Bakacast Briefs – The Saga Begins

Hey, look! It’s the debut episode of Bakacast Briefs! As always, you can download it directly, subscribe to our RSS feed, or let iTunes do all the work for you. So, what is Bakacast Briefs, you ask? Basically, we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that Bakacast will only update once a month. However, we wanted to give our audience something to listen to during that large gap of time. So we figured we’d try doing mini-episodes that ditch our typical news and in-depth review format; instead, Bakacast Briefs will feature Jon (aka Ritsu), Chris (aka Kagami) and me giving our brief thoughts on each week’s new anime episodes. Unfortunately, Chris is unusually busy with something called “real life”, so it’s just Jon and me in this episode. We discussed:

I was hoping to add Sengoku Basara 2 to this list, but Funimation still hasn’t put the first episode up (so much for a “simulcast”). I’ll talk about it on next week’s show, I promise. Also, this list is likely to change as we drop shows we’re not interested in. So by the time we’re a few weeks in, we’ll probably have narrowed it down to a few shows that all of us are watching. In the meantime, tell us what you think of the new style. It’s very much in the “experimental” stage, so we’d love to know what you like or don’t like about it. The music used for this episode is “Colour Television” by J. Arthur Keenes.

Crunchyroll on the Road to Profitability

Earlier yesterday, ANN reported that Crunchyroll—the formerly illicit streaming anime site that went legit in January of 2009—broke even in May. This is huge news for advocates of on-demand and simulcasted anime like myself. It proves that Crunchyroll’s strategy can work, which hopefully means Japanese companies will be less hesitant to put their stuff online.

To put this in perspective, the enormously popular YouTube has yet to turn a profit, though this is likely because the service was largely ad-free for quite a while. Crunchyroll, on the other hand, supports itself by charging subscription fees for instant access to their newest shows and—for non-subscribers—including commercial breaks in their videos. It would be interesting to see what percentage of their revenue comes from each source, though it’s highly unlikely Crunchyroll will ever release that kind of information.

Whatever the monetary breakdown, Funimation and the Anime Network are probably feeling much better about the chances of their own streaming services. And if they succeed, us fans may finally get decent, legal alternatives to DVDs.

Crunchyroll Licenses EVERY Haruhi Series

Crunchyroll, the subscription-based anime streaming site, just announced that they’ve acquired the online streaming and digital distribution rights to all of the Haruhi series. This includes The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya seasons 1 and 2, as well as the webseries Melancholy of Haruhi-chan Suzumiya and Nyoron Churuya-san. It does NOT, however, include the Disappearance film. These shows will soon be available for free to everybody in America, the British Isles, Scandanavia and the Middle East (but not Australia). However, in order to see the ad-free HD-quality streams, you have to subscribe to their Anime Membership service for $6.95 a month. Personally, I don’t think subscribing is worth it. Although I admire what Crunchyroll is trying to do, I’m also frustrated by the crappy quality of their video streams. For example, when I tried to watch Heroman, the HD stream looked so bad that the show was nigh-unwatchable. I think I’ll stick with my trusty Haruhi DVDs for the time being.