This Week in Anime
How to Watch Anime on a Budget

by Christopher Farris & Lucas DeRuyter,

Chris and Lucas find their pockets stretched by the multitude of anime streaming services; let's see how far we can get using legal, free streaming!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.
Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead.

Cowboy Bebop, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, Mob Psycho 100, and One Piece are currently streaming on Crunchyroll, while Jellyfish Can't Swim in the Night is available on HiDive. Captain of Cosmos, Street Fighter Alpha, Transformers Armada, and Transformers Energon are on Tubi, while Sherlock Hound and Allison & Lillia are available on RetroCrush. Space Adventure Cobra is on Freevee, while Pop Team Epic and Dirty Pair are on Pluto TV. Uma Musume Road to the Top, Gundam Build Metaverse, and Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury are all available on YouTube.

@Lossthief @BeeDubsProwl @LucasDeRuyter @vestenet

Chris
Lucas, things are a bit tight this month. The electric bill's up from running the air conditioner through this heatwave. Oh, and it turns out I'm probably not getting the deposit back on that convention Steve and I tried to host the other week. I gotta find a way to save some money, or it looks like I'm going to be enjoying my bell peppers sans beef for my forthcoming meals.

Lucas
Times are tough, Chris! We're all finding ways to scrimp, save, and bring in a lil' extra on the side!

Why, just last month, I spent money on AT LEAST four different platforms to watch the latest anime and read the latest manga! Will someone good at the economy please tell me what I can do to fix this!??
Ah, streaming services. They were pitched to us as the solution to paying for cable, and now staying subscribed to all of them will run you just as much as paying for cable. Folks have said plenty about platforms like Netflix and Hulu raising their prices while also forcing ads on those same paying customers. If someone's going to cut back for the sake of a budget, a streaming platform they've only used to watch The Office for the fifteenth time is a prime candidate for the chopping block.

Now, as anime watchers, things are a little narrower for us, options-wise. Hell, sometimes a service like Funimation will save you the trouble of deciding to budget it out simply by folding all on its own. Still, it's hard not to feel like you're getting taken for a ride when you remember that Crunchyroll actually used to have a proper free option.
Oh, Chris, don't get me started on all of my hot takes around the (mostly burst) streaming bubble. TL;DR, I have loads of concerns about the Western anime and gaming spaces still chasing that dragon despite the television industry robustly proving that streaming is unsustainable and exploits the end consumer.

Also, am I the only one who remembers the partnership between Crunchyroll and Funimation where they split their library along dub/sub lines, and you could watch titles owned by the other based on that distinction? That was rad! Do more consumer-friendly stuff like that, media companies!!!

I wouldn't hold your breath for that maneuver, given we're still waiting for Crunchyroll to exhume a bunch of anime out of the Funimation graveyard and get them onto their service. You're still paying more now for Crunchyroll though, ostensibly for those unified services. Also for supposed bonuses in using their hollowed-out, puppeteered corpse of what was the RightStuf store.
This leads to looking at another angle of all the money spent watching anime. If you're a physical media enjoyer (or just wanted to check out a show that might not be streaming), RightStuf's store used to have you covered semi-regularly. I'd often compare their convenient price-slashing promotions to the anime equivalent of Steam Sales. That sort of money-saving maneuver happens...less often now that they've turned it into the Crunchyroll Store.
Not to mention how that particular buyout also made buying adult material in the anime space from a trusted retail outlet a lot harder. Though, through a miasma of subsidiaries and corporate shenanigans that are hard to parse out, it seems like Buy Anime spun up to fill that need.
But who even has money to buy merch when most of it goes to just WATCHING anime anyway!??
Not to lose perspective, I'll admit that it's still technically cheaper than it's ever been to watch anime as an anime fan. Even the physical discs you can buy these days are more cost-effective than the years of "$20 for a DVD with four episodes on it" if you wanted to keep up on a newly licensed show as it was released. Pricey Aniplex sets aside.

Still, those streaming services add up, especially as they increase prices and restrict functionality. Depending on your reach, some numbers I crunched indicated you could be dropping an extra $300 to $600 a year to keep up with streaming simulcast releases. That's not an astronomical amount, but it'd still be enough to put some extra beef in your bell peppers.
Oh my god, yeah, we're a LONG way away from the inception of the Western anime fandom, where to watch just about anything, you had to mail some dude on the internet an envelope full of cash so that he would mail you back a fansubbed VHS tape that'd you'd have to send back to him in a week. Still, I wouldn't be a good socialist if I didn't point out where folks could instead find possible alternatives when companies ask you to fork over more and more for diminishing returns.
Yup, it's a question asked as often by freshly minted anime fans who don't have any spending money besides their allowance as it is by persistent fans trying to budget things out: How do you watch anime without paying for it?

