Where to Legally Watch Anime Online in the UK

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Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Rui said:
Well, it should be available everywhere in the world. It makes no sense that Toei are sponsoring events and attending trade fairs in the UK when nobody can watch the appropriate parts of the series legally without leaping through hoops and risking their their Crunchyroll account (if they ever decided to clamp down on what is a 100% harmless exploit) or personal security (for many of the region-circumvention methods); at least Shounen Jump's US edition eventually managed to make it here. If they want their DVDs and events to do well you'd think that letting a region in which the show is licensed onto the legal English language stream would be common sense for all involved.
FUNimation's titles licensed from Toei seem to often include Australia etc. but never the UK, Toei's own streams through crunchyroll etc. usually exclude the UK, and DBZ was tied up for years with an French company. From this I infer that Toei considers the UK to be part of Europe, not part of the English-speaking world.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

I can't say I know much about the EU digital market thingy but would streaming be affected? I thought it was only for things you can download.

Also, wouldn't it mean that if Crunchyroll has the rights for one country in the EU then the whole of the EU could access it?

I thought it was supposed to be along the lines of "if you offer something in one country in the EU then it should be available to all of the EU at the same price", kind of like a digital version of breaking down trade barriers. Depending on how it works, the Japanese licensors might think they're just giving rights for a limited part of the EU but could actually be functionally licensing for all of the EU (though if that's how it worked they'd likely catch on and start being even more restrictive, which seems to be the standard reaction for licensors unfortunately).

Like I say though, I don't really know what it actually means and I'm just guessing really. Unfortunately these sort of things do often get twisted along the way even if they started out with good intentions (for example, if companies have to charge the same price to all of the EU you can bet they'll pick the highest one).
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

But then you have Toei attending UK trade fairs in the UK to try to sell One Piece merchandise rights to UK companies, and arranging concerts full of spoiler footage from later in the series; activities which cost them money and clearly seem to be aimed at widening the market for One Piece in the UK. Manga UK was also present at the latter as Toei's agent in the UK except they, too, have no interest in fixing the situation with One Piece's (lack of) streaming. If Manga UK was more like FUNimation and fully active in the digital sector, I'm pretty sure we'd have been let in on the streaming fun long ago. Toei's strategy of letting the local agents guide you seems to be a mistake when those local distributors don't end up doing anything out of terror that a legal stream will somehow cut into physical sales, or simple inertia. I wish they'd just centralise the whole thing and leave the UK companies out of it unless they have a proper simulcast strategy in place.

Smeelia, I think the Europe situation is worsened by the patchwork of languages we speak and the deranged belief on the part of companies that everyone in one country only speaks the language of that area. Viewster's insane grab-bag of regions for each individual title it licenses imply to me that there are no set rules; company 1 might lump all of Europe together for licensing, company 2 sells bundles based on an estimate of which languages are spoken where, company 3 just throws Swedish rights in with the Italian ones because they feel like it and company 4 might refuse to license to Europe at all for no clear reason.

Then if a licensor in (say) France picks up France+UK rights for a show, they might (quite reasonably) decide not to bother finding an English-language streaming site so that they can lose money paying to commission subtitles for an audience of <100 UK fans who care about streaming legally, so rather than telling the licensor to broadcast it in English somewhere else they just sit on the rights. And block us from the French stream even though they have the UK rights, because obviously nobody in the UK can possibly understand a non-English stream.

I hate regional licensing.

R
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Regional licensing is great, there'd be about half as many forum posts to read each month without it! ^^;
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Smeelia said:
I can't say I know much about the EU digital market thingy but would streaming be affected? I thought it was only for things you can download.

Also, wouldn't it mean that if Crunchyroll has the rights for one country in the EU then the whole of the EU could access it?

I thought it was supposed to be along the lines of "if you offer something in one country in the EU then it should be available to all of the EU at the same price", kind of like a digital version of breaking down trade barriers. Depending on how it works, the Japanese licensors might think they're just giving rights for a limited part of the EU but could actually be functionally licensing for all of the EU (though if that's how it worked they'd likely catch on and start being even more restrictive, which seems to be the standard reaction for licensors unfortunately).

Like I say though, I don't really know what it actually means and I'm just guessing really. Unfortunately these sort of things do often get twisted along the way even if they started out with good intentions (for example, if companies have to charge the same price to all of the EU you can bet they'll pick the highest one).


There was a BBC News article about it affecting the iPlayer, so I would assume it does include streaming.

I believe it is supposed to force providers/licensors to start seeing Europe as a single market for digital products, forcing them to offer the same service to all of Europe. So instead of Anime Limited buying streaming rights for English and German-speaking Europe (as I believe they've done with Seraph of the End - Vampire Reign), they would be expected to buy the rights for all of Europe, and then stream the title throughout Europe.

