Random Topic: Is Animax UK Worth It?

So with the site still continuing, I figured for this month I'll talk about another streaming service that's been a mixed bag in the UK anime community. Many fans in the Asian territories are happy to have a service like this, but does it have the same effect over here?

What we know about Animax UK

Before I get to the point of this post, the story about how Animax UK began is pretty interesting. The service is basically a spiritual successor to Anime on Demand, another anime streaming service in the UK that promised to provide tons of content that we generally couldn't get due to licensing reasons by adding titles like My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU and To Love-Ru Darkness and simulcast them. However things went silent and we heard nothing since, even in social media they haven't provided any new updates whatsoever. Not long after Sony began adding anime titles to their Sony Movie Channel every Monday at midnight, ranging from Bleach to Mardock Scramble. It was then revealed that Anime on Demand had discontinued and Sony's Animax service would take over, in addition bringing over some of the titles the previous service had.

Just to get the obvious out of the way, Animax UK does retain the logo and representation of their counterparts in the Asian territories, but the service itself is handled completely different. The UK streaming service has been unique to the other accessible sites (Crunchyroll and Viewster) because they also provided access to anime movies in both English (if available) and Japanese. Their catalogue also had exclusive titles from a partnership with Viz Media Europe, whom many will know in the UK as the French distributor Kaze. Titles from Kadokawa and TBS have also been added to the service, which may explain the absence of these shows on Crunchyroll for UK.

Their Catalogue & Simulcasts

The first titles added to Animax UK were Beyond the Boundary, Coppelion and Magi: The Kingdom of Magic, followed by the Kaze deal with dozens of their titles including Bakuman, Bleach, Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!, Princess Jellyfish and Un-Go. In terms of their catalogue, it was pretty good at first where they provided titles that UK fans haven't been able to access on other streaming services before. As time went by, they slowly added more titles including some Aniplex shows like Mekakucity Actors and Nisekoi, both of which were region locked from us on Crunchyroll.

As time passed by, we noticed a pattern of sorts on their collection. While we already knew about Kaze being involved with more than half of the titles, the others were into question. At first, many of us thought that Kaze owned the rights to them and would be releasing them on home video in the future. But it turns out that is not the case. A lot of them are in fact handled by Kadokawa and TBS, both of which are very strict in terms of licensing as they don't want to cause reverse importation since anime prices in Japan are expensive. For Kadokawa, their titles on the service include Maoyu, Problem Children Coming From Another World, Aren't They? and Student Council Discretion Level 2 while TBS has quite a lot of their titles on the service including Busou Shinki, Hidamari Sketch x Honeycomb, The Kawai Complex, Rail Wars, Sasami-san@Ganbaranai and Tamako Market.

Recently Funimation also provided a couple of their titles on the service from the first half of 2014 seasons and just recently a couple from Summer 2015 including D-Frag!, Fairy Tail, Noragami, Nourin, Overlord, Ping Pong the Animation, Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace and Selector Infected WIXOSS. Unlike the subtitle work that Animax have handled for their other titles, a couple of the Funimation titles use the exact same font that they generally use on their main site and products.

As mentioned, Animax UK also provides a bunch of movies for their streaming service. Kaze provided the first three Bleach movies, the first two Berserk Golden Age movies, the first two Mardock Scramble movies, Street Fighter II: The Movie (with the censored English dub) and also a bunch of Anime Limited titles including Makoto Shinkai's The Place Promised In Our Early Days and The Garden of Words as well as Perfect Blue. Soon they'll also have 009 Re:Cyborg, Giovanni's Island and both Tiger & Bunny movies.

So the service itself has a cool selection of titles that we barely see anywhere else, so what's the problem then? Well just recently they've suddenly come back after many months of silence, and with it they just announced a mobile app for iOS and Android while their PlayStation exclusivity just recently expired (allowing Crunchyroll to release their app onto the service for UK & Europe). I always wanted to talk about this service but I couldn't find the right time to do it as there are some issues that I want to point across.

So the rant begins now..

Problem #1: The Subscription Payment

The most important part for every legal anime subscription service is the pricing. The pricing matters because there are people out there who don't want to spend a lot each month for the content provided. Let's take Crunchyroll as an example. Their Premium service is £4.99 a month (or £39.99 for an entire year) to cover not only hundreds of anime available in HD 1080p but also free access to the latest manga available as well as the additional J-Drama shows also in HD 1080p. Their Premium service also provides discounts and bonuses in the shopping section. All of this alone is worth the money they are asking, so why am I arguing about it with Animax? Because the price isn't worth it at this stage.

Animax UK's content is mainly locked off and require a subscription fee. With only around 60 titles in their catalogue they are also asking for £4.99 a month or a special 6 month deal that allows you to pay £3.99 a month. Now granted they did reduce the price at one point not long after they started the service but that's probably due to the lack of customers. My problem with this is because when you compare it to Crunchyroll there is not enough content to justify the price tag, and let's not forget the fact that the customer has zero notice on whether they'll add more titles to the service. Another reason why the price isn't worth it is due to their partnership with Kaze. Kaze are notorious because their subtitles are not in the best shape at times and with Animax they still have kept the same issues including what happened with Bakuman.

