Two popular illegal anime and manga streaming sites are now “closed forever”, forcing many fans to go towards legal mediums and worrying about the future of other sites. Both KissAnime and KissManga announced on August 14th that copyright owners have taken down all their files forcing the sites to shut down.
Before the shutdown, the official KissAnime discord support account posted that “All files are taken down by copyright owners. KissManga and KissAnime will be closed forever. Thank you for your supports. Thank you for those years.”
People are speculating that the new Japanese copyright laws that passed in June are the final strike in the coffin for both these sites. Even though the laws don’t go into effect in January 2021, the penalties for those even using the sites could be up to two years in jail or a maximum fine of 2 million yen (around 18,763 USD), or both. And the ones operating the sites could get up to five years in jail or a maximum fine of 5 million yen (around 46,909 USD ), or both.
Because of the shutdown, many phishing sites are now taking up the KissAnime and KissManga name trying to access people’s info. Some of these websites could infect unsuspecting visitors with viruses and malware so it’s best to avoid them. The original website repeats the discord message left by the support bot.
It’s currently unknown if other sites under the “kiss” brand like KissCartoon or KissAsian are closed as sites claiming to be them are still up, but these could also be phishing sites. No official statement from the parent company has been released yet.
Earlier this year, MangaRock decided to cancel their services because they want customers to support the industry and not “rip(s) of creators’ hard work.” The future of other pirating sites like 9Anime and Gogoanime is still uncertain.
KissAnime has been a popular site for anime fans to watch their favorite shows illegally since 2012, with their sister site KissManga providing magna for readers. Even though legal anime streaming services like Funimation and Crunchyroll exist, a group of fans would rather watch anime illegally because of how money is funneled to creators or the legal sites don’t have the rights to certain shows making them hard to find.