Crunchyroll has faced backlash after voice actor David Wald revealed the company has been illegally opening and distributing his fan mail for the past five years, violating U.S. federal law regarding obstruction of correspondence. This revelation sparked widespread outrage, highlighting Crunchyroll’s questionable practices, including its monopoly over anime distribution in the West following its acquisition by Sony. Critics argue that Crunchyroll has become complacent, exemplified by the failure of its original content and a significant price increase for subscriptions. Furthermore, Wald’s situation underscores broader issues within the company, such as alleged discrimination against voice actors and a toxic work environment. Crunchyroll’s response has been inadequate, stating they are investigating the matter but failing to acknowledge their responsibility. This incident adds to the growing list of grievances against Crunchyroll, raising concerns about the treatment of voice actors and the future of anime distribution.
not anymore lol, not these days. and regardless, id rather pay some effort and time to have access to literally everything i could need, rather than paying out of my paycheck for a service where i dont get to keep what I want if the service goes down or if they decide they just dont wanna carry the show that im watching anymore. if they have it in the first place. (but hey, you could always pay for multiple subscription services so you get to watch most of what you want to. just not keep, that’s not your choice lol)
Yeah, setting up qBittorrent plus an RSS feed and VPN takes very little time and effort. Not much harder than signing up for a subscription service. Then maintaining it is as simple as updating your RSS feed with new anime you want to watch at the start of the season or when you find something you’d like to see.
Plex can be a bit of pain to setup to properly scrape anime, but there are some good guides out there. Jellyfin is easier, but setting it up for remote access is more difficult.
All in all, it’s a bit more up front effort for an overall better experience than having to juggle several monthly subscriptions every anime season just to watch everything you want to watch.
If you want to support the creators, buy the blu-rays when they come out.
Some people (like me) are lazy and don’t wlreally want to do it if it takes more than 5 minutes. I doubt I could even download a VPN program in that time lmao
Then pay for a streaming service or buy Blu-rays. You’re paying either way, the methods above are just paying with your time