The Anime We Can't Watch Anymore

[00:04] and extremely well- reggarded anime that you cannot watch legally anymore. Streaming is great. I love streaming. I love the ability to take my phone wherever I go. And as long as I have an internet connection, I can watch anime.

[00:18] I don't need to pre-download things. So, you know, sometimes that's beneficial. And in short, at least for this position, anime has never been more accessible on a general scale. The further back in

[00:31] time you go, the harder it is for anime to actually legally be in your hands. Either just because it's not available or even if it is, it's expensive. And you know, when you're a kid in the '9s and early 2000s, you don't got a lot of

[00:44] money. Not to say the kids today have much money, but this is not a channel be talking about like products essentially and the nonavailability of said products, but not an economics channel. So, like when streaming first

[00:59] like anime streaming in like the the early to mid2010s, early to mid2010s, uh the the pitch was anything you want anytime. Now, the asterisk about anything you want was usually what is

[01:13] popular at that time. And it made a lot of sense and it worked as a marketing pitch. which got a lot of people subscribing to a variety of streaming services. We all pay the monthly fee for god knows how many different services

[01:27] and for probably far too long depending on how often you watch things. And it hasn't been until like the more recent couple of years where that promise of everything uh starts to become less and less accurate because even if an anime

[01:43] 2015, we're now in 2025. Is it still popular? Is it still available? Sometimes the answers to those questions is yes, but also no. The reality is is that anime licensing for North America, because

[01:58] and that's fine. Uh licensing is temporary. Physical media is forever, but I'm I'm jumping points here. Over time, if a streaming service licenses an license will expire at some point in time, and it is up to like the pencil

[02:13] pushers or whoever is running the numbers at those various streaming companies to be like, "Okay, it's going to cost x amount of money to re-up this license to stream this show for this amount of time. How popular is it? How

[02:26] likely are our subscribers to actually watch this thing? Will we make our money back?" And apparently the answer to a lot of that is no. This is also assuming the license back in the first place, which is another whole ball of wax. And

[02:42] it's also assuming that the shows in question ever went to streaming in the first place cuz a lot of them never did. So side tangent since the start of this year roughly. Um I've been part of a podcast. It's an anime podcast called

[02:54] friends uh Jeff Thu and Miles Athetherton sit down once a week uh and Athetherton sit down once a week uh and discuss anime. And our goal has been to develop a list of the 100 best anime of all time according to us, not anybody

[03:10] else, which has points of contention, sure. But the thing that I've noticed the most is when we have our meetings to try and sit down and discuss, hey, what anime do we want to talk about in the coming weeks? Sometimes when I think of

[03:23] a show, the problem is is that I immediately think next. I would love to show Miles and Jeff this anime. There is no way for them to watch it. We don't live in the same place. Miles is out in California. Jeff alternates between

[03:36] Canada and Japan. Even if I own the physical media in question for the anime just hand them the physical media so that they can watch it at their leisure. other things that all three of us are doing, it's usually hard enough to find

[03:50] time for us to sit down and discuss the anime, let alone trying to block off who knows how many hours it would take to actually watch all of these shows, might be able to find the time individually in our schedules, but then

[04:03] for all that to line up so we can do a bit of a watch party for movies and bit of a watch party for movies and short OVAs. Sure. for longer 24 52 70 plus episode shows that is less viable. So if I want to show these anime to my

[04:19] good friends so that we can discuss deliberate and then determine the goodness the greatness of any of these shows they first need to be able to watch it. And there is a not insignificant amount of anime both in

[04:34] existence and also just like on my wall behind me that like I can't tell them to behind me that like I can't tell them to go watch without the assumption that they are going to have to find it in places that exist

[04:49] on the internet. And I know for this purpose we don't fit the regular mold of what like an average anime viewer coming into the medium is going to want. That's The streaming services want to make sure, hey, you're watching Solo

[05:03] Jiu-Jitsu Kaizen, right? You're all caught up. Hey, Demon Slayer is coming right? Dondon, you've caught up with Dondon, right? All of these popular good. These are the things that the streaming services uh care about. Not a

[05:18] like, "Hey, uh, you want to watch Rosa Versailles, right? You remember Rosa Versail? Great show. Great show. Uh, you want to watch a Banner of the Stars, right? That's a good show. Um, you want to watch Kano, His and Her

[05:31] Circumstances, you know, the the the romance comedy directed by Hidano Yeah, you want to watch that, right? I would love for you to go watch Shigfumi. I would love for you to go watch Hibane Renme. I would love to sit you down and

[05:45] force you to watch the first episode of Technolize just for your opinion. And I can't do any of that because a lot of times an not insignificant amount of those shows were never available for streaming in the first place. And even

[05:59] if they were, they are long gone. I do actually have to give shoutouts to my uh podcasting partner Jeff for doing a similar video as to this about a year and a half to two years ago, but that was mostly focused on uh anime that

[06:13] it used to be part of Funimation's library. And that's not an insignificant amount of anime here. So that's worth mentioning that like Funimation had a lot of shows. Some of the shows that I just mentioned were Funimation titles.

