The anime streaming war certainly appear to be heating up these days. Bitter rivals have become allies (see Crunchyroll and Funimation) and now a powerful new challenger (Amazon's Anime Strike) threatens to upset the balance.
When new recently broke that
Anime Strike now has a download option, allowing its users to watch the latest episodes in places where they're without an internet connection, it was a hot topic of discussion within the anime community. Suddenly, many viewers were rethinking the anime streamer's double pay-wall (Anime Strike is $4.99/month but also requires an Anime Prime membership, which is $99/yr). When Polygon reported on this development, they were actually
contacted by a Crunchyroll rep who informed the site that they too would be rolling out the option for downloading episodes albeit later in 2017. "
Our breadth of titles and relationships within the anime industry can’t be beat,” the rep said. “
We know offline streaming is important to our viewers, and we're working to bring this feature to the platform in 2017 so that fans can keep up with their favorite shows wherever they are."
Stay tuned for further developments and news on exactly when this service will be launched.