Yes, the easy answer is "piracy," but we're not going to direct you toward a crime that could cost more than that yearly subscription. Fortunately, a more above-board alternative is already being explored, spurred by the shifting cost/value benefits of those premium streaming services.
Ah, piracy; don't do it, gang! If something is legally available for purchase in your region, it's your ethical obligation to consume it in a way that the creators benefit from! Not only is that how commerce has worked for basically all of human history, but it also benefits you as a consumer because those creators are apt to make media that you'll like with the money you give them!

Ah, Tubi. It's often the punching bag in the streaming wars. You have to give them credit where it's due. They've got a couple of bangers over there!

It's easy to regard Tubi with sort of an "Aw, you tried" mindset, but as the article up there indicates, their no-rent strategy has paid off—in viewership and advertising visibility, at least. They've also built an eclectic library where you can score some amusing contrasting screencaps, as indicated by your posting there.

You gotta love the multiplicity of this medium letting you assemble a grab bag aiming for the same audience featuring Robot Carnival, Grenadier, GeneShaft, and a South Korean Gundam knockoff. I'm mostly disappointed they couldn't use Captain of Cosmos's infinitely better alternative title.
Johnny Destiny: Space Ninja!?? That sounds like a cool dude! I wanna party with him and/or follow his adventures!

In my mind, this is what streaming platforms are supposed to look like and is what made them so appealing back when they first started popping off in the late aughts. Here we have a collection of current IPs whose business model revolves around having as wide a distribution as possible (Yu-Gi-Oh, Digimon, and most Shonen Jump anime), and stuff that's old enough or underperformed to the point where license holders don't' really mind that it's not generating maximum profits for them (Astro Boy 2003, Blue Dragon, Medabots, etc.). That's how you discover both mega-popular and super-niche IP, and that elevation is what streaming platforms used to be REALLY GOOD at doing.

Notably, that kind of sought-after discoverability made me realize there was this collection of anime to watch on Tubi in the first place. I found myself curious about the 2015 mecha exercise Heavy Object, and wouldn't you know it, that weird purple tube was the only place to stream it then.

Around the same time, I'd hankered to snack on the first season of Dagashi Kashi, which had disappeared from more major outlets seemingly due to licensing weirdness with the Funimation/Crunchyroll changeover. But Tubi, again, had it hanging around!
It felt like the second coming of tripping over anime episodes people had uploaded to YouTube back in the day.
Outside of a few causalities, ANN noted that in anticipation of the CR-FN merger, it feels like "legally lost" anime are becoming a thing of the past. So long as an anime is released somewhat recently, it seems more likely that you'll always be able to find it on a second- or third-string streaming service.

With that being said, I'm still waiting on someone to pick up Baccano! after it got a shout-out at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards this year!

Granted, the trick here is that whatever loopy licensing hoops Tubi had to jump through to have those aforementioned series has since stopped applying. Both Heavy Object and Dagashi Kashi are now gone from the service no sooner than I checked them out there just last year. So it's not a catch-all solution, and it might be a case of "If you see something you like in their catalog, watch it sooner rather than later." But hey, at least you can still watch the good Street Fighter anime movies and (checks notes) Eiken there.
Well, that would explain why all of Heavy Object is up on YouTube in 360p despite the platform's strict copyright system. If nobody's making money off of it, they're not going to be aggressive in policing those kinds of dubious releases.
Look, Heavy Object was mid, but that doesn't mean I'll advise people to watch it via jank options in potato quality. "Free" shouldn't equate to "sub-par."

I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that, as a Transformers fan, Tubi is the go-to place whenever I want to stream episodes of that franchise's various entries, including the anime ones! That's another conditional recommendation. Transformers Armada isn't exactly going to fill the void left by The Witch From Mercury after you've canceled your Crunchyroll subscription.
That's a great point! People shouldn't have to sacrifice quality while being budget-conscious. Thankfully, the RetroCrush streaming platform offers plenty of older anime of respectable quality, though many are behind a $5-a-month price tag.
Some would say you can't put a price on being able to stream Violence Jack.
Or Sherlock Hound (which Kennedy just reviewed for ANN) because that hidden gem is available for free on the streaming platform!
RetroCrush is cool because it ostensibly has a gimmick. Catering to the oldheads who want to stream stuff like Iria: Zeiram the Animation and Megazone 23 fills a niche (and makes them a natural to pal around with Discotek). They also branch out a bit with live-action films and even recent anime like Allison & Lillia.

