This Week in Anime - Anime in YouTubeLand

Coop
Lucas, many great and terrible acts were committed on the internet twenty years ago. We'd gone back to the past to play the shitty games that suck ass, saw the evolution of dance, and most relevant to both of us, watched anime in three parts. Of course, I speak of the now-preeminent video platform, YouTube.

© Google

In some ways, we've come a long way since then, and not so much in others.

Lucas
How do we go back, Coop? How do we go back to an age when YouTube was just one of several video hosting platforms on the internet instead of a moral and economic quagmire that nobody, least of all its owner Alphabet, seems to want to improve; but now it's too much of a pillar of the digital media ecosystem to do away with outright???

But regardless of the moral and moderation failings of the now-old-enough-to-drink website, it's undeniable that YouTube is an entertainment behemoth with viewership numbers and cultural cache on par with major streaming platforms! It's no surprise, then, that anime distributors and owners of a series outright would choose to release their works on the platform when the conditions are right! Today, I'd love it if we chatted about the underlying circumstances that make YouTube so appealing for releasing anime today, as well as the new and old titles that now live on the platform!

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Absolutely! For many fans around our age and younger, YouTube has served as a (mostly free) gateway to discovering new favorites, fascinating curios, or just outright garbage (complementary) to chuckle over. In the platform's early years (from 2005 to 2009-ish), I remember watching cool anime opening collection videos and full-on episodes split up into three-part chunks—each under ten minutes long. That practice was a necessity at the time because it took years for YouTube to build up the infrastructure for that to happen. In fact, going past ten minutes was initially a luxury reserved for the first handful of folks who made a living off the site as YouTube partners. As a middle schooler back then, I specifically remember watching all of Kashimashi ~Girl Meets Girl~ in that fashion on a Sunday afternoon. This was alongside copious Ranma 1/2 clips (specifically, one of its movies) because I'd been reading the manga.

© 1992 Rumiko Takahashi/SHOGAKUKAN・Kitty Film・Fuji TV

Though rare these days, a "part 1/3" from that era can still be occasionally found on the site. However, it's important to point out that none of these uploads were official—just fans circulating the tapes as always.

For so much of the oughts and 2010s, YouTube was GREAT for watching old anime that didn't have an avenue for an official release, or had enough dubious stakeholders that no one was motivated to file a copyright claim against the uploads.

© INTV・VAP

I'm not ashamed to admit that I watched all of the Berserk (1997) dub on YouTube back in the day because, at the time, there really was no other means for me to watch what's nothing short of a foundational work in the Western anime fandom. Thankfully, Discotek put out an official Blu-ray of the series a few years back, making it more broadly available now, but there used to be lots of glaring gaps in what anime was available to EN audiences, and old YouTube was great at meeting that demand.

Berserk '97 is a perfect example of a classic that's fallen by the wayside for one reason or another. I also had the pleasure of writing the copy on that recent Blu-ray release, too. However, for every Berserk, there's a Birdy the Mighty, Call Me Tonight, or What's Michael? that's caught up in rights confusion or other matters which preclude it from getting an official streaming or home video release. That's where YouTube tends to come in.

But sometimes the kinks get worked out, and we're thrown an official bone! For example, how about that stealth announcement for a new release of Phantom Quest Corp. from Media Blasters? I'm pretty sure that'll look way better than an ancient VHS rip.

While YouTube uploads of unavailable anime definitely met a need back in the day, they often did so with an image and sound quality that left a lot to be desired. Today, I'd much rather shell out a bit of money for a series I want to watch if it means I can watch it in a higher quality, and support the various people who worked on said release in the process!

© 高橋留美子／小学館

Now that we've painted a picture of just how ubiquitous YouTube was with anime piracy as little as a decade ago, I hope our younger readers (young people read this, right?) understand just how bizarre it is for anime fans around our age to see numerous series airing legally, and sometimes exclusively, on YouTube!

© Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima/SHUEISHA, Watanare Production Committee

No kidding! A handful of publishers had flirted with official YouTube uploads in the late aughts and early 2010s, but it was never done for currently airing shows. Probably because it couldn't be. Keep in mind, this was way before Crunchyroll went legit or simulcasting was an everyday part of the business. To throw a few examples out there, Funimation had posted the entirety of titles such as Birdy the Mighty: Decode and Serial Experiments Lain, TMS kept throngs of Sonic X fans happy in 2015 before expanding out, and much of the now-defunct Nozomi Entertaiment's catalog is still available to watch quazi-legally—featuring shows like Utena, Captain Tylor, and Dirty Pair.

