Being able to stream anime legally and not having to deal with bad subs or low quality on illegal sites at a relatively low cost has been one of the better things to happen for the anime community in the last decade. Companies like Crunchyroll and Funimation have meant a lot more anime for a lot less. Netflix continues to have the problem of not knowing what a simulcast is outside of Japan, but I’ve already talked about that in a previous post. Anime Strike, however, has been even more of a thorn in the side of the community for the past year. But, after Amazon realized that they created a garbage product, Capitalism finally won out and they officially ended Anime Strike.
Allow me for one second to just dance on its grave, and bask in how terrible a service, and an idea, Anime Strike really was. They were taking what were arguably some of the best shows of each season, and hiding them behind a 15 dollar a month paywall. Even people who already had Prime video had to pay an extra 60 dollars a year just to use the service at all.
Now, with Anime Strike gone, all of the anime that were Anime Strike exclusives have been transferred over to their general prime video library. As IGN pointed out in an article, this includes things like Land of the Lustrous, Made in Abyss, and one that I’ve been interested in for a while, The Great Passage.
Some have tried to argue that the idea of having exclusives at all is not fair, but one, exclusives are what makes a service worth getting in the first place, and two, that was not even the problem. The problem comes when corporations who do not understand the medium they are getting into in the slightest come in an create an unnecessarily high paywall for completely unjustified reasons.
Anime Strikes end is a good thing for the community. It means that good shows will not have to be hidden behind greedy business practices and a lack of understanding on the part of Amazon.
What are your thoughts? Did anyone actually have Anime Strike? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading and bye for now friendos!
Animated Observations 
Strike was never available in Australia. Fortunately a lot of the titles they had were available on HiDive so there’s only a handful of shows that I still haven’t been able to see. Now that they are just on Amazon I may consider it but to be honest I don’t tend to do anything through Amazon because they are almost always more expensive and the small pool of anime they have exclusively probably doesn’t do enough for me to pick up yet another subscription.
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I don’t think it is. My mom has an amazon prime account so I can use hers if I want to watch something, but it doesn’t really seem worth it to pay a full 10 a month otherwise. Strike was just Amazon thinking that the anime community is dumb and will buy anything that has larger than average eyes.
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I only use free anime sites and that. I watch stuff on Crunchyroll because there’s no ads
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I watch Crunchyroll with my ad blocker on and there’s no ads
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Understandable. I’m sure that’s fairly convenient.
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Since I had Prime, I did try out Anime Strike, but I only really watched from it maybe once or twice, that includes only one or two episodes. The subs were atrocious and awkward and honestly, it was never worth it. So, I ended up cancelling that part of it and just read reviews on the shows that interested me the most as bloggers posted their thoughts after each episode. I’m glad that Anime Strike has died, but I still doubt I’ll watch anything (anime) from Amazon as their subs are horrid.
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I tried it for a week so I could watch Made in the Abyss then I canceled. I’m happy they are ending the little extra charges.
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I just learned this yesterday. I am happy. Shows I couldn’t see are now available. Its a bad idea to put shows behind a paywall. It just encourages piracy for all the poor people in the world. That mistake killed Hulu. Better to have minimal commercials and offer a short delay you can remove in exchange for a tiny premium fee. Small fees because most anime fans are young and unemployed. When you’re asking for allowance money, its carefully considered.
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Absolutely. Companies need to understand the community before they decide to sell to the community.
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