In a way, fans are enjoying a new golden age of anime as the prominence of streaming and the ever-growing popularity of the genre take a foothold in western pop culture. Anime is arguably easier to dive into than its ever been, with great TV shows and movies to dig through, spanning acclaimed classics from decades past to the latest hits that have fans all over the world buzzing online. In terms of accessibility, it certainly helps that practically every major streaming service under the sun has embraced anime as a supplement to its primary offerings.
That being said, Crunchyroll and Funimation are still the first streaming platforms that come to mind for many, and that’s thanks to services using the genre as their own primary appeal. Whether it’s for completed series or what’s airing right now in Japan, the catalogs of these platforms can’t be ignored.
But even as anime becomes more accepted in the west, the level of depth for what’s on offer can be daunting for beginners. Thankfully, our guides on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and more for anime should provide prospective fans and veterans alike with plenty of options to sift through.
A University of Houston graduate in Print Media Journalism, Guillermo has covered sports entertainment and practically all forms of geek culture as a freelance writer.
His young career so far has seen him write about soccer through websites including Read Bundesliga and Bayern Strikes, specializing in FC Bayern Munich. From there he moved on to Comic Book Resources, Game Rant, The Gamer, and Screen Rant to indulge his inner nerd, with over 2 years and counting as a senior writer at the latter.
Guillermo's interests span video games, movies, TV series, comic books, anime, and manga -- and if you're not careful, will talk your ear off specifically about the last 40-plus years of Batman lore.
Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Guillermo studied at Lone Star College in Texas before ultimately completing his Bachelor's degree.
Writer at heart and gamer in mind, Ryan Epps loves using creativity and imagination to inform the masses on everything entertainment. He has written work on sites like Vocal, IBTimes, and TheGamer. Though horror and science fiction might be his favorite, unforgettable and complicated characters are what best pique his interest. So long as the story is intriguing and thought-provoking, Ryan will be dreaming of the best ways to bridge that narrative to all audiences. When not writing, editing, or gaming, he is escaping reality via Lovecraft and William Gibson.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?