We have some very sad news to announce. On December 31, the entirety of Crunchyroll’s catalog will be behind a paywall with no more free content. Prior to Crunchyroll’s merger with Funimation, the vast majority of the Crunchyroll catalog was available for free with ads, with only the most recent episodes being paywalled. The merger was when more paywalls started to be put up, with everything uploaded since the merger being paywalled. Eventually, a large quantity of older titles started to become paywalled too. The writing was on the wall, and this could be seen coming a mile away, but free Crunchyroll is dead.

This is probably the biggest blow to free anime content since Hulu removed its free tier in 2016. Hulu’s popularity with anime fans seemed to take a massive nosedive when they removed their free tier, which included almost all of their anime catalog sans Sailor Moon. Crunchyroll probably won’t see as catastrophic effects with this move, but this is unfortunate news. As for places to watch free anime, older titles can be found on Tubi, Pluto, and Plex. Crunchyroll has a free linear scheduled stream of shows on Pluto and Plex, but these tend to be mostly older or  lesser known titles. The big names like Dragon Ball Z, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, My Hero Academia, or Demon Slayer most definitely aren’t on this stream. You might be able to catch some classics like Yu Yu Hakusho or Soul Eater if you’re lucky. Otherwise, it’s mostly obscure titles like Cop Craft.

The trend of streaming services removing free tiers has been going on for a while now. Hulu, Peacock and now Crunchyroll are all examples of this trend. It was such a magical time when the vast majority of Crunchyroll’s library was free, but that moment is no more.

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