Crunchyroll - Everything Anime

Let’s all take a minute to appreciate anime as a cultural export and phenomenon from outside Europe or North America. The art style is distinct and unique, and there’s always a finite story to tell. Think of Naruto, Samurai Jack and even the most famous of all these names, Pokémon/ Digimon. If you were or are an anime junkie, Crunchyroll is the home of all your greatest anime hits from the past to the present. This app offers 950 shows and 25,000 episodes from all across the Pacific, making it the Netflix or Amazon of anime streaming.

What Content Does Crunchyroll Offer & How Can You Access It?

Once you download the app on iOS or Android you can proceed to start streaming content over it. You’ll have to pay a premium subscription of $6.95 monthly to access content, including comics and episodes that have just been released, never mind how this might be infringing on certain copyrights. With the subscription, there are no ads and you can view content at your desired resolution (1080p/720p). If you love collecting anime stuff, you can shop on Crunchyroll too.

Get Access to Greater Content with a Premium Subscription

You can stream at lower quality (480p) on a free subscription, but then you’ll have little to no control over what you can watch, plus you’ll also have to contend with plenty of ads. Crunchyroll allows premium users to watch content with subtitles in various languages. Through Crunchyroll’s partnership with Funimation, users will be able to access more English content (only for Premium subscribers).

Is It Worth the Subscription?

Depends on how you look at it. Crunchyroll is meant for an anime-hungry market, therefore for a $6.95 subscription with the possibility of watching all the latest anime shows (literally those released hours earlier) it may be worth a try. With over 950 shows and thousands upon thousands of episodes, what’s not to like? Plus, you could cancel your subscription at any time or opt for the weekly option.

Crunchyroll plays in Adobe Flash, though HTML5 seems like a more viable option (probably because some of the videos from way back are encoded in Flash). The controls are simple enough: you can change the screen into full view, and change the play resolution and volume settings. Setting subtitles isn’t as straightforward though.

With a vibrant online community which you can interact with, tons of shows and other anime content such as Manga which you can access at the click of a button, Crunchyroll definitely has more pros than cons.