If you had to pay to watch anime would you stop watching?

Of course.. I would buy DVDs and Blu-rays and download content from Crunchyroll and then I'd then sell bootleg Blu-ray and DVDs out of a penthouse basement. pirated anime, manga, and games, but i wouldn’t stop there. I would torrent Crunchyroll content just so my Mal buddies can avoid paying for them . I’d even pirate snacks if they came in “premium edition” packaging.

Happily, that is exactly how I watch my anime. Crunchyroll for watching new anime and my physical media collection for re-watching older anime. So, I am not impacted whatsoever by any sudden disappearances of unofficial sources. If hypothetically speaking, a server of an unofficial source burned down, not a problem! I can continue to watch my anime uninterrupted.

I am collecting the classic, classic stuff like Ideon,Great Mazinger,Grendizer,pierrot magical girl and Heidi are worth paying for. Seasonal rom-com and Isekai is a big no.

Yup, you got me. You're a greater anime appreciator than I am, if it's based on subscription services or stacking your shelves with this stuff. I wouldn't even be here if I had to pay a penny to watch anime. I can't remember the last thing anime-related I bought. Must have been a DVD from many, many years ago. I've seen a few users on here who show off their old anime boxsets and merchandise, but it just collects dust, and I'd have already sold it on eBay. Glad to see commenters in here saying they'd go paypig and distribute the means of viewing to us non-paypiggies.

I already pay a subscription to a streaming site. I still end up watching most of my anime elsewhere for free though because I am lazy.

I think you've been hanging out with Colourwheel too much. Is this gonna be a daily thing now? Shaming the pirates in new and creative ways?

Brazil is a country where piracy has always been the norm, but when Netflix and Spotfy first released here, with good content and fair price, the piracy dropped and people started to legally afford for their things. Now Netflix has become shit and TV shows and movies piracy is growing again.

I would gladly pay for a good service at a fair price, but the companies are not willing to give it to me.

@OhNoAFanOfTouhou
Well its better than boobs and ass threads. Unless you are into that.

I'm ok with the price I'm paying currently. But how high would prices climb, if paid subscription were the only option?

@Azulmagia88 Well I respectfully disagree, good sir.

@Gsarthotegga
I like having my own little data center with uninterrupted anime watching plus having physical anime boxsets and disks is better than just having a mal list and harddrive. ;)
PS. You can do some dusting it wont hurt you.

@Dark_Mikoto
The best way to do it.
Unless your house burns down but I think there's a higher chance of another data center burning down first. lol

I don't really watch anime now, but I would probably end up buying a few series I already like so I could enjoy rewatching them without paying for subscriptions.

I have a question for the people making those topics in the screenshot though. If you care so, SO much about increasing the size of your list, why not just lie? It would be faster than watching at 2x speed, and you might just enjoy the anime you end up watching more when you're not rushing to the next one. I think it's good that making a list can motivate people, but if you're just watching to press the complete button, you might as well read a synopsis to increase efficiency. Do you do it so you can take pride in having a big list?

I personally don't lie in my lists btw, unless it's funny.

@Azulmagia88 I used to have a lot of DVDs but ended up finding them inconvenient because of space and it made more sense to me to have a file on the comp instead. I already have lots of books to dust, and I had to make space for more books, so no discs. No posters, no figurines, no anime pillow, etc. I'm curious how dedicated you are on this. Do you not pirate anything at all, or maybe certain things on occasion? Or maybe subscription service + buying select sets that you like + no pirating?

For the record, these aren't the only paid options for legal anime access. You can purchase access to stream individual shows on platforms like YouTube and Amazon. No subscription required. Most people don't do this because they can become unavailable after purchase on rare occasions, but it's still an option that is worth considering.

I mean, Crunchyroll is not that expensive. The platform may be shit but if I had no option but to pay I would. I don't pay for it right now because my cousin shares his account. And either way we are already paying Netflix and Disney+ so if an anime is released there I'm already paying for it.

Would anime actually be available, though, or would legal services understand their oligopoly and control what anime are allowed to be watched and in what way? No longer having to compete with pirate sites means that they don't have to show you any anime that don't fit with their narrative, you can't cross reference more accurate translations from fansubbers, they can release anime at their own leisure because they won't lose viewers by stalling, which service gets which license will probably become more chaotic since if season 1 and 3 are on one site you can't just pirate to fill in the gaps, so sharing series between competitors becomes economically advantageous. Sounds like hell. I'd probably just switch to manga.

Most of my favourite anime aren't available legally, and they're series that don't have enough of an audience for it to be worth it for legal outlets to license them. Also, what about anime that were already free? There's lots of anime released on Youtube and Bilibili for free. Would you need the premium subscription to watch those too or would they be grandfathered in as free content?

If there was a site that had all the anime, and fansubbers could even post their fansubs there and get paid for contributing, but it had a reasonable subscription fee like $15/month for HD and no ads I wouldn't mind that. We all know that's not happening, though. If piracy is taken out of the equation then legal sites will get worse because they're no longer being kept in check.

@DarkFirefly72
What do you not like about Crunchyroll? Is it not having the shows you want to watch or something else with the service?