Miles Atherton

Back in March of this year, the popular bootleg streaming site HiAnime shut down. With an estimated 13 - 15M unique monthly active users worldwide, it was one of the largest piracy operations in the world of anime. Usually when the top piracy site goes down, a small-but-meaningful percentage of its users move to legal anime sources, mostly out of convenience, because finding another pirate site would take some effort.

HiAnime, the biggest bootleg anime streaming platform on the English-speaking internet, is reportedly dead. Piracy has a long and unique history in the world of anime, and so I thought I’d take this opportunity to give some context to the site, and respond to some of the most common reactions I’ve seen on the topic of HiAnime and anime piracy in general. 1.

Since the most recent round of Crunchyroll layoffs, subscribers have noticed frequent issues such as new episodes airing late, audio tracks getting swapped, typesetting mishaps, and more. But now it looks like Crunchyroll is making a purposeful change to how they release new anime, and it’s not for the better. But first: our simulcast ranking of August’s titles now that we’ve presented them to clients, an update of last issue’s Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle chart, and more… - Klaudia A.