I’m really behind on Ristorante Paradiso, so given my shitty internet connection and minimal space available on my laptop I decided to give Crunchyroll a go. I should mention that I’ve been whining for years that anime companies need to be providing a faster turnaround for the international market if they ever want to dream about ending the piracy problem, or at the very least minimizing it. To be perfectly honest I think the concept of Crunchyroll is fantastic and that it’s a huge step in the right direction—but it’s got some rather glaring problems right now.

I’ve heard /a/ bitch about the quality of the video and whatnot, but I dunno it seems comprable to other streaming video services (Hulu, Netflix, etc) and really doesn’t bother me. I’m not a huge qualityfag for most things. Some shows definitely benefit from HD (SenBa for example), but for the most part it’s not a big issue and at best it’s more of a luxury than a necessity–i.e. Do I *need* to watch SenBa in HD to enjoy it? No. Is it even more awesome in HD? Hell yeah. Anyway, I think the free streaming quality is just fine. I haven’t looked at the quality of any of the other options. I’d have higher standards for something I’d be paying for, but for free this is perfectly acceptable. 

My main problem with CR is the atmosphere/interface. Take a look at CR in comparison to Hulu:

I dunno about you, but I’d take Hulu’s interface over CR’s any day. I think the main issue is that CR hasn’t changed it’s look a whole lot since it became legitimized—it still looks more-or-less like Youtube (or any other user-generated video upload site). The video is off center and the area immediately around it is quite cluttered with unnecessary shit and obnoxious moving ads (I’m sorry, I just find it intensely annoying to try to focus the video while there’s a WoW ad cycling over and over to the side). Admittedly the ads thing is likely a result of a different advertising scheme (namely, no commercials). But on Hulu, the video literally takes center stage on the screen, the area around it is much neater and professional looking.

Another major area of annoyance with CR is it’s idiotic userbase. Hulu has similiarly idiotic people, but the nice thing about Hulu is that it doesn’t shove obnoxious user comments in your face. I don’t think I’d use Hulu as much as I do if just below the video there were things like this:

[insert obnoxious, animated avatar]
xsmexygurll69x:
OMG!!!!! SILUS IS SOooOOooo HAWTT!!!!11111 <3

[insert avatar with 'witty' text]
sirsparklepants: 
lol guiz I just relized. david. slaid. golaieth. LIEK IN THE BIBLE!

Again, very Youtube. Not that it’s a bad thing for Youtube, but if you’re trying to present yourself as a professional site, with “official” content as opposed to user-generated stuff it just doesn’t seem to mesh very well. But maybe it’s just me. If I want to know what people are saying about an episode of something, I go on /a/ or I’ll go look at blogs or a forum. I don’t care what the idiots on CR think about an episode. 

tl;dr: CR, try to be more like Hulu and maybe people would be more interested in using your services than pirating your subs :P