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Amazon closes Anime Strike and includes exclusive anime in Prime Video

Amazon closes Anime Strike and includes exclusive anime in Prime Video

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Credit: YouTube

One year after its announcement, Amazon is canceling Anime Strike, its anime streaming service. The dozens of anime shows and films it offered will now be included on its Amazon Prime subscription service instead. Today, Anime Strike’s Twitter page shut down and the exclusives section on its website is now empty, as first spotted by Kotaku.

The news is a boon for anime fans in the US — or at least those who subscribe to Amazon Prime. Those users will no longer have to pay for the separate $5 a month to access anime that was exclusive to Anime Strike. When Anime Strike launched last year in the US, it became a headache for anime fans who were already shelling out $12.94 a month for Crunchyroll and Funimation subscriptions.

Fans had rejoiced when Funimation and Crunchyroll teamed up back in 2016 to lower the cost of a Funimation subscription and broaden its offerings. But then Anime Strike appeared, winning exclusive rights to shows like Inuyashiki, a sci-fi show about an old man with superpowers, and Made in Abyss, a show about a girl who befriends a robot to find her mom. Amazon Prime users who wanted to watch Anime Strike had to pay an extra $60 a year, and those without an Amazon Prime memberships had to shell out $159 a year to subscribe to both. Under the new system, anime fans who aren’t yet on board with Amazon Prime will still have to pay $8.25 a month to access those shows, however.

“We have decided to move the curated catalogs of Anime Strike and Heera [a channel for Indian movies and shows] into Prime Video so that more customers can enjoy this content as part of their Prime membership,” Amazon confirmed in a statement to The Verge.