[06:27] Are they available anymore? No. Let's say that I wanted to get them to watch Hibid Renme. Hibid Renme is a great series. It's not actually on the shelf behind me cuz it's still at my alternate set that I haven't used for

[06:40] most of this year. It's annoying that I made that set and put all of my prize want to use them as props that I can't, that's fun. But if I wanted them to watch Hibernate Renme. Uh where is Hiban Renme available? Hib Benet Renme.

[06:55] Oh, Crunch Roll's got a page for it. Oh, look at that. I can add it to my watch list. But unfortunately, this show's videos aren't available anymore. Why the hell not? They had the license at one point. It was available at one point.

[07:10] It's not anymore. So, if I want to watch, if I want to show someone a hy reme, I can't. I have to physically hand them my DVDs in order to do that. If I want to do this above board and fully legally, I need to do that. Looking into

[07:23] it a little bit deeper, uh, according to Reddit, from the people that actually was available on Funimation and then briefly on Crunchyroll, even when they had it, they only had the English dub of it, which I mean is fine cuz I actually

[07:39] specifically. But like, if you want to watch the sub, out of luck, I guess. And that's not the only one. Oh, let me look this up. Um, if I want to show my good friends Miles and Jeff Naoki Urasawa's Monster from 2004,

[07:57] it is as I am sitting here on Netflix, but I made a video on that couple years back and at that time, if I recall correctly, it was not available anywhere. Also, fun fact is that that video included a not insignificant

[08:13] amount of talking about comparing Monsters sub and dub cuz I like both for different reasons. Netflix here only seems to have the English sub. They seems to have the English sub. They don't have the dub at all and that is

[08:26] almost certainly lost media at this point cuz Monster never got a physical release. Well, that's actually a lie. It did. How many episodes did that had? They had one volume that I think Viz released when they had the license, if

[08:38] they still do. They released one volume and then that was kind of it. I don't know if they just decided, yeah, one volume with I think only four or maybe eight episodes out of the 70 some odd that exist within Monster. Yeah, that's

[08:51] So, it's like, where are you supposed to get it? How are you supposed to watch get it? How are you supposed to watch Liam O'Brien be a depressed doctor for a while for 74 episodes? Interestingly enough, I have found this

[09:07] uh upscale project for a monster that exists on the internet archive. legal, is it? And that's sort of the thing. It's like the places may have it

[09:19] license expires and they never bring it up again cuz it doesn't make financial sense for them to do so. And then there's also like the other side of where I don't think it's a financial question at all. If you want to watch

[09:31] Full Metal Alchemist right now, where do you got to go? Well, thankfully if you want to watch Brotherhood, which most Full Metal Alchemist fans will tell you that's the only thing you should watch and to them, uh you can do that on

[09:44] dub. If you want to watch Full Metal Alchemist 2003 either as a point of comparison or you know it was a good show and it was the Full Metal Alchemist for like 8 years until Brotherhood came out in what 2010. It was such a good

[09:59] show and you can't watch it anymore. And yeah, you can be that guy or those watch Full Amalgamus 2003 cuz Brotherhood exists and to that I say get out. It's it's fine to love Brotherhood. It's fine to prefer Brotherhood. Let me

[10:13] watch 2003 when I get the itching for it. Let me listen to Arenducasa's Alons. Goddamn it. And that that was like the start of where I first noticed that Anniplex was clawing things back. I feel like there was a point in time where

[10:25] Anniplex and Funimation just were not on good terms cuz everything that they did have magically disappeared and has never come back. Where can I watch Bakano right now? Can I watch Bakano anywhere? There's a lot of Anniplex titles that

[10:37] just purely are not available anymore. Like a part of me feels like the only Crunchyroll right now is because they know that it is worth probably the pay to get the claw out of Anniplex's hands. I mean, it also helps now that

[10:52] Crunchyroll is owned by Sony and you know, Sony also owns Anniplex and yeah, there's probably some inner office cross talk and hate there, but at least it's not like crossing company borders anymore. But like if I want to watch

[11:04] Bakano right now, I can only do so with my my existing DVD, my my like 15-year-old DVD set. I think either the UK or Australia had a Blu-ray set time, but I don't believe we ever got it in the States. And even if we did, it

[11:19] would have been Anniplex pricing, and I would not have wanted to pay that. And even if that was available at one point, it's not anymore. Any given anime season has about 30 shows. Of those 30 shows, only probably like maybe five of them

[11:34] are worth a damn. Maybe only two of them are popular enough to justify a physical release. But even then, some of my favorite shows from like the last 10 years have never gotten a physical release anywhere. Sometimes shows are

[11:49] just so immensely popular that a physical release may be like sneakily shipped out there. I need to remind myself to actually go and pick myself up Blu-ray now that hopefully all of it is released. Sometimes you get really weird

[12:02] releases like Dondon season 1 is being released by GK Kids and I love GK Kids. But like historically GK Kids usually does films and I love that and I'm happy for that. But they put out Dondon and I'm like okay great thank you GK Kids.

