Are there Enough Legal Resources for Anime?
If we all lived in Japan, we could simply watch anime on TV, as long as we had cable and maybe a machine to record it on. But outside of Japan, we get a very small selection of anime on TV.
Ever since I was little, I watched anime on TV here in Canada, but when I hit my preteens, people started to point me towards downloading anime online. At the time, there was no Netflix or YouTube, and it was illegal to watch anime online. Most sources only provided unlicensed anime to avoid legal trouble.
Nowadays we are pretty lucky. We have Funimation, Crunchyroll, and Hulu, all of which offer anime viewing online for free, and it's completely legal. You don't have to worry about breaking any laws when it's all laid out for you like that, and it actually does the anime industry good.
But these resources are not available worldwide, and many people are still illegally downloading anime to watch.
I tried to show a Durarara!! opening to a friend in Mexico via an episode on Crunchyroll, but the video was denied, saying that it wasn't available in her country.
Similarly, Hulu is only available in the United States, so I actually can't use it up here in Canada. The Canadian Netflix is also very limited when it comes to anime, to the point that it is not worth subscribing to unless you use an American proxy to get more selection.
Funimation's website as well is a bit finicky here in Canada. It often won't load the episode, saying that it's unavailable in my country. Fortunately they have a YouTube channel so I usually turn to that, but what do people do if the YouTube videos are unavailable in their country as well?
While options have increased for legal methods of watching anime online, it could be argued that there is still room for improvement.
What do you think? Do we need more sites that allow us to watch anime legally? Do you think people should buy their anime if such a service is unavailable to them? Should these companies open up to a wider audience?
Companies like Funimation, Crunchyroll, and Hulu are very good for the anime industry, and if they are available in your country, then by all means, I recommend them. The anime industry is very harsh with low pay unless the anime becomes a big hit. When you view ads on something like Crunchyroll, the revenue goes to the creators. Similarly, when you pay for premium content, most of your subscription money is given to the creators of the anime you watched with your account. It's a lot better than pirating which results in no money towards the creators, and watching ads only takes a few seconds of your time.
