With some pretty poor dealings over the past year when it comes to the anime that they’ve acquired in order to block Netflix from dominating the realm alongside Crunchyroll, which boosted their position by partnering with Funimation in order to stave off the massive money of those two competitors, Amazon today announced the launch of Anime Strike, “the first curated on-demand subscription from Amazon Channels.”
The new service is available to Prime members in the U.S. for $4.99 per month after a 7-day free trial. According to what’s been revealed so far, “[S]ubscribers can enjoy over 1,000 episodes and movies, ad-free, with new episodes added weekly. Fans will appreciate anime episodes with vivid action, deep plotlines and relationships, complex characters, stunning visuals, strong narratives, and plot twists. Anime Strike includes recent hits like The Great Passage, and same-day-as-broadcast series with episodes released weekly direct from Japan, including Scum’s Wish and Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga.”
Competition on the streaming side is definitely continuing to heat up as growth slows and carving out new niches to attract becomes paramount. For new viewers, there’s definitely the hurdle of getting a prime membership (which has a yearly price of $100 or a month of $10), but it comes with a whole lot of benefits that Amazon hopes to entice you with beyond the streaming (and their own original programming) since they’re deeply embedded with their Kindle and Echo devices as well as the obvious shopping elements.
Honestly, it’s easy to see the resistance that a lot of fans will have, especially from a certain age and mindset. If you’ve shifting to pure consumption without ownership and have decided that home video releases are no longer for you, this is an ideal model. Even with a Crunchyroll membership in your pocket, adding another $15 or so a month is still less than half the cost of one DVD or Blu-ray TV season a month and you get a wide range of material out of it. I suspect it’ll take Amazon awhile to really build not just a solid library but a solid viewership for it, but they’re the company that will take the long view approach for it and will wait out (or buy out) the competition.
This is an easy to mock moment but fans would best be wary of doing so knowing how Amazon and others like Netflix operate.
About Amazon Channels
Amazon Channels is the new way for Prime members to watch over 100 on-demand channels – no cable required, cancel anytime, and no additional apps to download. The service includes a wide variety of popular and more niche video subscriptions to choose from, including HBO, SHOWTIME, STARZ, PBS KIDS, Acorn TV, A+E Network, AMC, Cinemax and Seeso. The video subscriptions features numerous benefits for viewers, including:
- Pay for only the channels you want
- No cable package required
- Watch anywhere, anytime on over 650 compatible devices
- Self-service cancellation of any subscription at anytime
- Create your own custom lineup from over 100 premium and specialty channels
- Free trials on all subscriptions
- Convenience of one account, no additional passwords to remember
- Trusted, reliable streaming from Amazon Video
Video subscriptions with Amazon Channels are available in the US with support for all the devices Amazon Video is available on—Fire TV, Fire and other iOS and Android tablets, connected TVs, game consoles, iOS and Android phones, and laptops.
