Crunchyroll is now available for Windows Phone 7
|Crunchyroll.com is a streaming video service that licenses and airs Japanese anime (that’s cartoons to you Westerners. Just not ONLY for kids, ‘kay?) and Japanese drama shows. It has a membership structure – non-members (with commercials), anime members, drama members, and all-access members. Non-members have to wait 1 week for new shows to become available; anime members get anime shows on the same day (typically 1 hour after it airs in Japan); drama members get their shows when they are available (evidently there is no standard release as with the anime).
My husband & I discovered crunchyroll when we got a couple of Roku boxes a few months ago. And now we can watch anime on our Windows Phones!
Launched into the Marketplace just yesterday (not available in China or the Middle East, apparently), the app is free, but you must have one of the premium memberships ($6.95/month for either the anime or the drama, or $11.95/month for the all-access – both prices in USD) to log in and stream the videos. It is unclear as of yet if it will become open to non-members in the future.
There is a 14-day trial membership, but if you have an .edu email address, you can get a 30-day trial.
You can get the app here for WP7.
In fairness, it’s here in the iTunes store, and here for Android (although I admit to not knowing about Android app sources, there are probably multiple places to get the Android version of the app). Aha – here it is in the Amazon store. I wonder if this will run on my Fire?
I’m an intense anime fan. I watch anime more than anything else so this is right up my alley. Right now I catch anime on the web for free usually within 2 days of airing but ill gladly pay the $7 to watch it on my phone.
I didn’t know that Hubby had already paid for the anime membership, so now with that, Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, AND DirectTV (although they’re massively discounting us at the moment because we already threatened to cancell) is a bit much. As soon as the DTV discounts are up, we’re cutting the cord. Then it’ll be roughly $8×3 vs. $75. I’m Much Happier with that. When we got married 9 years ago, DTV was costing us $45; so it’s nearly doubled in that time.
I’m watching a new show, Polar Bear’s Cafe. Hubby is watching mostly culture shows and classic animes (currently he’s been watching Harlock and Galaxy Express I think).