Growing up, like most kids, I watched a lot of cartoons, especially on places like Nicklodeon and Cartoon Network. Sometime in 5th grade, while watching Toonami on Cartoon Network at night, I caught a glimpse of this anime. Naruto. And there's nothing like the feeling of discovering new entertainment for the first time. I watched things like Dragon Ball Z or Sailor Moon growing up, but I didn't really register them as 'anime' until that point with Naruto. The number of shows I catch each season is slowly decreasing as I get older, but I still try to watch something new every season. So when Crunchyroll, a streaming service for anime new and old, was advertised on YouTube, I got curious. Like really curious. Too curious. Is this premium service good? I've been seeing Crunchyroll for a long time, but is it worth spending money on? Let's find out with a little review.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
1:20 Brief history of Crunchyroll
4:07 Personal experience with Crunchyroll
7:47 Thoughts on pricing
9:23 Compared to competitors
10:53 Closing thoughts and conclusion

Let's start with a little history lesson. Until 2006. Crunchyroll made its debut as a place for anime fans to gather and discuss anime on a forum, and it was a popular place to watch free anime subtitled by fan translation teams. As their base grew, they moved from copyrighted material uploaded by the base to a site that developed itself as a place that acquired rights to stream officially licensed anime series hours after its Japanese release. Their library has grown tremendously, but of course over time and now they even have their own Crunchyroll Original Animes. They've really changed their image over the years, and very quickly. It took them within three years of hosting user-uploaded content to completely ban it. This is all because during those three years they managed to secure funding from a venture capital firm and secured the rights to simulcast a popular show. Naruto Shippuden.

Naruto is a huge franchise with many fans. This was a big breakthrough in getting rid of their old image and helping develop themselves as a source for anime. Crunchyroll and many others offered a free service for a market that existed, but didn't have a good service for it at the time. Would you rather be a platform that allows illegal uploads with the chance of being sued, or would you rather start from scratch with some support and have one of the most popular programs on your website?

In 2020, Crunchyroll is an anime streaming service with a library of anime that ranges from older stuff like Cardcaptor Sakura and Naruto to anime released in 2020 like Re: Zero, Haikyuu, or Jujutsu Kaisen. They have an app for many different devices. If you are a free member you can watch all available shows, but for new shows you will have to wait a week after release to watch them. Although Crunchyroll has originals like Netflix or Disney, their originals can be watched without paying for a premium subscription, you only get ads. As a premium member, you'll enjoy an episode of each show more because ads can really take you out of the experience. My overall experience using Crunchyroll Premium was a positive one.

Okay, let's move on to the subscription prices. The 9.99 plan seems to be the best value. The price of 14.99 seems ridiculous, the extra benefits seem minuscule to me.

Let's talk about Crunchyroll's competitors. Funimation offers a similar service to Crunchyroll, but there are differences. Their lineup and anime catalog overlap, but there are anime that have both platforms and are unique. They have the same rule of having to wait a week to see the latest episode if you are a free user, but there are also titles that require a premium subscription to watch. Their free-to-view model is similar to Crunchyroll in that you watch ads before, during, and after episodes. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime video, well they are more different services that offer more than just anime, they have so much content that it is not even comparable, but if we only look at anime, Crunchyroll wins of course.

So, should you subscribe to Crunchyroll? And is it worth your money? It depends. Is anime your main source of video entertainment? Do you watch enough new and old anime every month to justify the price? Does Crunchyroll consistently have the anime series you care about enough to spend money on? Do you like Crunchyroll's offering better than Funimation's? If you answered yes to all these questions, then yes. If you answered no. Then probably not.

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