Contractually Crunchyroll can't offer titles outside the region designated in their contract. So if the law were to come into effect, Crunchyroll wouldn't just be able to offer anything they have in France to the UK or anything they have in the UK to France, otherwise they'd be in breach of their contract. As I understand it, they would either need to re-negotiate for Pan-European rights to the title or pull it from Europe completely.

Obviously all of this is conjecture, because their plans are quite vague, and the EU has tried to do this before in the past, and failed spectacularly, so it may not happen. Depending on how it's implemented it may not even affect Crunchyroll, seeing as they're a Japanese-American owned company based in San Francisco.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Quite mad at Crunchyroll right now. My free trial was due to end on Sunday but I didn't want to continue using the service as I need the money for KLK on the 29th. I went to cancel and there were two options, the one I picked being Cancel Recurring Membership, which ensured that I would keep all premium features until the end of the current billing period. So I went through and cancelled only to be met with a message saying all of my Premium features were being halted immediately. What the hell? It explicitly said that I could use the premium features until the end of the billing period, which was Sunday. If I had known that, I wouldn't have bloody cancelled. It's a great service and I definitely want to get a membership in a few weeks but this has soured me a bit on them.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

GUEST PASS DUMPING TIME

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Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Crunchyroll's account pages can be a bit funny at times, I often worry I'll end up clicking the wrong thing when I'm looking at them. The customer service could possibly help, although maybe it's just the way they do trials (since they'd ideally want everyone to sign up for at least one month).

If you can get the whole year subscription at once you save a bit of money on the membership. That is, if you can pay it up front and if you don't need to be able to take the odd month off.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Now added to list:

- Baby Steps [Viewster (Season 1)]
- GOD EATER [Daisuki]
- Katekyo Hitman Reborn! (Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn!) [Viewster (Season 3)/(Season 4)/(Season 5)]
- Medaka Box [Viewster]
- NINJA SLAYER FROM ANIMATION [Viewster]
- Tesagure! (Tesagure! Bukatsumono) [Crunchyroll]
- Ultimate Otaku Teacher (Denpa Kyoushi) [Viewster]

Knights of Sidonia; Battle for Planet Nine should be on the same page as Knights of Sidonia.
The Prince of Tennis II OVA will be on the same page as The Prince of Tennis II.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Knights of Sidonia Season 2 is now live on Netflix. Once again in both Japanese and English.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

First two posts (the main streaming list) has been updated. Due to the character limit, even the M section had to be moved to the second post.

Let me know if you want to add a J-Drama section (since there's seem to be some well-known ones recently in this season) to the thread, I'm up for it but there is a chance that I might not have the space for it heh.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Sweet!!! Or at least, it will be once Viewster introduce a subscription service.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

First post has been mini-updated to include links for Blood Blockade Battlefront and Gangsta., both of which are now streaming on Viewster.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

First two posts have finally been updated.

I will sort out Post 3 at some point later today (which covers digital distribution and other stuff).

I do hope that this list does get the attention throughout the UK anime community, it'll be a shame for fans to not realise that a particular show they like is available legally in one place.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

Someone seems to be sneaking their head into the image of all the logos. Not sure though.
 
Re: Where to Stream Anime Legally Online in the UK

The remaining YouTube shows that I had yet to include in the main list is now sorted, however these lot have since been expired:

4Kids
Dinosaur King [English Dub]

GundamInfo - These Gundam titles may come back in the future, as they often appear every now and then
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny (Remaster)
Mobile Suit Gundam 00
Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack

Manga Entertainment
Aria the Animation (Season 1)
Aria the Natural (Season 2)
Astro Boy (1963 U.S. Version) [English Dub] - Episodes 26-41 & 43-52 are unavailable
Boogiepop Phantom (Season 1) [English Dub]
Boys Be.. [English Dub]
Dirty Pair (TV, OVA & Flash remake: Missions) [English Dub]
Gasaraki [English Dub]
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Season 1) [English Dub]
Junjo Romantica (Seasons 1 & 2)
Kimba the White Lion (1966 U.S. Version) [English Dub] - Episodes 26-52 are unavailable
Maria Watches Over Us (Seasons 1-4) - Episodes 05 of Season 3 is unavailable
Martian Successor Nadesico [English Dub]
Now and Then, Here and There [English Dub] - Episodes 01-06 & 08-13 are unavailable
Rental Magica
Sound of the Sky
Star Blazers (Space Battleship Yamato) [English Dub] - Episodes 64-78 & Movies are region restricted
The Irresponsible Captain Tylor (Season 1) [English Dub]
The Third: The Girl With the Blue Eye [English Dub]

Manga Entertainment (Movies)
Dead Space: Aftermath [English Dub]
Martian Successor Nadesico: The Motion Picture - Prince of Darkness [English Dub]
Redline [English Dub]
Street Fighter Alpha [English Dub]
Street Fighter Alpha Generations [English Dub]
 
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