18
An article on HiAnime's death and anime piracy in general, from a former industry insider
(animebythenumbers.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2026
18 points (90.9% liked)
Anime
4349 readers
104 users here now
This community is the place to discuss and ask questions about anime, anime news, and related topics.
Currently airing show discussion threads are created by our resident bot, rikka@ani.social. If it doesn't make a thread for an episode that you want to discuss, see the user guide on the wiki for instructions on how to ask rikka to make a thread for you to use.
Check out our wiki to find:
- Episode Discussion Thread Index
- Weekly Discussion Thread Index
- Bot User Guide
- List of shows currently monitored by the bot
Rules
More complete rules on the wiki.
- Posts must relate to anime or similar (donghua, etc.)
- Discussion threads for currently airing media must be made by the bot. If there isn't a discussion thread made for a piece of media you want to discuss, then request it via pm.
- Ensure that all series spoilers are tagged. See here for details.
- Memes should be directed toward !animemes@ani.social (or similar) instead of this community
- Do not post explicitly NSFW material. Please use your best judgement when marking lewd material as NSFW, unmarked material risks being removed.
- Please redirect discussion of piracy towards a more appropriate community
- Any clips from currently airing shows cannot include content from episodes released within the past 7 days.
- All posts and comments must adhere to the ani.social Terms of Use
- In general, keep things civil and avoid attacking other individuals.
Post Tags
Post tags are completely optional, but some recommended tags would include:
- [DISC] or [Discussion] for general discussion/question posts
- [Rec] Recommendation posts with a recommendation/review
- [Clip] a video clip post
- [News] for news and updates
- [Spoiler] for discussions with spoilery content - indicate the series that is being spoiled
Related General Communities
- !animemes@ani.social
- !anime_irl@ani.social
- !avid@ani.social - Videos
- !animewallpapers@ani.social
- !manga@ani.social
- !lightnovels@ani.social
- !anime@lemmy.eco.br (Brazil community)
- !anime_es@ani.social (Spanish language community)
- !aum@ani.social (Myanmar community)
- !otomegames@ani.social
- !visualnovels@ani.social
- Megathread of other communities on the fediverse maintained by @MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
Discord
Thanks to @NineSwords@ani.social for running the discord!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
We're outliers though. Less than 10% of anime viewers are gonna have opinions on how Crunchyroll is managed. They just watch whatever the latest hype thing is.
Less than 10% of anime viewers have an opinion on ever-encroaching ads, limited selection and AI subs? Are you sure about that? We're anime nerds. We have a LOT of opinions.
That's the thing, most anime viewers aren't anime nerds. They just watch Solo Leveling or Frieren or whatever the latest, most hype things is and call it a day. That's why a show whose main character barely has a personality took "Best Character" in the Crunchyroll Awards last year, even against what should've been stiff competition. A significant number of viewers didn't watch any of the shows with good characters. Just Solo Leveling and maybe some isekai slop.
Anecdotally, none of the people I know IRL care about any of this stuff apart from my wife.
https://xkcd.com/2501/
If they aren't an anime nerd, would they be using an anime piracy site?
Yes. They'll google something like "watch solo leveling free" and then click on whatever links show up. It's not exactly advanced.
If they're just watching a single show would they really pay for a service? Can't speak for where you live but I'm fairly certain that where I live no one would do that.
It depends. Netflix makes the math a little weird there since there are definitely people watching just one or two anime on Netflix, but then also using it to watch live-action stuff.
Ah yea, I think Netflix would be a lot more different when making this decision compared to Crunchyroll.