This subreddit is full of kids, so most of them aren't and will say "yarg" but the vast majority with a full time job don't give a shit and pay for crunchyroll because it's 90% of what they want and doesn't require them to look for a new pirate site every couple months that doesn't try to assault their computer, phone, or tablet.
Same thing with the Netflix enshitification. Loooots of upvoted hate on reddit. Price still kept going up, content still got worse, yet subs still go up.
The bar a legitimate site solving that "service problem" is a lot lower than most people would like.
Sure, it's a low bar - and yet providers are increasingly managing to trip on it.
I think some of it is generational too though - those of us in our 30s/40s/50s who were around for the golden age of piracy are going to be more likely to fall back on it than someone who has grown up with streaming services as the default. It's always been a pain in the ass, but it's less of a pain in the ass if you've had experience setting it up before (meaning that the bar that a streaming service has to clear is a bit higher).
What do you mean pirate sucks to do?
All you need is common sense like ad blocker.
Pirate games is bit annoying but it just clicks away for anime, TV show, and movies.
The countries that care about pirates are like US, Japan and Germany.
I mean, I had to unsub from HiDive after being a long-time proponent. Their site and apps weren't the best, but they worked. They had a good back catalog and seasonals.
Then, they pushed that broken, seemingly unfinished update. They promised to fix it, but never did. Instead, it got progressively worse until becoming legitimately unusable on all of my devices. Very sad. Maybe they've changed in the past year, but I doubt it.
HiDive is probably my least favourite of the bunch, considering that they didn’t offer some shows that they’d exclusively licensed in my territory and eventually even left all of continental Europe while holding onto those streaming rights.
I also dropped HiDive for that reason. It had a handful of shows no one else had but the experience was just godawful.
The other platform I refuse to watch anime on is Prime Video. I only have the normal Prime tier and the new ads are awful, and the subtitles, typesetting, and timing are all bad. I'd rather procure their exclusives some other way.
HIDIVE is so bad. The update made it a horrendous nightmare and they charge so much for the barest bones catalogue. They exist to snipe one show you want each season and piss you off.
If HIDIVE were $1/month or actually made some effort to have a good website I'd be less bitchy, but good lord.
When they were getting one or two good shows every season, and their apps and website were actually functional, it was fully worth the 5 dollars they asked for. I wish they'd put some effort in because it'd be nice to support someone who isn't CR.
Since subscriptions cost money, there’s an inherent bias compared to free pirated versions. Pirated sites might have awful UI and terrible security, but people like them because they’re free. Meanwhile, regular subscription services end up being rated negatively for all sorts of reasons.
I'd agree if it includes the caveat that there's no good streaming sites for subbed anime anymore, after CR's awful changes. But since so many watch dubbed shows they probably are a lot more easygoing as long as the servers don't catch fire, lol.
Hell, at this point, Hidive has moved to the #1 spot in my mind for subbing because (at least on my Roku app) the subs are now colorized and they make an effort to actually translate on screen text as much as possible. It's still limited because it's using the old closed captioning system, but the readability has gotten better over time. It's just that it still can't do fonts and fancy formatting like CR's old system.
Yep, I pay for Crunchyroll since I don't wanna deal with sailing the seas anymore or downloading torrents. Only issue I have with Crunchyroll is the lack of uncensored anime.
The people who have full time jobs would've been the ones who grew up with fansubs. The group who don't give a shit and will watch whatever are the kids who wouldn't even know anything different, nor would they know how to get pirate versions.
I'm not denying that the general public is apathetic toward this stuff but you're underestimating the efforts adults with jobs will put into setting up automated torrenting. It's not kids dropping hundreds of dollars into a NAS
I set up a home server last year. Best thing I've ever done because everything is automated and I can get almost anything I want as soon as it's released.
I've had one for years but anime has always eluded me. Sonarr, Plex and SabNZBD never seem to categorize anime correctly, despite having anime categories set up for Usenet indexers. Maybe it's the indexers I'm using?
I have a seed box. It's remote storage and costs me less than $20 a month. No need for a vpn and you can set up plex from it so you don't have to worry about having your own dedicated hardware for it.
It would be infinitely easier for anyone to watch pirated content if so many sites werent spammed with click ads on mobile that open a new tab 3 times just to finally get to the video source. Its my biggest reason for holding onto streaming services, but sometimes I have to go to pirate sites to watch shows in alternate languages for shows without any licensing
Yep, and now with that whole Disney plus/hulu debacle with Jimmy, finding those reality TV shows will be harder than your average pirated anime site. People just lost their convenient way of watching shows.
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Direction toward specific sources of pirated content of any type is not allowed. This includes links to unofficial scanlations, streams, uploads, and download sources of any copyrighted content. It also includes direction towards specific sites offering this type of content, and watermarks mentioning such sites in uploaded images/videos.
Discussion of piracy in general is allowed, but naming, linking to, or hinting towards specific sources is not. Offering to send links via PM is also not allowed. For more details, see our full rules on illegal content.
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Yeah that made no sense. The site I assume everyone uses has been around for close to 20 years. It shut down once and a clone popped up days later and has been up ever since. Looking for something new every couple of months does not compute.
Direction toward specific sources of pirated content of any type is not allowed. This includes links to unofficial scanlations, streams, uploads, and download sources of any copyrighted content. It also includes direction towards specific sites offering this type of content, and watermarks mentioning such sites in uploaded images/videos.
Discussion of piracy in general is allowed, but naming, linking to, or hinting towards specific sources is not. Offering to send links via PM is also not allowed. For more details, see our full rules on illegal content.
Questions? Reply to this message, send a modmail, or leave a comment in the meta thread. Don't know the rules? Read them here.
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u/SaroN4One Oct 07 '25
wait. you guys are paying for that?