Forum

Hey, I've always wanted to see an article go deep into this. How despite CR being significantly smaller than the competition, an anime that doesn't air on its service somehow is generally underwatched than if it was.

It's good timing. I saw someone say the upcoming The Ghost In The Shell, was going to be in "Amazon Prime jail" when that's not really right since it is still be same-day simulcast. The fan concept of "Netflix/Disney+ jail" was meant to be aimed at shows that were airing in Japan and licensed by a company but not actually being simulcasted causing fans to turn to unofficial means to watch weekly. This case would just be on a less popular (anime) streaming service yet for them it is considered just as bad. It's not an equivalent, but it is interesting to see that there are people that think of it this way.

The only reason anything that Disney+ gets doesn't get much success is that Disney doesn't bother to actually promote the anime that they license. One of their employees is the only one who bothers to market and advertise the shows they get, even mentioning schedules or delays.

so, um...yeah..there's a lot to cover in my opinion department...but here's the cliffnotes and i don't feel like i'm really gonna be saying anything original, but i'm gonna say it anyway. even if it's a hot take. in fact, i kinda had fun sharing my feelings on the current landscape of legal anime streaming, because i rarely have an opportunity to.

from my experience - or at least just from looking around - even if you have like a big name, it most likely won't translate to success... (there are some exceptions. like, oshi no ko with hidive, but...it's hidive...it wasn't that popular of a platform to begin with...)

city the animation (animated by kyoani, streamed on prime) and lazarus (animated by mappa, streamed on hbo max of all platforms) are probably examples of this. even though these both have pretty big animation studios attached to them, i really didn't hear anyone talk about them, and if they were, obviously didn't talk about how it was on prime video or DEAR GOD hbo max.

the same applies to a show i was personally interested in. mission: yozakura family. which landed on hulu/disney+ and i didn't really have much motivation to watch it on there because, like i just don't like using either platform.

i'm just not into western (or general, i guess) platforms picking up anime because apart from netflix, most of them don't really...i don't know..."get" anime...if that makes any sense...?

a perfect example is an article i recently discovered with amazon saying how they want to become the, "preferred destination for anime globally" and i looked at that and just broke down laughing. like, technically they are if you get prime video and the hidive and crunchyroll prime video channels, but like...really?

does it...? i don't think i didn't a really good job explaining it. and i don't wanna be brutally honest and say, "unless your name is crunchyroll or netflix, if a show is picked up elsewhere, it may not work out." even if it's true.

PilotPayback wrote:

city the animation (animated by kyoani, streamed on prime) and lazarus (animated by mappa, streamed on hbo max of all platforms) are probably examples of this. even though these both have pretty big animation studios attached to them, i really didn't hear anyone talk about them, and if they were, obviously didn't talk about how it was on prime video or DEAR GOD hbo max.

I'd say that Lazarus got a bit of exposure on HBO Max, while I don't know if the actual views were good, I remember it being on the Top 10 most watched shows, but as I said, don't know how exactly reliable were those metrics, not that the show was particularly good, though I say that out of all of the big streaming services, Max has the least amount of "original" anime, though the few they have are under the [adult swim] banner. As for CITY, yeah, I didn't see people talking about it, but I believe the series was kind of niche, I saw more people discussing other Prime Video anime like GQuuuuuuX, Panty & Stocking S2 and Sanda.
Disney, on the other hand, seem like they don't have any clue what to do with anime, they don't even have any anime movies on Disney+ compared to its competitors.

PilotPayback wrote:

a perfect example is an article i recently discovered with amazon saying how they want to become the, "preferred destination for anime globally" and i looked at that and just broke down laughing. like, technically they are if you get prime video and the hidive and crunchyroll prime video channels, but like...really?.

If Amazon Prime Video wants to become the preferred destination for anime globally maybe they should have approved of dubbing shows using AI, since it kind of shows that they don't respect anime and its viewers.

I'm always going to wonder how much of a difference it would have made if Undead Unluck was picked up by Crunchyroll instead of being in Hulu Jail. That graph with only 4 series being released on Hulu is nuts.

Like the series is very niche still and has a big chunk of the beginning be some tired anime tropes like harassment, but it's one of those "what-ifs" I think about when I've talked with other fans of it and how the anime just went completely under the radar.

Being focused on anime in particular definitely makes a difference. You can infer that at least a bit from those graphs. With the total number of subscribers, you'd think that Netflix would the place for anime just by sheer volume of eyeballs, but it's clearly not.
Amazon Prime is a bit of an odd one because anyone with Prime for any reason has access to Prime Video. I used Prime Video to watch anime more than I ever had in 2025 (meaning that I used it at all Laughing

) but this season didn't have anything on there I wanted to watch so it's back to zero for me. It's almost comical to see that bit about executives there saying they were going to make a big commitment to anime when we see that they are also sneaking AI dubs out there. I guess they are committed, but not that committed.

