Last year I posited a question: has Hulu failed anime? Well, Bullet/Bullet, their most hyped title, was a major flop/flop, so yes they are still losing the anime streaming war. Still, there is one other party that is really struggling in the anime streaming wars that that platform is Amazon Prime. Why is Amazon Prime also struggling to connect with anime fans and what can they do to succeed, let’s discuss.
Amazon Prime definitely got off on the wrong foot with anime fans when they first started to compete in the anime streaming wars. Their initial plan was to launch an add-on service called Anime Strike for anime fans back in 2017. Major competitors like Netflix allowed fans to watch their anime with no additional paywall so this backfired hard. Although the Anime Strike service had beloved titles such as Made in Abyss and Land of the Lustrous, most of the titles on Anime Strike didn’t really find a larger audience until Anime Strike shut down less than a year after launching and its titles moved to other streaming services. Anime Strike was their first major blunder for the ages, but it looks like things are not improving. that much.
Their second attempt to move in into the world of anime was by streaming the mega popular Rebuild of Evangelion films. Still, it was just one franchise in an otherwise uneventful catalog with Amazon Prime putting all the focus on American produced adult animation. It wasn’t until 2025 that we are seeing a major push into Amazon Prime licensing anime.
Let’s talk about Amazon Prime’s licenses and the treatment of their licenses. A few of their licenses include niche Z-grade schlock like Ubel Blatt. Probably their first hyped simulcast license was Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuux, riding off the heels of The Witch from Mercury‘s success on Crunchyroll. GQuuuuuux was significantly less watched than its predecessor, probably in part because the show itself was divisive and required extensive knowledge of Universal Century lore, and probably also in part by Amazon Prime’s marketing, which is even more minimal than Hulu’s. A similar lack of consumer awareness seems to lead to hardly anybody talking about the long awaited second season of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. That show at least has had a much more positive reception among those in the know. That show had an additional controversy because Amazon Prime recast the dub with Los Angeles based voice actors instead of the beloved original Funimation cast. Kyoto Animation’s newest slice of life anime City has gotten the least buzz ever for a Kyoto Animation title.
We see the same pattern as with Hulu, with the vast majority of marketing going into the domestically produced animated content. You can argue that this is because Hulu and Amazon Prime find more financial gain to have with streaming originals than licensed content. Still, it seems like Hulu and Amazon Prime want to build up an audience of anime fans without spending any marketing money. It just won’t work as most casual anime fans don’t trudge through pages of anime news sites just to find out what is streaming where.
Invincible and Hazbin Hotel probably wouldn’t succeed as big as they did if not for their major marketing push. Gundam, Panty and Stocking, and Kyoto Animation are all major brand names that anime fans would flock to if they knew about them. The reason Netflix and Crunchyroll are dominating these streaming wars is simply because they know how to market and hype anime. If the followers just emulate the leaders, they probably wouldn’t be losing the anime streaming wars. It still seems like anime is the afterthought of Hulu and Amazon Prime while the American adult cartoons are still their priority. It sucks to see so many potential hits wallow in obscurity because they couldn’t get licensed by Crunchyroll or Netflix, but that’s where we are.
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