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I'm going to the World Science Fiction Convention later this year, where I've volunteered to be on a panel doing some kind of anime recommendations for people new to anime. As the name implies, this is a con that gets a high proportion of international visitors, so I'd like to be able to make recommendations to people in light of what's actually available in their countries.

So: what's out there for legal streams outside Japan itself and Region 1? I know that Crunchyroll is frequently able to make works available to other parts of the world, and I know that ANN UK and ANN Australia have their own video sections. What haven't I heard about because it doesn't intersect with the US at all?

It may be of benefit to inspect what Kazé have on offer. The size of the French market is such that Kazé can expect better custom from domestic fans than its British counterpart. It would seem likely, therefore, that a greater number of streaming licences are within reach of the former.

There's Anime on Demand here in the UK, but it's not really worth bothering with, in my opinion. You have to be a paid subscriber even just to watch past the first episode of a series and they barely have anything at all up there. I've not heard anything from them in months, to be honest. Their last tweet was 24th May, and that wasn't regarding any more series announcements. In short, they're a poor imitator of CR, so don't waste your money on them.

I don't know how, but ViKi is considered legal. Also IIRC FMA: Brotherhood was streamed worldwide on youtube.

Funimation and Nozomi show quite a few series on YouTube which we can see over there in the UK, at least. Some specific series are region blocked, but it's nice that we get thrown a bone.

Nico Nico (the original Japanese version) streams Fate/Zero worldwide with English (and some other) subtitles, earlier than CR's time-delayed broadcast, as well as quite a lot of shows in raw Japanese. Unfortunately most of the other Japan-based services which remember the rest of the world exists tend to be open only by accident rather than design.

Gundam AGE streams legally in Asia and some other locales with English subtitles IIRC. We can't see it here though.

Perhaps it might help if you could give us a list of shows that you're thinking about recommending. Then people could tell you whether they're available in other regions.

Are you intending to recommend shows distributed on DVD and BD as well? If so, which ones might you be suggesting? For instance, the excellent sci-fi series Dennou Coil is available in R4 from Siren Visual, but not here in R1. Since Australia is a PAL country, it's possible for people in some European countries to watch those DVDs on a region-free player.

Sony's Crackle site has anime streams including (subtitled) Puella Magi Madoka Magica and some shows like Nodame Cantabile and Kurozuka that are unavailable in R1. These include English dubs from their release on Animax Asia.

yuna49 wrote:

Perhaps it might help if you could give us a list of shows that you're thinking about recommending. Then people could tell you whether they're available in other regions.

I expect a lot of it will be driven by audience questions, so I have no idea. Plus there will be other panelists, and I don't know who they'll be, let alone what they'd be planning to recommend. So I'd rather have a comprehensive list and when something gets recommended, be able to check and say, "And that one is available free and legally in your country on..."

And of course I don't know that I'm even going to be on the panel; I may just be compiling this resource for someone else to use.

Given the vagaries of licensing, I think that's going to be a very difficult task. Most streaming sites have region locks on some or all of their programming. I think Crackle is somewhat global since it's owned by Sony and tends to show its own programming, but even then there can be locks. For instance, Nodame Cantabile was available to US viewers for a while, then suddenly it was locked. Now Sony has made it available in the US again.

WTK maintains lists of DVDs and BDs with English subs or dubs for other regions over at Mania. There's also a thread on streaming but it appears limited to the US and Canada. WTK occasionally drops by here as well, so maybe he/she will see your request. A polite PM might be another option.

ANN itself appears to stream in other regions. For instance, the list at animenewsnetwork.co.uk is here. The list is quite extensive, but many of the links like those for shows licensed by Funimation appear to point to Hulu which I believe only holds rights to stream in the US and Canada. Not being in the UK I can't really determine which of those series are actually available for streaming in the UK. Indeed the list itself may be entirely different if I connected from a UK IP address. As a test, I chose a random episode of Kuragehime and was taken to Hulu and shown an ad for Citizens Bank! While Citizens is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, I doubt ads for Citizens would be shown to viewers in the UK. Maybe one of the ANN admins can help with this?

Crunchyroll now streams some of its shows in Latin America with Spanish subtitles.

Looking at that list which yuna49 linked to for animenewsnetwork.co.uk, it's basically a duplicate of Crunchyroll's UK library, so I suspect that's where they get their videos from.

It will be very tough to get a proper list. Hulu is very hot on region locking so anything there is out, but I live in the UK and even I have no idea whether most shows on other sites will be locked or not without physically trying them. It's a complete mess for anyone outside the favoured regions.

ANN UK's video section lost its main reason for existence when Kaze's Anime On Demand service switched to its own hosting, so from a UK perspective at least sticking with CR/AoD/Viki etc is safest. ADV's Anime Network website has a UK entrance and that's still around, it seems, though some things are dub only and I've never used it.

Lupica wrote:

Hulu is very hot on region locking

I have no doubt that if the rightsholders were willing to license their material for streaming into other regions Hulu would be happy to oblige. Hulu isn't making these decisions; the content owners are.

yuna49 wrote:

Lupica wrote:

Hulu is very hot on region locking

I have no doubt that if the rightsholders were willing to license their material for streaming into other regions Hulu would be happy to oblige. Hulu isn't making these decisions; the content owners are.

There are a significant number of series which are available on YouTube via Funimation but not on Hulu. For whatever reason, Hulu's entire library blocks the UK. They have the UK domain but have yet to set up any local service or unblock the shows their providers could let us see on their US one. Therefore I stand by my remark.

Hulu Japan is the same. I'm not a fan of their efforts so far, even though I appreciate that the insanity of the current situation of course wasn't originally created by them directly.

While Hulu has been happy to carry anime because it's cheap and has a devoted audience, most of what it carries, and most of what it makes its money from, are streams of American network television shows. I don't find it surprising that Hulu doesn't make an effort to have a more nuanced policy toward region-locking. Just the complexities for marketing if only some of their shows were available would be daunting. "We're sorry, but you cannot watch this week's episode of Desparate Housewives or Revenge, but hey, we've got these cool Japanese cartoons you can watch instead."

Well, yes, but I only posted about Hulu to warn that it was a waste of time to recommend them in the context of this thread since they only cater to Americans, and this is still the case.

Not seen these mentioned thus far:

In Australia Madman have their Screening Room and Siren Visual have or had streams up in association with ANN.

In Germany Kaze runs https://www.anime-on-demand.de/

France also has http://www.what.tv/ which includes Kaze and other stuff.

FUNimation's YouTube streams are sometimes open to the UK as previously mentioned (partial and out-of-date list here), and also any other regions they have rights in like South Africa. It varies by title and is pretty much impossible to determine unless you are in that region.

Gong have streaming from multiple venues to all sorts of places - see http://www.gong.fr/ou_retrouver.php