So, in case you’ve been swamped with so much work or been watching so much anime for the past week, on February 27 Anime-Planet announced that they would be providing Crunchyroll anime on their site, marking the first team up between a recommendation database for anime and manga and a legal video provider. So of course I have to briefly talk about it.
From what I have experienced checking out a few of the videos (Hunter x Hunter, Tonari no Seki-Kun), the video player manages to run a bit more reliably than CR’s, so that would make it convenient — you can watch an anime on AP and the site will update your watchlist without you having to do anything. They don’t have everything at the moment (like Kill la Kill and Wizard Barristers, for example). They are also limited by region restrictions, because it’s still CR videos.
Overall though, if you’re into supporting the industry, then the only possible thing that can stop you from signing up to AP is its design. Even I can tell it can probably be updated for more modern times. But if it’s not that big of a deal, then there should be little problems. Probably.
Due to how busy she is, Kim Cameron, the CEO of Anime-Planet, was able to answer a few questions about how this partnership with Crunchyroll occurred and the work it actually involved. Here they are:
How did the opportunity to work with Crunchyroll come about?
Crunchyroll approached us a few years ago (via the AP site) about bringing their anime content to Anime-Planet, and we’ve been in discussions since then about how a potential partnership would work.
I know you’re basically running the site by yourself with only a few other people, but did you get a sense as to how this idea would be received?
We were hoping it would be well received. While there’s still people out there who are totally fine with fansubs, many (not only in the AP community, but outside of it as well) express interest in helping support the industry that produces the content they love so much. We wanted to bring legal content to the AP community so they could not only update their lists and get awesome recommendations of what to watch next, but also so they could easily watch it online. So far, the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we have some additional announcements coming soon that will be just as exciting!
Crunchyroll has been up front with us, as well, about how much they respect our recommendation content, and they were equally as excited as us to get this feature launched.
How was the general schedule for this project? For example, did you spend like 10-12 hours working on it and stuff?
We’ve been working on the project for close to a year – we wanted to come up with an automated system for both grabbing and outputting the content, and that presented some challenges as Crunchyroll doesn’t have an API. Both me and my one other volunteer developer have full time jobs, so we spent nights and weekends off and on working on the feature. For me personally, I juggled working on Crunchyroll with also working on the upcoming redesign and other features.
What were the challenges of integrating CR videos onto most of the Anime Planet pages? And how did you feel when you was finished with all the technical stuff, and then all it came down to was spreading the word?
The biggest hurdle was coming up with a scalable, abstract database schema that could hold all of CR’s content, and would enable us to link our entries to theirs. Plus trying to build the code in general without an API. We finished the code very shortly before launch so I was quite excited all the way through the launch
What do you hope this partnership accomplishes, for both Anime Planet and Crunchyroll?
I’m hoping that existing AP users spend less time updating their lists due to the auto update feature, and that they have an even easier time to figure out what to watch next. I’ve seen people outside of our community saying how they’re now going to return to AP after a long time away due to how awesome this integration is, and that makes me very happy! Of course, I hope that this integration also means renewed interest in supporting the anime industry so we can keep our addiction going!
So, now with this partnership, will you sign up with Anime Planet? Or if you’ve already signed up, what do you think of this feature? Feel free to comment below!