[12:16] Like say let's say I wanted A Place Further than the Universe. There is a Blu-ray set out there but it was released in Australia. I need to import the Australian version. Like the consequences of all of this basically

[12:28] boil down to there is not an insignificant amount of very popular anime, very good, very great and outstanding anime that are just going to become lost media from an official and legal standpoint. And I'm not saying

[12:43] that like all of these are monumental. Some of them sometimes are. Like you might not know it now because it is somehow available on Netflix at the moment but I remember a time a not insignificant amount of my life where uh

[12:58] streaming was popular and Neon Genesis Evangelion was not available anywhere like anywhere and then Netflix picked it up and put it out there. Why did they do that? Because it was stupid popular and people wanted to watch it and it wasn't

[13:12] people wanted to watch it and it wasn't available anywhere. And so, is that eventually going to be dropped from the service? Maybe. You don't know. There was so much anime from like when I was getting into watching anime full-time,

[13:25] when I was getting into YouTube for the first time. You can't watch those shows. I'm just sitting here double-checking some titles to make sure that I'm correct. At least some of them. His circumstances. Kano. Uh, I guess I have

[13:39] to take that back because you can watch the dub of it. Nomi Entertainment put out the dub of it on YouTube 14 years ago and it's still here. What?

[13:51] Well, okay, that's great. I mean, I have the DVD set, but I wasn't expecting that. So thankfully that one is not going to become lost media un unless until you know uh maybe the legal side of things realizes that this 14-year-old

[14:06] upload of the dub of His and Her Circumstances is just on YouTube and then they pull that down for legal reasons. Uh but I'm happy it's there. Go watch His and Her Circumstances. My god, I want these things to be available to

[14:20] people. I want them to be available at a reasonable price. And sometimes the reasonable price is a streaming subscription. I've supported streaming services before. I still do in many cases because, you know, it is a

[14:34] reasonably cheap way of watching anime. And, you know, I grew up in the time where you would spend $40 on a DVD and it only had four episodes on it. Spending 10 bucks, 10 bucks an episode, it's not the greatest, I'll tell you

[14:47] some cases that still would be preferred to not having it at all. You could go on Amazon right now and get the anime classics version of Bakano for a cool

[14:59] classics version of Bakano for a cool price of $46. I would do anything to get more people to watch Bakano, but I won't pay that. What I want to see is easier and better ways to preserve older content. I want

[15:15] ways to preserve older content. I want anime from the 80s, the '9s, 80s, 90s, and now. Oh god, it's not now anymore. the the 2000s is not now, Tristan. I want anime from all of these eras to be available to people. I want

[15:29] to be able to show them things from those eras and not just the the uber populars that like become required watching. I don't think it'll be from the '90s. I don't think that'll be difficult. There have been times where

[15:42] various Gundam from the '90s have gone in and out of licensing. Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're available on home media, a lot of times they're not. And as someone who loves watching anime, who does this essentially for a

[15:56] living, at least in part, I'd like that to still be available for everybody who comes after me. Everybody who is around now, everyone who will be around in the years to come. These licenses are expiring and getting renewed sometimes

[16:12] expiring and getting renewed sometimes on a whim. And it's not our whim. It's some nameless face or corporate suit or what have you. And if they decide that you're not going to watch a thing, then you're just not going to watch it

[16:26] you're just not going to watch it anymore, I guess. But this is like history here. We're talking about these shows existed and still exist on someone's hard drive, but can't always

[16:39] be enjoyed. And it bothers me when it feels so simple. Even if the the complicated minutia of contracts, the economy, pricing, all this other stuff is not fully within my wheelhouse, I don't believe that anime history should

[16:54] don't believe that anime history should disappear just because the paperwork disappear just because the paperwork expired. And hopefully that will change. At least as I've been sitting here, I've gotten a little couple of bursts of hope

[17:07] doom and gloom I came into this recording with. But it could all disappear tomorrow and that would be very very sad. But that's it for me.

[17:19] video. Thank you to my patrons who support my channel and allow me to continue to rant about anime and sometimes the lack thereof for significant amounts of time. And a very special thank you to patrons like Rif

[17:33] and Bonapart, Omar Showman, Ross Emerson, Hector Monttoer, Aiden, and Cityo because I can't continue this without your support. So, however much you're able to help, I would greatly appreciate it. And as I go and venture

[17:48] into the worlds of trying to wrap up 2025 in a variety of different ways, you too should go and watch some of these classic anime from years past. Cuz maybe in the years to come, you might regret

[18:03] that you didn't do so. So then, watch more anime and stay frosty.