2026 is not
exactly being the favorite year for otaku wallets. After completely eliminating
its free plan with ads on January 1, Crunchyroll decided that
it was the perfect time to squeeze a little more out of its subscribers. As of
today, March 4, the controversial rate increase for existing
users comes into force, and the community has responded in the only logical
way: by canceling their accounts en masse.
First-class
pricing, third-party platform
The orange
company's official excuse for raising $2 to all its plans in the United States
(leaving the Fan plan at $9.99, the Mega Fan at $13.99 and the Ultimate Fan at
$17.99 per month) is the development of original games, the addition of manga
and the expansion of its anime catalog. However, users are furious that the
basic platform continues to have unforgivable shortcomings for a service that
now charges almost the same as Netflix.
Social
media was flooded with complaints and screenshots of cancellations. "Time
to cancel, prices go up and Crunchyroll barely works," wrote one user on X
(Twitter). On forums like Reddit, the community shredded the disastrous
interface design, pointing out how confusing and erratic the format of seasons
is, especially in long anime like One Piece. Added to this are the
loading problems in the application for Smart TVs and recent scandals with the
quality of the subtitles, such as the translation disaster that occurred with
the anime of Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction.
"Piracy
is a service problem"
As
expected, this blow to the pocket revived the eternal debate about piracy.
Although Sony (owner of Crunchyroll) and global alliances such as ACE have
invested millions in shutting down piracy giants such as Zoro.to and AnimeDao
in recent years, users claim that the problem is not a lack of morals, but the
quality of the product offered.
"They
literally raise the prices for what, their service sucks and pirate sites have
better user interface, better video players and better translations, plus they
already caught them using AI to make their subtitles," said one fan,
echoing Gabe Newell's famous phrase that piracy is, at its core, a problem of
poor customer service.
Despite the avalanche of criticism, a small sector of the community defends the platform, pointing out that the basic plan remained at $8 since 2019, while other streaming services have raised their prices up to three times in the same period.
