Amazon shuts down Anime Strike channel

Published on January 7, 2018

Amazon premiered Anime Strike channel – a platform which offered over 1,000 episodes and movies for Japanese-style animation fans, roughly a year back. The platform would offer classic hits such as Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. Apart from this, users would also get to stream exclusives like Scum’s Wish, Onihei, The Great Passage, Vivid Strike!, Crayon-Shin Chan Gaiden: Alien vs. Shinnosuke, and Chi’s Sweet Adventure.

Amazon shuts down Anime Strike channel

The company has reportedly decided to shut it down. This news definitely comes across as disappointing for all the anime fans. The good part is that the Anime Strike will now be added to Amazon’s Prime Video service along with Bollywood channel, Heera.

“We have decided to move the curated catalogs of Anime Strike and Heera into Prime Video so that more customers can enjoy this content as part of their Prime membership,” an Amazon spokesperson was reported by Digital Trends as saying. In other words, all the active Anime Strike memberships will be discontinued from January 5 onwards.

“Amazon has notified subscribers that content from Anime Strike is now available in Prime Video and included with their Amazon Prime membership. Amazon also automatically canceled their Anime Strike subscriptions, refunding any portion of their final monthly payment that extends beyond Jan 5th,” Amazon reportedly said in a statement.

The truth of the matter is that the Anime Strike channel did not receive much attention amongst the fans, despite its impressive line-up. It failed to compete directly with substitutes like Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Netflix. The subscription to Anime Strike costs users about $60 a year, and many viewers complained that there was no ad-supported free viewing option. “Anime Strike is performing great. Signups are higher than initial projections as we add more content and more features,” Amazon told Forbes in May. “Besides new episodes every week and new shows every season, we’ve been able to introduce new things that anime fans weren’t able to get before.” However, it appears like things haven’t been all that great for the channel since then.

Enjoyed this video?
Amazon shuts down Anime Strike channel.
"No Thanks. Please Close This Box!"