My solution to this is to reduce the price permanently to around £2.99-3.99 a month until they offer 200+ titles in their catalogue. Remember not everyone can afford multiple subscription services each month at the same time, in this situation many will prefer to keep their Crunchyroll sub than Animax's.

Problem #2: Cancelling Subscription Controversy

When it comes to subscription services they will generally charge you each month if you wanted to renew them each time however there are some customers who can't do it anymore or have changed their mind about the service. So the simplest solution to this is to cancel the subscription and leave the service with the amount of time it has left. However with Animax that is a different case.

There was an infamous controversial moment that occurred earlier in 2015 when a UK Anime Network user wanted to cancel his/her subscription because they didn't want to put up with the service anymore. To their surprise they discover that they could not even cancel their subscription because the option to cancel was not even present on the website. This frustrated them that they had to contact Animax via phone to cancel their subscription and things ended up getting ugly. To summarise what happened, Animax ignored his/her pleas to cancel their subscription and even charged them by renewing it when he/she managed to receive the option to cancel. In the end the customer lived to tell a tale, you can find out more about what happened here.

The point I'm trying to make with this situation is that you should not force your customers to put up with the subscription and it is their right to cancel at anytime. Crunchyroll and Netflix always have an option to cancel subscriptions without any hassle whatsoever. This kind of behaviour is unacceptable to the customer eye. My solution is simple, don't lock off the cancel option when a customer has subscribed to you.

Problem #3: Simulcasts that aren't Simulcasts

Aside from the subscription prices, simulcasts is the most important part for every anime fan who wants to support the industry. For those who aren't familiar with the term simulcast it's when you have the latest episode for a current or new series and it comes available as soon as it finishes airing in Japan. For Crunchyroll they add their simulcasts 1 hour after airing as they need to sort out subtitle translations and making sure there aren't any problems with the video, same goes for Funimation with their service.

However when it comes to Animax, a simulcast is basically adding the show 8 weeks after it's been aired and allowing the user only a couple of days to watch the video. In some cases there are even some player issues and subtitle track problems. What I'm trying to explain here is that you should not call a new episode a simulcast when it's been ages since it's finished, what's even more insulting is leaving it to the end of the season to add it onto the service. Now in certain situations this is understandable when you have someone like Crunchyroll who have exclusive rights to Naruto Shippuden and other services like Viewster can't add the latest episode until a week after, or when Daisuki gains a timed exclusive deal for Monogatari series: Second Season and Crunchyroll has to wait a month to add the previous episodes. The difference here is that the service with the exclusive titles actually simulcast those episodes without any sort of problems whatsoever. Animax has gained exclusive titles most notably from Funimation and TBS and don't even add them or mention that they have them until weeks have passed.

Heck just recently the latest 'simulcast' episodes for Overlord and Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace literally disappeared from the website after a week has passed.

According to Animax, the reasoning was down to the subtitle translation. But the thing is why would you need to sort out the subtitles when those shows have come from Funimation? Whom as far as I'm aware their subs are generally hard-subbed (from what I've seen with Fairy Tail and over on Viewster with Death Parade). That makes no sense.

Solution? If you are actually going to simulcast then get the show on the service as soon as the broadcast has ended (or at least a day after it's been aired as Viewster tends to receive this issue due to subtitle issues ~ note that some shows that Viewster have on simulcast are from Anime Limited). If the episode has already been aired weeks ago then don't call it a simulcast. Simple enough.

So, is the service worth checking out?

Animax UK is still two steps behind when it comes to legal anime streaming. They don't provide simulcasts on time every now and then, their subscription service doesn't live up to the price, there is no indication on any schedules or new additions to the service aside from telling UK Anime Network, and overall it lacks a big catalogue.

There are some positives to Animax however; they've got a good selection of movies that you can't find anywhere else unless you buy the product, most of them even include an English dub option. Crunchyroll did recently add movies thanks to Discotek Media but they are restricted to US & Canada. Another positive are the titles that we didn't have access to already, 90% of the catalogue is exclusive to the service which does help with the price but because there's so few content in contrast to a newcomer like Viewster (whom have just added well over 100 titles already to the service) it's not enough to grasp any anime fans attention, not yet anyway. Animax is still around and are slowly adding content but if they want to compete with Viewster they'll need to add content each week.

Despite the controversies, Animax is still alive and kicking. They do have an app for mobiles and PlayStations (which in fact actually prevented Crunchyroll from getting their app onto the UK store until just recently) but like their website counterpart it's useless unless you have a subscription. So overall if you're really curious, feel free to check them out but like many anime fans such as myself and the folks on Anime UK News, we recommend you proceed with caution or just go to Crunchyroll, Daisuki or Viewster instead.