Crunchyroll (anime website)

ChillyWilly

I'm looking for some reviews and experiences with the website Crunchyroll. My wife has been getting into anime big time lately and I'd like to set her up with an account if it's worth the money.

Have any of you used it and, if so, would you recommend paying for the service?

silence1186

Don't they release most stuff for free after like 7, 8 or 30 days? I may be thinking of a different website.

VanityPants

The episodes do go free after about a week, but by paying you get to watch them without commercials, immediately, and in HD.

I'd say it's worth it. They don't get every show every season, but they get pretty much all of the big ones and they seem to be getting better each season.

LostNinja

Unless your wife really wants to watch it in hd or plans on watching it via the PS3 or 360 app, I don't really see that much of a benefit to signing up for the premium membership. I've never really considered their ads to be that intrusive (they are not as bad as hulu's anyway) and the only other restriction is a week delay for new shows from when they air in Japan.

Essee

Okay, so I signed up for CR at the end of last year, mostly to support the industry, and I gotta say... I wasn't expecting either HD or simulcasting without waiting a week to be a big thing for me... but being able to stream tons of shows legally in HD, usually the same day they air (often on-par with even the illicit, complicated options my friends sometimes use), has been amazing for me. Now I'm spoiled, because I do also watch stuff from Funimation's site/Hulu (almost all of Hulu's stuff is from Funi) for free right now and I really find myself wishing it were in HD, or at least 480p (pretty sure even Hulu's free offering is in 360p). Also, CR picked up like 90% of the shows this season, so this is a good time to check them out! Plus they have a huge catalog of pretty great shows, and their subtitling team is very good. They do have a free trial, which can be extended by guest passes (every premium member gets one guest pass each month... including myself-- they expire after 3 months so I have 3 kicking around right now). Trial requires giving them credit card info but can be cancelled without you being charged, guest passes don't even require a credit card (but I think they require a free account). If you pay for a year at once it is suuuuper cheap as well. I've gotten my money's worth by far already. The one thing they don't have is dubs, because Funimation is pretty much the go-to company if you want an awesome dub. They also don't have anything Funi gets the rights to. Funi's site is currently still really unstable (a server upgrade is coming soon I guess?) even for premium members, though... I really wanna throw my money at Funi to support them as well, but I just can't while their stability still sucks.

It should be noted that if you don't live in the States or Canada, CR's library is somewhat limited compared to those countries (due to licensing rights) but still pretty expansive. This season in particular is really good for other territories though!

ChillyWilly

Well, I signed up for a free 30 day trial through my Xbox and my wife and I started watching Attack on Titan last night. Pretty amazing stuff.

I mean, Netflix has a pretty good amount of anime (which we already pay for), but the amount of content on Crunchyroll is ridiculous. If most of the good stuff is going to be free anyway, it probably isn't worth it to us to add another bill every month.

Thanks for the help.

Toefoo

Just a heads up: you will need a premium account to continue watching through your Xbox once the trial is up. All the free stuff is limited to watching through their website, unfortunately.

DarkPrimus

ChillyWilly wrote: »

I'm looking for some reviews and experiences with the website Crunchyroll. My wife has been getting into anime big time lately and I'd like to set her up with an account if it's worth the money.

Have any of you used it and, if so, would you recommend paying for the service?

I would say it's worth paying for it if there are a number of shows you want to watch this season.

For example, last season, I paid for a subscription because they had half a dozen shows I wanted to watch.

This season there's only two or three. If some of those shows turn out to not be as appealing as I thought they would be, I'll probably drop my subscription.

It's all a matter of analyzing how much you feel you're getting out of the service every month.

Delphinidaes

I watch a fair amount of anime and I use CR for a good majority of it. I have the 'Anime' account (4.95 I think?) since I don't really care about the Dramas that they show. 90% of the time it works great, I get to see the shows I like in great quality, readily available. Every now and again one of the 1080p streams will be glitchy and i'll drop it to 720p for a smoother viewing but it's well worth the monthly fee.

They don't have all the shows released each season but they seem to have the vast majority of them. One thing I really like is that it marks the episodes I have already seen, which helps scatterbrained me remember where I was in a series if it's a longer one or I miss a few weeks.

I highly recommend it for Anime viewing. On a side note I think a lot of the sub groups these days actually use the CR subs, but I'm not 100% on that.

I used to use it to watch on my phone at lunch at work as well (which worked great I might add) but my job has since changed so I don't get the same lunch breaks I had before.