Crunchyroll Now Caters Directly For the UK

If you are an anime fan with an Internet connection, then the chances are that you know about Crunchyroll. Over the past few years, they have become the net's largest legal online streaming business catering for fans of anime and Asian television outside of Korea and Japan.

Last week UK Anime Network posted an interview with Crunchyroll, where the CEO, Kun Gao discussed Crunchyroll's aims and its service, and it's well worth a listen if you want to learn more about this new and rapidly expanding side of the industry.

Key among the topics was how Crunchyroll caters for the UK market. Although Crunchyroll started as a North American company, and still licences its anime and live action content for that market first and foremost, the goal is to achieve parity when it comes to licenses for the UK, and eventually the world. With that in mind, Crunchyroll last week announced that they have launched a UK specific domain, www.crunchyroll.co.uk, which at the time is a mirror of what you will see at the US site. More importantly, Crunchyroll's subscriptions for UK customers are now a fixed price in pounds and pence, instead of dollars and cents varying according to the exchange rate.

The price for an all in subscription is £8.99 a month, although the live action side of Crunchyroll doesn't cater to the UK all that strongly, giving us just a fraction of the content that the US sees. Fans will be more interested in the anime only side of the subscription, which at the time of writing is a fairly reasonable (if slightly higher than the dollar price) £4.99 per month. At least this way you no longer have to worry about your bank skimming a little off the top for the privilege of paying in another currency.