Also, the last part made me a little sad with Imaoka saying that the hypothetical first choice for a platform would be Crunchyroll because it will get more eyes because those eyes for streaming is more and more where the interest stops. Physical media is a dwindling priority for the company despite reaching that anime audience that wants to support these things beyond just watching it once.

Greed1914 wrote:

Also, the last part made me a little sad with Imaoka saying that the hypothetical first choice for a platform would be Crunchyroll because it will get more eyes because those eyes for streaming is more and more where the interest stops. Physical media is a dwindling priority for the company despite reaching that anime audience that wants to support these things beyond just watching it once.

Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon did not and will never gave a shit about physical media releases. What's your point?

garfield15 wrote:

Hey, I've always wanted to see an article go deep into this. How despite CR being significantly smaller than the competition, an anime that doesn't air on its service somehow is generally underwatched than if it was.

It's good timing. I saw someone say the upcoming The Ghost In The Shell, was going to be in "Amazon Prime jail" when that's not really right since it is still be same-day simulcast. The fan concept of "Netflix/Disney+ jail" was meant to be aimed at shows that were airing in Japan and licensed by a company but not actually being simulcasted causing fans to turn to unofficial means to watch weekly. This case would just be on a less popular (anime) streaming service yet for them it is considered just as bad. It's not an equivalent, but it is interesting to see that there are people that think of it this way.

They call it "jail" because instead of subscribing to Crunchyroll, which is specifically for anime and has 85-90% of a seasons shows, they now have to subscribe to more services for which some may not care about beyond the show they want to watch.

I feel like anime suffers a bit from a version of the "Not invented here" problem you hear about where some companies prefer to develop their own versions of something instead of adopting a common standard or licensing something from a competitor (Memory sticks for PSPs and Sony cameras come to mind). Especially in this climate of proliferating services run by major content producers, each service has an interest in promoting its own productions first. They spent much more to make it, after all, and actually own it, and probably see them as having broader appeal than weird Japanese cartoons.

HBO Max and anime. Disney+ and anime (except for Hayao Miyazaki)
Neither platform screams anime at me. Surprised by HBO Max.

At their most watched, more people watch the upper tier of Netflix anime than are subscribed to Crunchyroll as a whole. That’s not hyperbole, Netflix’s own bi-annual reports highlight that, with numbers for the highest tier in that 10-26 million people total. The problem is for every few shows that Netflix puts their full weight behind there are a lot that they don’t. And that is to say nothing of Disney+/Hulu where no one knows what’s there because they don’t tell you.

If Amazon Prime is to have any hope of piercing the marketplace, they have to actually advertise their anime next to their “real” shows, which is a tall ask for many of these executives. Until they do that, Crunchyroll has the easiest path to the viewer, since their name is synonymous with anime, making them a shorthand destination.

If any anime is worth watching, everyone watches it. It has nothing to do with the name of the platform... It's almost like everyone forgets how Crunchyroll only became popular when the service, availability, and variety were actually better than the "free" alternatives. Combined with the merger which is really what pumped their numbers, rather than anyone actually choosing Crunchyroll lmao. The moment that changes, is the moment everyone goes back to the infinite mirrors iykyk.

Also, if any given anime isn't on crunchyroll, that is the entire reason of new subs on the other platform. Why else would anyone sub to a streaming service, other than to watch what they want to watch.....

In the end, all that matters is the quality of the anime combined with the quality of the service. Pay if it's good enough, free if not. There will never be an anime monopoly, as long as you can just watch it for free.

Beatdigga wrote:

At their most watched, more people watch the upper tier of Netflix anime than are subscribed to Crunchyroll as a whole. That’s not hyperbole, Netflix’s own bi-annual reports highlight that, with numbers for the highest tier in that 10-26 million people total. The problem is for every few shows that Netflix puts their full weight behind there are a lot that they don’t.

Netflix doesn’t publish viewers (people or accounts) in its engagement reports. It publishes hours viewed and “views,” which is total hours viewed divided by runtime. But they do not indicate unique views or viewers, which is not the same as people or accounts. Also, it would be an apples to oranges comparison because Netflix doesn’t publish its subscriber base by country, and not every anime title is available in every country it distributes in. The report doesn’t include which countries make up what amount of hours and views.

https://about.netflix.com/en/news/what-we-watched-the-second-half-of-2025

Wait, wasn't Crunchyroll supposed to be a monopoly? The real cage is Hidive which literally blocks its licenses for countries other than USA, CA, UK, AU AND UK, but you all gringos don't care as long as it's available for you.