So there’s this logic about Piracy being a service issue more than just a price value evaluation because like, if the service is great people are willing to pay and people want to see things they like continue to thrive and exist and they’re willing to support it.

And sure enough, I make a point to put my money and fanart and support behind things I want to see succeed. But uh, we all know how dysfunctional modern late stage capitalism (read: businesses valuing money and control far more than the people their business is supposedly for) is self-sabotaging by design.

So. Recently I’ve been on a Granblue kick. I started playing Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising and enjoyed it a lot for its lovely aesthetic, great music, exciting gameplay, and much more story content than I expected. then Granblue Fantasy: Relink came out and I gave it a try and it’s super good too for similar reasons! So then I try out the browser based Gacha Granblue Fantasy game as well and it’s got quite a bit of charm, but the official client for it is kinda clunky and there’s no official US app for it either, one just plays in the browser or finds other ways to rig it up. (I ADORE Vikala by the way, I want her in Granblue Rising and Granblue Relink!!!)

So I find out Cygames put out the first few episodes of the Granblue Anime on Youtube, but it’s only the sub. That’s fine, I watch a few episodes and enjoy it, but subbed anime tends to be a harder commitment for me than having a dub that I can listen to while I’m doing other things on the side. And just a couple of hours ago I found out that AniPlex did indeed release a Granblue Fantasy Anime with English Dub! And it’s got all the voices I’ve become familiar with from Rising and Relink! So I try looking up how to watch the dub version.

First result: Funimation. Except it was already in the news recently that Sony (who bought Crunchyroll AND Funimation because the anti-trust laws aren’t really being enforced) will be shutting down Funimation and migrating everyone’s accounts to Crunchroll (and deleting anyone’s Funimation libraries).

So okay, I search again. No point going with Funi if they’re just gonna take my money and run in a few days. The next result unsurprisingly is Crunchyroll. I click on the link and it’s taking me to Season 2. Which is not what I’m looking for, I want the English Dub of Season 1 because I’m new to the anime. I try to use the search feature, but Crunchroll takes me to the login prompt for some reason.

So I log into my old abandoned Crunchyroll account, only to be immediately prompted that I need to choose what to do with my Funimation data: Merge, Overwrite, or Discard. I choose to merge, because while I didn’t use Funimation a lot, I’d prefer not to have all of my money spent on it deleted just so they can charge me for it again later. I search for Granblue and again the only result I’m seeing is Season 2, and specifically only the subtitled version, not the English Dub.

So I back out and search on Google again and get a promising link to Amazon for the anime episodes… or so I thought! Season 1! All the episodes! English! But big text on the screen says “This video is currently unavailable to watch in your location”.

So I’m back at Google, I can’t find any streaming service that I already pay for that has the show, I can’t find a new service to sign up for that will give me the version that I already know exists, I can’t find a new copy of the supposedly existent blurays for sale anywhere and I’m getting to the point where I’m seriously considering digging around Usenet or some other platform to see if I can find the show that I would have paid for in the first place. I click on one of those sketchy Google links. You know the ones.

To my surprise. All of the episodes. 1080p. Multiple subtitle options. English and Japanese dub options for every episode. Multiple different video providers for each episode in case one goes down. Downloadable without DRM making it hard to use on older or uncommon devices. Auto-play, Auto-next, dimming options, intro skipping, outro skipping, and while it has some extremely annoying popup ads that try to clickjack my browser, they only show up the first time I click anywhere on the page per video, then stop getting in the way. A service almost as good as Netflix for the price of one (potentially malware laden) ad per video. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they had an option where I could pay to make these ads ago away. Even if it costed the same as Netflix does right now it’d be a better offer for actually having the darn show I was looking for.

So why would a site like this exist?
1: Because somewhere somebody was like “why do all of these other streaming services suck? I bet I could do it better for cheaper”.

2: Poses an existential threat to the existing status quo of streaming services if they’re convinced they can “win” people’s money by just doing what they were already doing or cracking down harder on people. This is the standard they need to beat, and it’s a standard set by people who do not have even a thousandth of the resources these big companies do. Do better.

3: Money isn’t the point… but it is necessary for survival (at least in our current culture). Since there is no incentive for them to enshittify their platform- consumers can easily go to any of their other similar low/no-upfront-cost competitors if things start getting too much of a pain to deal with- they *have* to take steps to keep the site attractive to visitors and to keep repeat visitors in. Those visitors in turn get those annoying ads or maybe throw in some donations which keep the site running. Not out of an aim for infinite expansion or infinite profit, for subsistence and sustainability. The accountability is baked into the design of the service. There is no “The Algorithm” to blame for shortcomings or unusual behavior. It’s just the society itself. And if a site like this is being operated primarily by just a handful of people, the ad income may well enough be enough to keep them alive and well supported more than the normalized wage-theft infinite grindtype 9-5 busywork job. And probably a lot more satisfying to boot since one doesn’t build a site like this unless they care about the content.

So uh, “nine anime” is cool or something I guess, lol.

BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH WHY IS IT SO HARD TO JUST PLUNK DOWN 60 USD TO WATCH THE GRANBLUE ANIME WITH ENGLISH DUB THROUGH AN OFFICIALLY APPROVED MEANS

I WILL GIVE YOU THE MONEY JUST GIVE ME THE SHOW, PREFERRABLY AS A DOWNLOAD SO I’M NOT WASTING MY LIMITED LIVING SPACE

THE GRANBLUE GAMES ARE ALREADY EATING MY MONEY SO IT’S NOT LIKE I’M NOT WILLING TO PAY

I sorta want to reuse some of the assets from one of my abandoned game ideas to do a new stream layout. Buuuut I’d need to redo how the actual chat overlay works, or use the default browser-based chat to get the text to fit with the rest of the theme, and that’s more effort than I want to put in this weekend.

Also kinda considering moving the chat to be vertically oriented instead and use horizontal character banner art instead, but I’d have to put a bit more thought into what kind of drawing I could make for a horizontal layout if I go that route. idk. Would definitely read easier though.

It’s sorta like a Retrospective where somebody got started with the series in Tekken 7, liked it, then went back and played all of the main Tekken games and talks about the experience and what they learned from it. It’s really cool!

TODAY IS TEKKEN 8 DAY!!!!

Only 7 hours and 30 minutes until it’s available!!!

TEKKEN.