© TriF/Mecha-Ude Production Committee

Setting that vast back catalog aside, the 2019 release of Mecha-Ude's pilot episode sticks out to me as one of the very first, brand-new titles to hit the platform. It'd be another five years before the proper series arrived on streaming, but this achievement is nothing to sneeze at. If anything, it almost feels like early proof that a high-budget independent animation could work on the platform. Unfortunately, this pilot has been set to private since then.

It's not that surprising in hindsight that a bunch of business people would realize the utility YouTube has in drumming up interest, and therefore investors, on a project before they realized its potential as a distribution platform, but this was still cool to see in 2019 and felt like one of the first big acknowledgements of anime's growing global audience!

Though it's worth noting that companies uploading series that they're not really sure what to do with to YouTube is still happening today! As Chris and I discussed in a previous column, REMOW is uploading all of the classic shonen gag anime KochiKame to the It's Anime YouTube channel!

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And while they have switched to uploading episodes in batches since Chris and I first talked about this surprise release, they seem to be keeping at it! Even if I don't personally care for the show, it's cool that a super influential anime is now hyper accessible to wide audiences and that this kind of distribution model has some kind of appeal to rights holders!

It's a good way of getting these influential titles out in front of new eyeballs, even if there isn't exactly a great business case to bring them to home video in this neck of the woods. Some titles just don't sell.

© K, S, I/S, UCP © Cygames, Inc

While that work is fantastic, I have to say, I'm even more impressed by REMOW's efforts with brand-new series. Tougen Anki, There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover, and The Hongry Hongry Honse— I mean Umamusume: Cinderella Gray have wowed me by taking advantage of YouTube's strengths. The company digs into subtitle features that only a handful of AMVs have touched, resulting in wonderfully styled subs (in multiple languages) that go beyond simple closed captioning, which REMOW does still use quite regularly as well. Not to mention that they're posting full-season marathons of certain series—an old practice that exploded once the ten-minute upload limit was gone. Like you can go watch all of honse for free right now!

Well, for a limited time that is. REMOW's titles (and most shows that officially hit YouTube these days) come with a two-to-three-week availability window. If a viewer misses that window, they have to catch up on a paid platform. The said platform is Prime Video in the case of REMOW's titles. While it's a frustrating practice for viewers, I get why it's done on the business side. These new titles need to make their money back somehow—be it merch, a sliver of the streaming bucks, or home video deals. Though I feel a little bit different about older titles because they're often not the focus when you're selling the latest and greatest.

© Tadatoshi Fujimaki / Shueisha, KILL BLUE Production Committee

But until that window closes, I can savor your name on the big screen as much as I want, Lucas!

Lmao, this is the part of the column where I disclose that I'm doing PR for the KILL BLUE anime, which is currently airing on REMOW's It's Anime YouTube channel, and a BUNCH of other platforms (but will get to the emerging phenomenon of a wide, multi-platform anime release and what that means for the biz in a little bit).

© Tadatoshi Fujimaki / Shueisha, KILL BLUE Production Committee

From the series you've listed above, it's already starting to become clear which kinds of shows are best suited to a YouTube release: those with alternative profit models or those that likely wouldn't stand out from the crowd otherwise.

© Cygames, Inc

While we could debate until the cows come home over whether the Umamusume anime is a glorified commercial or an artistic work in its own right, the fact of the matter is that a part of the reason the show was made was to get folks into the game, and hopefully spend money once they're in that ecosystem. If Cygames can make direct revenue via the game, they don't really need to get a cut of a subscription fee or flat payment from a distributor, and are incentivized to make the anime as accessible as possible. TLDR, YouTube is the perfect fit for this kind of anime, and I think we'll see more titles based on ongoing games come to the platform soon.

© Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima/SHUEISHA, Watanare Production Committee

And while I personally loved There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless... and its shockingly frank exploration of how a need for connection can spiral into borderline toxic intimacy, we probably wouldn't be talking about it as much today if it had been released on Crunchyroll and gotten buried under a mountain of seasonal RomComs. This novel release model helped the anime to do well enough to inspire a five episode second season, and apparently caused REMOW to rethink that limited availability policy as the entire show is still up on their YouTube channel!

© Teren Mikami, Eku Takeshima/SHUEISHA, Watanare Production Committee

We're never going to live in a world where every new anime lives on YouTube in an official capacity, but it's clear that the economics of this industry are trending in a direction that has a smattering of titles that benefit from a free release model premiering on the platform every season.

Even the teams behind huge Shonen Jump adaptations like Akane-banashi are keenly aware of when their title would be best served by YouTube as a platform.

