AniTube was one of the best known websites to watch anime online in Portuguese. At the peak of its popularity, in 2014, the portal reached more than 50 simultaneous hits. However, it closed in 2016 after becoming involved in controversy for offering illegal services, broadcasting Japanese animations for Naruto, One Piece and Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan), without paying royalties to the original producers.
Nowadays, there are several clones of AniTube that are still in operation, but all are still considered pirate sites. Despite the controversies, the portal played an important role in popularizing anime in Brazil and even in the emergence of official streaming services, Crunchyroll.
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When was AniTube created?
The exact debut date of AniTube is unknown, but the site has been operating since before 2010. At that time, there was still no Crunchyroll, Netflix or Amazon Prime Video to officially watch anime. This is why the portal was so successful in Tupiniquin lands.
a library full of classic and recent anime, the portal made full episodes available for free, without having to download them. Often, new chapters were released with subtitles in Portuguese on the same day they were broadcast in Japan.
AniTube was more famous in Japan than in Brazil
Despite being quite famous in Brazil, AniTube's largest audience was in Japan. According to reports from the Japanese government, 93,5% of accesses came from the Asian country, while only 4% were from Spain.
This fact made the Japanese authorities highlight AniTube as one of the biggest piracy sites in the country, alongside names such as Nyaa Torrents, The Pirate Bay and illegal manga distribution portals.
What happened to AniTube?
In 2014, the government of Japan began identifying and taking down pirate sites that facilitated the illegal distribution of anime around the world. One of the targets of the anti-piracy operation was AniTube, which continued to operate for some time, even receiving court notifications and having more than 12 links removed from Google.
In 2016, the site went offline in Brazil out of nowhere. At that time, the creators of AniTube told OtakuPT that ownership of the site had been sold to Japanese investors. The decision, however, was not taken because of legal problems, but because it was too expensive to keep AniTube running, since the servers cost more than US$ 31 per month.
One of the first decisions taken by the new owners of AniTube was to close the service in Brazil and in all countries of the world, with the exception of Japan, on May 6, 2016. Soon after, the creators of AniTube split and created other sites to continue distributing animes online other names, AniTube Brasil and Branitube.
AniTube ceased to exist, but its legacy lives on
Despite having stopped working in 2016, AniTube left its legacy in the form of other sites that continue to illegally offer anime online to this day. To beat these portals, official streaming services, Crunchyroll, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, started to include more Japanese productions in their catalogues.
By Crunchyroll, it is even possible to watch anime officially and for free – some limitations. For example, free users are not entitled to Simulcast (simultaneous transmission in Japan) and can only access a limited amount of titles.
Image: Reproduction / AniTube.