Excuse me, I'm being informed that Allison & Lillia came out in 2008 and am now crumbling into dust.
While I can't help you out with the inevitable forward march of time, I can note some other budget-friendly anime gimmicks! Last October, Crunchyroll added its channel to Freevee, an ad-supported streaming platform owned by Amazon that's more overtly modeled as a cable replacement. The titles it brought to that platform are a bit of a grab bag, but it's a solid way to watch new-ish anime on the cheap.
Freevee sounds like one of those made-up streaming services people use to make fun of that whole sphere, but the upside there underscores just how much is available. I won't disparage anything letting someone watch Space Adventure Cobra for free.

There are a whole bunch of these kinds of services, stuff like Pluto TV, Crackle, Sling TV, etc. They all have seemingly similar libraries, but enough of their quirky inclusions that you can find yourself navigating to a particular platform because you went googling for how to watch one specific show.
Absolutely! A lot of what we're recommending here for people at opposite ends of the anime fan spectrum: newcomers who want to get a feel for the medium through eclectic titles and old-heads looking to watch something obscure. Unfortunately, there aren't many options for middle-of-the-road anime fans who mostly just want to watch the big, new titles.
Notably, much of what we're detailing here is focused on English-speaking audiences streaming in North America. I'm sure there's a whole other universe of eclectic options for budget-minded anime viewers in other parts of the world.
That's important to consider, too! Right now, international licensing seems to be a crap shoot mostly, but most regions, at the very least, have their version of Toonami. This is to say, a televised program dedicated to broadcasting popular anime in a dub appropriate for the region.
If we're going to include watching anime through good old-fashioned cable service, that doesn't necessarily fit the budget-conscious pursuit of "free." But I guess you could also argue that you need internet service to at least access most of the streaming platforms we've mentioned here, so really, it's all relative.
That's true, but considering I've only ever watched Toonami through my parent's cable plan, it's always been free to me!
I'd joke about that being the original version of pirating anime, but then I recall that stealing cable was totally a thing, so maybe there's more synergy there than I might have initially expected.

Of course, the most straightforward way to get new anime for free is right from the suppliers, which happens more than you might expect in our bold new digital age. You mostly see it when the anime in question is a tie-in for something the company behind it wants to promote, like with Uma Musume uploading all four episodes of Road to the Top to their YouTube channel for people to watch freely.
Does that make it even more apparent that the anime in question is technically a commercial? Yes, but who am I to look an anime gift horse in the mouth?
It works out when some of these toy commercials are pretty dang entertaining. This was the genius of Gundam Build Fighters back in the day, putting a rad robot battle cartoon up to watch for free as a loss leader that got people buying up a bunch of model kits. It worked when the show in question was good. Less so when it was a few episodes of the lackluster Metaverse anime advertising a project that ironically led to the model kits themselves being pirated.
Yeah, I like a good deal as much as the next guy, but I really can't stress enough that money-trading hands are super important to keep this anime ecosystem going. Catching something for free when the owners have decided to release it that way is great, but those loss-leading business models always sketch me out and make me worried about worker exploitation on the back end.

C'mon, anime industry! Just let me pay for the stuff I actually want to watch! Preferably in a way where I know the people who worked on it are getting most of that money!

It does mean it's a nice gesture when some of these series stay up despite having done their job already. I cracked earlier about being unable to watch Witch From Mercury on any of those Great Value streaming services. But the twist is that GundamInfo still offers the adventures of Suletta and pals on their YouTube channel, even after they've already sold a bunch of Aerial model kids...and Guntank model kids...and Aerial snacks.

The other side of the arrangement is that the mess of modern anime that airs these days can't be willed into existence without money changing hands at least a few times. If you're craving creator support, a wealth of indie animators out there are sharing their stuff on various art platforms with digital tip jars ready for you to contribute. But as long as the corporate licenses meet consolidation down to the level that platforms like Crunchyroll strive for, you'll generally need to front an entry fee to those suits for the new shows.
Hey, hearing I can have my own Suletta Sunday whenever I want makes me want to buy a model kit, so there might be something to this release model!

And you're right; middlemen and the obfuscation that comes with their presence are just a part of the modern anime landscape. While that's a bummer, humanity has never really figured out a super ideal way to create and monetize art at scale. So, I guess I can't be too mad that the economics of one of my favorite artistic mediums is less than ideal.

The good news is that by uncovering all these options for free anime, I might make it to payday while still being able to include some meat in my diet! Satisfying home-cooked meals and I never have to pay to watch Dirty Pair again? You can't put a price on that.
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