And as you've already pointed out, Lucas, this strategy works well for Akane-banashi as Western audiences are likely unfamiliar with the storytelling art. Marcille Donato wrote a wonderful primer on Rakugo that I'd recommend looking if you'd like to learn more about it. But more than the unfamiliarity, the series also has to contend with the kind of disinterest that's plagued down-to-earth sports and yanki titles for ages. These titles are "battles of wills" more than "battles of people with superpowers", and most viewers err toward the latter.

While I think a part of what's at play here is most anime making most of their money from home video or merchandise sales, it makes a lot of sense to release Akane-banashi on YouTube. While anime is perpetually "bigger than ever," a work based on a real-world art form is likely to appeal to folks outside of the anime scene, and those audiences are best reached by making a work hyper accessible. Akane-banashi staff and production committee are betting (correctly imo) that this work will perform better if they target fans of the performing arts rather than just endemic anime audiences.

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To return to a previous point, while we're used to seeing anime release exclusively on one or two streaming platforms, I think a title releasing on as many platforms as possible is about to become a lot more common. If a work isn't anticipated enough to score a sweet exclusivity deal from one of the bigger streamers, then it makes sense for the rights holders to instead go as wide as possible and hope they build up enough of a broad fanbase to make up for this release structure on the backend. This is doubly true for sports series, or other kinds of anime that stand a better chance of popping off with folks who don't traditionally watch the media type.

I agree with that idea in theory, but we're also brushing up against what the mainstream sees as "anime." We're talking your Demon Slayers, JJKs, and Chainsaw Men. If someone on the outside of the arts and anime subscribes to that perception writ large, that's another hurdle to overcome. But this distribution model does open up enough wriggle room to squeeze past that perception if a title's lucky. Being on Prime and Netflix, to a degree, implies that a title isn't just another anime from the Crunchyroll anime store—and it's not stuck completely in the exclusive niche there.

The perception of anime in the West has been reset to a degree since the pandemic. It's fantastic to have so many new eyes on the medium, but that's also re-calcified the old "shonen defines the whole bag" perception in a big way. I'm speaking more about the large silent majority of viewers and those on the general mainstream than your average longtime fan or ANN reader. Those renewed and silent perceptions are a big element to consider when looking at titles that don't exactly fit into the current mainstream mold.

Looking back toward the more experimental, ambitious end of anime on YouTube for a moment, Studio Pierrot's using that aforementioned wriggle room to debut the grand return of their magical girls—Magical Sisters Lulutto Lilly. For reference, Pierrot kicked off this storied series with 1983's Creamy Mami and had concluded it with 1998's Fancy Lala... "had concluded" being the part to focus on now. The studio's bold move to stream the Lulutto Lilly on YouTube (on a slight delay) might go back to what we've talked about when it comes serving audiences that normally wouldn't be by the larger streamers. In this case, it's shoujo and magical girl fans. At the same time, this move could be read as push back on the modern version of that aforementioned perception. By the way, if you parlez-vous français, the entirety of Magical Emi's up on Pierrot's YouTube channel as well.

You're right in that anime has come so far along as a medium that "this is anime" branding could be more of a constraint on a specific series than something that boosts a work. PR and Marketing are all about finding the right pitch for the right audience, and "anime" as a medium isn't always great at making clear why something's special to a given audience. This is why Hulu's "We Have Anime You've Already Seen Before" branding drives me up a wall every convention season. By this same token, a YouTube release makes a lot of sense for Magical Sisters Lulutto Lilly! I imagine the core audience for this franchise is ride or die and already supporting the franchise through additional purchases, and a wide release via YouTube is the best way to get new, young audiences into the property!

© 2026 Hulu

It's cool that anime is big enough now to be treated like any other media type, and in 2026, that means going wide or even free with a distribution model when you aren't sure what kind of baked-in audience an IP has. Especially with Japanese entertainment properties steadily earning more globally than domestically, the age of production committees throwing a work up on Crunchyroll and then treating the interest and revenue from global distribution as a windfall is winding down.

Even if the distribution models are changing, the old anti-piracy adage is still the same: "if you wanna keep getting anime over here, you've gotta pay for it." Select titles will only keep going up on free-to-watch platforms like YouTube if companies think that's the best way for them to turn a profit, and that means fiscally supporting a work one way or another.

© 福田晋一/SQUARE ENIX・アニメ「着せ恋」製作委員会

I know I'm raising this point at a time when the average American is perhaps more price-conscious than ever, but we've gotta accept that the media we consume is worth some amount of money. If nothing else, this column shows that anime companies are doing all they can to make a work as accessible as possible when it makes sense, and the only way any of this continues is if some of everyone's little treat budget goes towards these projects one way or another.