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The Rundown

This afternoon it was announced that the Funimation Dub of One Piece (not the 4kids dub) was picked up by Neon Alley. Neon Alley which plans on coming to Playstation 3 in September, is the 24-hour a day, all dubbed into english, uncut, limited advertisement, $6.99 a month anime service. It's a television network like HBO for Anime. That you can not use a DVR for. Despite my opinions, Neon Alley is a neat idea and I will be the first one to sign up. I would like to try it, I might love it.

This is the first big show from Funimation and Toei to sign up, which really shows how studio agnostic they are being. One Piece is a big score and shows how much they are trying to cater to the Anime Fan. In reality, they have some huge names listed on there service (see below). This seems to be a very good way of getting people on board.

I give Viz a lot of credit for trying something as balls to wall, as this. Now get some of the more adult-orientated content other than Berserk and Tiger & Bunny.

Neon Alley shows

• NARUTO Shippuden
• Tiger & Bunny
• Inuyasha - The Final Act
• ZETMAN
• Lagrange - The Flower of Rin-ne-
• Blue Exorcist
• Vampire Knight
• Nana
• Berserk: The Gold Age Arc I - The Egg of the King
• Bleach the Movie
• NARUTO Shippuden the Movie
• One Piece
• NARUTO
• Kekkaishi
• Death Note
• Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan

Neon Alley Trailer

I need to create the Neon Alley company page. It's a promising website, and I like how they have movies. Other legal streaming sites don't do movies, dub or sub. I don't like to stack up subscriptions because it gets a bit expensive. I chose Crunchyroll over Funimation because most of my wiki projects falls on that site.

Edit:

Keep up the news reporting! I chose to report news on my wiki projects since things are getting busy.

I'm not sold on Neon Alley yet and here's why:

• It's a TV channel that's only available on a video game console, and not even the best selling one.
• It isn't on-demand. Hulu, Netflix, and DVRs have conditioned people that they can watch what they want, when they want. This channel isn't DVR compatible so you have to watch it when it's broadcasting, just like a sports event.
• It's subscription based and I already have enough subscription based content. It's competing on the PS3 with Crunchyroll, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Crackle (I think) and Amazon on Demand. All of them are about the same price and, I'm not sure about Amazon but all the others offer more anime content.

I also wonder how they'll handle some of the long running dubbed content. If they show one dubbed episode every weekday, they'll catch up to the latest dubbed releases in a few months and be stuck on reruns. If they drag it down to once a week, it'll take them like a decade to get to where the Hulu release of stuff like One Piece is right now.

If there was a free time window or SD for free on Neon Alley, I'd be more positive on it, because that could draw people in and maybe they'd subscribe after getting used to it. As it is right now though, I just don't see what the appeal is. Is it dubs? Netflix and Hulu Plus have dubbed anime and a good chunk of Neon Alley's lineup is stuff that's already available on those sites. Is it anime on your PS3/TV? Crunchyroll, Hulu Plus, Netflix, and Amazon offer that too, and for many shows, it will take years for Neon Alley to reach the episode # that these sites are already up to. On top of that, you can watch them whenever you want to rather than at a time dictated by Neon Alley.

@takashichea: Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Netflix totally have movies on their site.

@sickVisionz:

Wait, Crunchyroll does anime movies?

Edit:

Unless you meant Asian drama movies.

@sickVisionz

I completely agree, the fact that it is not an simple subscription service is very backwards in thinking. Anime Network, Crunchyroll and Funimation all offer interesting services that are, watch as you want. Crunchyroll definitely is the best at platforms and has the most content. Funimation does a great jobs with being ahead on dubs and Anime Network has some great programing. I would love it, if Neon Alley was both a liner channel and normal subscription service. How HBO and HBOgo work together. I get both of them with my service.

My biggest backing of Neon Alley is the fact that we just don't have a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, Anime channel that normal people can access. Yah, sure, Funimation Channel, but that is on a select number of cable providers and most are in SD. Neon Alley feels like someone cares about catering a channel to anime fans (this could be totally wrong, but you never know) which to be honest is more needed than anything else. Sadly, the barrier of entry for this is a bit to high to be really successful as a mass market product and I will be shocked if this makes it a full year.

I am hopeful that they are smart and do free previews, like HBO and Showtime, to give everyone a taste. Also, I hope they bust there butts to get this thing on every device that does video playback. You need to be able to watch this anywhere and you need to treat your subscribers like gold. The fact that they have Funimation, Aniplex and Taiseng on there side does help.