When you stream anime on a legal site, you know the money's going to support the anime industry, but who knows where KissAnime's ad money was going. KissAnime in fact stole translations from both fansubbers and official sources, and filled its website with ads. KissAnime didn't have the fansubber's defense of translating anime purely as a labor of love. Whereas most fansubbers these days try to follow an ethical guideline of only subbing unlicensed anime, KissAnime was blatantly trying to steal views from legal sources. RELATED: ONE: Everything to Know About the One-Punch Man Manga Artistįor one thing, those obscure unlicensed shows certainly accounted for a tiny minority of KissAnime's traffic. But what if you wanted to watch those unlicensed kids shows, or some obscure gem from the '70s that never came overseas officially? There's some debate to be had over whether or not piracy is acceptable in such cases, but regardless of what side of that argument you fall on, KissAnime failed even a pirate's standards of ethics. If you're an American fan interested in supporting current and mainstream anime, there was zero reason to use KissAnime over the many official legal streaming services available.
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The cost of a subscription is negligible compared to what it once took to collect a single series on physical media, and even if you can't afford subscriptions, the vast majority of Crunchyroll and FUNimation's catalogs are available for free with ads.
The few shows that don't stream in the US are mostly young kids shows and long-running family sitcoms that few American fans are interested in.
Between Crunchyroll, FUNimation, HIDIVE and Netflix, almost every single new anime made in Japan get a legal streaming release in America, and aside from Netflix's delayed releases, new episodes stream almost immediately after they first air in Japan. However, anime today is in a wildly different place than it was 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. RELATED: With Usopp, One Piece Crafted the PERFECT Underdog Crunchyroll started as an illegal fansub site before becoming a legal streaming service in 2008.
In this setting, fansubs had some clear advantages, and many of the professionals involved in official anime translations today got their start as fansubbers.
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In the early days of fandom, the vast majority of anime was completely unavailable legally in the States, and the few officially licensed anime were either heavily edited for TV or on prohibitively expensive VHS releases (often selling for $20 an episode or more). The popularity of piracy among American anime fans has understandable historical roots. While many who used the site might miss it, shutting KissAnime down is ultimately a good thing for both the anime industry and anime fans. " This closure comes as a result of strengthened copyright protection in Japan. All that remains on the site's URL is the message: "All files are taken down by copyright owners. KissAnime, the most popular anime piracy site, shut down on August 15.