Should YOU Spend YOUR MONEY on Crunchyroll Premium? A Casual Fan's Perspective

Growing up, like most kids I watched a ton of cartoons, specifically on places like nickelodeon and cartoon network. Sometime in 5th grade, while watching Toonami at night on cartoon network I caught a glimpse of this anime. Naruto. And nothing beats the feeling of discovering new entertainment for the first time. I’ve seen stuff like Dragon Ball Z or Sailor Moon growing up but I didn’t really register those as “anime” until that moment with Naruto. The number of series I keep track of each season has slowly been declining as I get older but I still try to watch something new each season. So, when Crunchyroll, a streaming service for anime, new and old, iis advertised on YouTube, I got curious. Like real curious. Too curious. Is this premium service any good? I’ve seen Crunchyroll around for a long time, but is it worth spending money on? Let’s find out with a little review.

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
1:20 Brief History of Crunchyroll
4:07 Personal Experience with Crunchyroll
7:47 Thoughts on Pricing
9:23 Compared to Competitors
10:53 Closing Thoughts and Conclusion

Let’s start with a little history lesson. To 2006. Crunchyroll made its debut as a place for anime fans to congregate and discuss anime on a forum, and it was a popular place to watch anime subtitled by fan translation teams for free. As their base grew, they transitioned from copyrighted material uploaded by its base, to a site that developed itself as a place that obtained rights to stream officially licensed anime series hours after the Japanese release. Their library has grown a lot but of course over time and now they even have their own Crunchyroll Original Animes. They’ve really changed their image over the years, and really quickly too. It took them within 3 years of hosting user uploaded content to disallow it completely. This is all because during that 3 year span, they managed to secure money from a venture firm and secured rights to simulcast a popular show. Naruto Shippuden.

Naruto is a huge franchise that has a ton of fans, this was a big break to shed their old image and helped develop themselves as a source for anime. Crunchyroll, and many others were providing a free service for a market that existed, but there was no good service for at the time. Would you rather be a platform that allows illegal uploads with the potential of getting sued out of your mind or would you rather start from square one with some backing, and have one of the most popular shows headlined on your website?

In 2020, Crunchyroll is a Anime streaming service, that has a library of anime that ranges from older stuff like Cardcaptor Sakura, and Naruto to anime that is being released in 2020 like Re:Zero, Haikyuu, or Jujutsu Kaisen. They have an app for a ton of different devices. If you’re a free member you can watch any of the shows available but for new shows, you’ll have to wait a week after release to watch those. While Crunchyroll has originals like Netflix or Disney+, their originals, can be watched without paying for a premium subscription, you’ll just get ads. As a premium member you enjoy an episode of each show more, cause ads can really take you out of the experience. My overall experience with using Crunchyroll Premium was a positive experience.

Alright, let’s move on the plan pricing. The $9.99 plan looks to be the best value. The $14.99 pricing seems crazy, the extra benefits seem minuscule to me.

Let’s talk about Crunchyroll’s competitors. Funimation offers a similar service to Crunchyroll but there are differences. Their lineup and catalog of anime have overlap but there are anime that both platforms have that are unique. They have the same rule about waiting a week to see the latest episode if you’re a free user but there’s also titles that require you to have a premium subscription to view. Their free-to-watch model is similar to Crunchyroll in that you watch ads before, during and after episodes. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime video, well those are more variety services that offer more than just Anime, they have so much content it’s not even comparable, but if we look at anime alone then of course Crunchyroll wins.

So, should you subscribe to Crunchyroll? And is it worth your money? It depends. Is anime your primary source of video entertainment? Do you watch enough new and old anime a month to justify the price? Does Crunchyroll consistently have the anime series you care enough to spend money to watch? Do you like Crunchyroll’s offerings over Funimation’s? If you answered yes to all those questions, then yes. If you answered no. Then probably not.

[Kingattack]

Well now you need premium to watch more than 3 episodes💀

[ninjaydes]

Ads can really take you out of the experience.
*cries in modern YouTube*

[JimmyTriesWorld]

EDIT: Apparently, Sony, who owns Funimation recently just acquired Crunchyroll during the creation of this video. So by the time you watch this video, the "Competitors" portion of this video may not be relevant anymore.

Here’s just a random list of 10 shows I really enjoyed on the top of my head. I don’t know what you’d do with this information but it’s here.

Haikyuu
Your Lie in April
Gundam 00
The Ancient Magus’ Bride
Re:Zero
Kaguya-Sama: Love is War
Kuroko's Basketball
Rascal does not dream of Bunnygirl senpai
That time I got reincarnated as a slime
Golden Time

[darkangels]

A Crunchyroll ad literally popped up when I tapped on this video.

[Bou]

Sorry, due to licensing limitations, videos are unavailable in your region: Almost everything in our catalog.

[Codemantic]

the smart fridge joke got me more than it should have lol

[xUnicx]

It’s funny how Naruto was also my first encounter of anime. I’ve watched a lot since then, especially between 7th and 11th grade

[ziich]

Toonami completely changed my life. It truly doesn't get the respect it deserves

[jessip]

Well, I love seasonal anime, hate ads, and siphon free Netflix off my parents, so I don't mind paying $10 a month.

[Settledown]

Sony has bought Crunchyroll, not sure how that will affect it, if at all

[Dominus_Potatus]

Well... when you live in a country that can feed a family for a week with $10, I prefer nyaa, lol

[jenovaizquierdo]

Awesome video dude, if Crunchyroll started making English audio I will definitely pay the subscription, I don’t mind the sud but the problem is that I like to eat or do something while watching anime.

[elbaff]

I would if;

- Licensing issues didn't prevent majority of shows being aired through it (VPN isn't a solution, it's a bandaid)
- If they gave concrete evidence to back their claims of helping the industry monetarily. This is the bigger issue of the two, it mostly becomes a moral high ground to stand on for some anime fans to use as a buyer's remorse kind of thing.

[XxjeffersonDkidxX]

"Funimation"
LMAO
Let's wait a little bit.
Crunchyroll as we know it was bought by Funimation, so they are gonna fuse.

[Doomguy]

My favorite is A Certain Magical Index. I honestly don’t know why. It just resonates with me more than any other series I’ve watched

[EpicDTK]

I love how I was just thinking about doing a yearly plan finally with Crunchyroll and you upload this vid!

[DerTendou]

I expected another "don't give Crunchyroll your money" video and I'm glad it's not. It's well done with introducing the history of the site and going over the plans.

[whippycream]

Would've liked to hear you talk on the quality of crunchyroll's player as it doesn't always work.

[TheKonamiMan]

I always liked VRV since it includes Crunchyroll's content as well as other services

[cyndawu]

If the anime you want to watch is on Netflix, watch it on Netflix. I binge watched long anime such as Hunter x Hunter, Fullmetal Alchemists, Code Geass and Naruto on Netflix. It even skips recaps, intros and ending songs with a click of a button. There is practically no loading time between each episode. Full HD with subtitles. And the best part??? NO ADS. This is super helpful if you want to binge watch 30 episodes of anime per day. What a time saver. I am so grateful to Netflix purchasing more anime on their streaming service.