KissAnime Is Shutting Down And That’s Not A Bad Thing
Over the weekend KissAnime announced on Discord that it would be closing down once again; this time for good. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Over the weekend KissAnime announced via a post from the moderators on the unofficial discord that both KissAnime and it’s sister site KissManga would be closing down once again; this time for good.
This choice came on the heels of the announcement of Japan’s stricter copyright laws which will ban illicit downloading of anime and manga as well as academic works, music, and videos. While the ban won’t go into effect until January of 2021, restrictions on “leech websites” that provide links to pirated material will go into effect in October.
Anime fans are by and large split about the loss of KissAnime and KissManga. Many are sad to see their favorite source for free new anime join Geocities in website heaven, while others care just enough to release a few memes to twitter and move on with their lives.
Torrenting and pirating have been part of the anime experience for almost as long as the internet has allowed for it to be, and for a while it sort of made sense. Buying entire boxsets of the VHS and eventually, DVDs made for expensive and physical space consuming collections, fan-subs were often riddled with grammatical and spelling errors (but at least they weren’t cut to shreds like the official dubs often were) and the months of time between getting excited about a new show and finally seeing episodes one through four grace the racks at the local Suncoast were borderline torturous.
But the industry has come a long way in the last twenty years; it’s easy to be an anime fan now between simulcast and high-quality subs and dubs. Services like Crunchyroll and Funimation bring almost any show you want streaming directly to the electronic device of your choice for a year for less than I spent on just my Trigun DVDs.
Not to mention the viruses. There are few more infuriating ways to fill your computer with viruses than KissAnime.
In the end, it’s a little bittersweet to see the service finally close its electronic doors for good. I’d be lying if I said I’d never watched a single show on KissAnime. But part of growing up is letting go of the worst parts of ourselves, and in a world where it’s so easy and reasonable to support the studios, KissAnime was definitely that worst part.
Interestingly, the kissanime.nz and kiss-anime.ws are still up, running, and available. While I didn’t risk the well being of my work computer to see if the files were still available to download, it seems that there are at least temporary workarounds. If this will continue to be the case in October or January is anybody’s guess.
Are you sad to see KissAnime and KissManga go? Do you still use them regularly? How will you get your anime fix now?
Ja ne, Adventurers!
