if you're looking for something a little more Niche to stream outside of Netflix and Hulu you
might be looking at something like Crunchyroll if you're familiar with anime hello I am Wanderer001
and this is my review of Crunchyroll for the Roku set-top box what I'm going to do is I'm
going to launch Crunchyroll and we're going to see actual load times because sadly that
is one of the things that I'm going to start this review off saying is the load times,
especially with Roku, are abysmal and I don't know why it could just be that
Crunchyroll has not taken the time to actually work on their Roku application but here we go
and again this is all in real time and realistically that was one of the better loads
that I got for Crunchyroll here so to start off some general Basics Crunchyroll is a paid service
and they have several different paid tiers here we see the three pay tiers for Crunchyroll you
have your fan which is the one I'm currently testing which is 7.99 a month that gives you
zero profiles only a single user however you get no ads unlimited access to the
Crunchyroll Library new episodes one hour after they air in Japan access digital manga
only available in English and then stream on one device at a time
if you move up to the mega fan that's ten dollars a month however you get everything
that you did with the fan base but now you can stream on up to four devices have offline viewing
and that few extras which are like okay you can get into the specialty Crunchyroll Expo 15 off a
hundred dollar purchase but if you move up to the 15 a month plan which is their unlimited
fan everything that you got before except now you have six streaming devices you can do the viewing
offline but now you get an annual swag bag and access to exclusive limited time run of a figurine
realistically if you want to stream on multiple devices you're probably going to want the 10 a
month plan if you're okay with just one device you could get away with the Eight dollar a month plan
but just know there are options out there for you so profiles still a little up in the air as to if
you can have more than one but you do need to pay more if you want to stream it on multiple devices
starting off right here we can see they have a big headliner letting you know hey what's going on
you can start watching right from here or we can select more and that will give us more info about
this particular show and here we can see the start watching episode 101 some fan art on the side we
can add to our watch list right from here and then we can scroll down and see our episodes so here we
have Finland Saga and then Finland Saga season two you have to highlight and then press OK on your
remote before it will switch seasons and then if we come back up here and select details it gives
you a little more about that now we're going to select back and back on my Roku remote and
you can see when I start talking about how chunky the actual application is a double tap shouldn't
have brought me back to hey do you want to leave but it did so it's a little slow and I do still
currently have the top up to your Roku set-top box coming down we have our top picks for you
this is based on your viewing history and stuff that are in your watch list and realistically
this Demon Slayer I've watched so I would say yeah um watch that and then the rest is kind of
not so so sure about we have our continue watching which is mainly what I'm using this for is to go
back and watch a lot of the old classic stuff as well as some of the newer things that there's hype
about such as spyax family currently that's one of the good things with Crunchyroll uh they do have a
decent sized back catalog but they also do have a lot of the new stuff and when I say new stuff you
have the ability to simulcast as long as you don't mind subtitles and I know it's a subtitle versus
Dub debate however subtitles you can get almost day in day dub depending on how quickly they can
turn those around for spy X family the the last episode I believe was about a week to two weeks
before they got episode 24 turned around now I am pressing on my Roku remote to get
Crunchyroll to do something and it has frozen up on me so I'm actually going to have to get
out of Crunchyroll and relaunch it and start it again now these are some of the headaches that
you do experience with this app on the Roku and as we can see from the blank screen this might
actually take a little longer than the first one yep here we go reloading and I'm leaving
this in all of its Glory no editing to take out how long this launch is because this is one of
my biggest pet peeves with this okay there we go so coming down we've got our continued watching
and if we scroll through we can see hey this is going to be everything that you were watching uh
this one shows I've watched just about everything because it's got the white progression bar at
the bottom as well as it shows I have one second left same with cells at work there
one thing with the continue watching which will be more apparent once we get down into the watch
list is if you are watching the dub or the sub and there's another season for German or Spanish
once you finish your season of whatever you're watching it brings you down to the next season
I really don't particularly care for that and I wish the application was smart enough to realize
hey I just want to watch the dub or the sub once I finish that leave it alone if we come down to
our watch list you can see that spy X family has something that says new if I select this however
it will automatically start playing the continue from season one of one and that's going to be
German so what we're going to do is we're going to come and then we're going to come up to spy X
family and then this should work what I want to say is as you add things to your watch list they
will always be the newest item on the top whatever your oldest is is always going to be at the bottom
so here I can continue with one of one or I can go to this series page or I can remove from the watch
