

I don't think Amazon's goal was to rule the anime streaming business, I think their goal was to get anime fans who don't have a prime subscription to sign up. It fits in with their "Channels" department so they slotted it in there. Their other channels also have a cost beyond the prime paywall.

Well, no actually. It's not good for the industry, in the short-term at least, because of reasons stated in the article, expressly the increase of licensing costs and the ability to reach an audience that was not previously familiar with or heavily invested in the medium. But it's mostly good for the consumers excluding that. Don't confuse consumers with the industry though, they are not the same thing.

Good point. Growing up in the 70's, when there was no method of watching a show other than when it aired... I take the longer view as well. But folks that are in their 20's (and to some extent 30's) grew up in a world of instant satisfaction and a cornucopia at the their fingertips. There's a certain sense of self-entitlement at work there.

Had Prime for several years and never used Amazon's video service much because of how hard it is to browse their content and clunky the Roku app is. With the demise of Strike, I figured I would binge some of the anime now available on Prime. Only got halfway through the first episode before I realized there is no way to change the awful subtitle formatting on the Roku app, the only option available is the horrible 1980's white lettering on a black background. If I had subscribed to Strike, I would have cancelled after seeing how horrible their subtitle format on Roku is. Their web player at least gives you some options to change the default to.

If it's not being licensed at a price the price goes lower. It's the same reason the costs assumably have gone up, because there is more demand for it. How many shows haven't been licensed in the past year?

And when it blew up in their face, they looked for one thing that would Solve it and make all the angry fans happy again...And fortunately, judging from most of the complaints, they didn't have far to look.
And now they're going to take their ball home and concentrate on demographics where the viewers DON'T get upset so often, like horror or sports.

I did find it via the web interface, but of course, I couldn't watch it in Chromium on Linux. Google Chrome is the only browser that works on Linux for Amazon video.

yuna49 wrote:

I did find it via the web interface, but of course, I couldn't watch it in Chromium on Linux. Google Chrome is the only browser that works on Linux for Amazon video.

That's unfortunate to hear, though hardly surprising. Is this a Flash issue, or something more substantial? I take it that the likes of Firefox and Midori would also be affected.