Author: Gabriel Persechino-Forest Published: January 6th, 2018
Amazon is ending its streaming service specifically “curated” for anime fans. It seems that poor service, refusal to remedy the situation and fan discontent with Amazon’s attitudes couldn’t be overcome no matter how much money or how many exclusives were thrown at it. Or perhaps Japanese companies started fighting back. A statement was released concerning this move:
We have decided to move the curated catalogs of Anime Strike and Heera into Prime Video so that more customers can enjoy this content as part of their Prime membership.
The usual corporate platitudes which translates to “Don’t ask.” This current move might help explain why Sentai has been licensing in mass for HIDIVE this season though.
This actually directly relates to an article I made recently and perfectly demonstrates the fan efforts that have kept this hobby as intact as it currently. Not even the power of super corporations can overcome a determined fanbase for a simple reason: As much as they’d like us to think we are at the mercy of whatever decisions they make, corporations still need us to actually buy what they sell and this is why consumers have, and always will have, all the power. Think about it this way: Crunchyroll is a relatively small company next to a giant like Amazon and yet they’re the ones currently winning the anime streaming market. This is only possible because of fan support and because Japanese companies highly likely do not want to deal with one super company monopolizing the market and are probably taking their own measures as well.
Amazon has historically besieged the markets they intend to enter until all competition is gone and they are free to establish a monopoly. It would be rather interesting if anime was one of the few markets they cannot play with as they wish. With any hope, Amazon won’t continue its aggressive entry into the market and will phase out their anime content in the coming years until such a time as their current contracts expire.
Source: Crunchyroll and Article Image: Amazon’s Anime Strike’s Home Page