list knows who a little art there we're going to go to the series page this way I can show you we
come down here and then we have all the different dubs and subs for this which is my problem
finish watching the English dub and it dropped me into watching the German dub and if we come down
here we'll see if that new was for the series that I was watching so they didn't have a new but it it
said it was new because since I started the German dub they had the German dub as new I'm going to
press back on the Roku remote and that was our continue watching and our watch list area here we
have a breakdown where it groups things so we've got iconic anime trios you've got most popular
and you can see it highlights in Orange so you know what you're clicking on which is really great
just updated on Crunchyroll because you watched and it kind of pulls together I
would say these are probably a similar genre then you have a big ad another big ad because
you watched spy X family hey you might like these World Travelers again it breaks it down
into all of these categories and I'm gonna go all the way to the bottom here because
there's no overall listing here it's just these groupings and you just keep getting groupings
I'm not going to say that that's a bad thing but I kind of wish that from here there was a hey show
me everything but you'll notice right there wow you scrolled all the way to the Bottom now you
can get to a browse all but if I'm all the way at the bottom and I select back on the Roku remote
it does not bring me back up to the top it asks me if I want to exit
the application which I do not like in my Roku apps if I hit the back button I want to go back up
to the top I don't want to try and exit but if we come into here and we browse all we can see we'll
get popular we can do newly added we can sort A to Z we have action Venture we've got lots of ways
that we can sort this by but if we take the slow slog back up to the top we can access the menu
item so from here we can search so if there's a particular thing that we want to search for
we have a search box we can type it out or we can use our voice activated remote Gundam Wing
and then come down to ok and it will show us results so here we go we've got the series
endless Waltz and then some other Gundam related stuff so right here top results series movies
episodes selecting those will break them out all right we're going to come back up
to the menu which isn't pressing up on the d-pad you have to hit left which is just asinine home
that's our home page which is where which we were at previously we're going to select up and then ok
watch list we kind of saw our watch list already that's going to show us everything that we have
put on our watch list again newest item is always going to be first on the list here we've got our
history this will show you a full watch history of whatever has been played so that's whether
it's on the desktop mobile or the Roku app also if you're sharing this with multiple people in your
home well guess what you'll see everybody's user views right there browse again this is another
thing that we saw when we made it all the way to the bottom of the menu so we can either fight
with the Roku remote to get up to the menu option in the left or scroll all the way to the bottom
still haven't figured out which one I prefer more settings so right here it's going to show you your
email but also your account letting you know this is how much is left on your current subscription
you have actions you have subtitle language which will allow you to change subtitles got default I
could do English us come back app language default I'm going to set that for English US mature
content well are you able to watch mature content notice there's no key or passcode to put in I just
go yes and it'll show me 18 plus content we can clear our watch history from here we can select
clear history and then good to go same with our search history we've got support selecting this
will bring you to their terms and policies and then we have do not sell my personal information
notice by default that is off so you might want to turn that on especially if you're paying for
this service and then log out we're going to come all the way back up to our menu and watch it jump
around which is really annoying to talk about a few other things that I can't show you because
I'm using a capture card first being if you start playing a show unlike Netflix or Hulu you do not
have the ability to skip an intro or skip to the next episode after after the episode ends kind of
forcing you to watch the openings and endings which for me I remember doing that when I was
younger so not that big a deal if you use the fast forward option on your Roku remote you will get
little preview Windows popping up saying hey this is where you are as you're fast forwarding which
I like because I like to be able to kind of skim and know where I am just in case I'm in a hurry
and do want to skip the intro I want to be able to know exactly where I fast forwarded to but all
together if you are looking for or know somebody who really enjoys anime Crunchyroll is well worth
checking out however the Roku app I do not know if I can recommend it it is it is atrocious I would
recommend watching this either on mobile or on a computer the service itself not terrible Roku
app horrible if you can slog your way through it like I was during this review I I'm not gonna lie
I rebooted the app uh at least four times and cut that portion out of the review uh but I have been
recording for a total of 20 minutes now so just look at the length of this video and I'll give
you an idea how many times the app crashed on me I have not yet had it crash while I was watching
something mainly navigating but still it is painful to operate food for thought with that
being said I have been Wanderer001 if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave
them in the area below and as always thanks for watching if you found this video helpful consider
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