The Demise of KissAnime

Having spent more than half my life watching Anime, I have not once realized the importance and the role of the sites that have fueled my entertainment.

Growing up anime was the oxygen to my life, couldn’t breath without it. I never did realize that the platforms I used for entertaining myself were illegal.

After all, licensed platforms had a price to pay and were extremely limited in what anyone could watch.

It was thus, natural to stream videos using illegal sites.

To be honest, even if my naive self did know, the only problem I would have faced would be whether the site was safe for me or not.

Fast forward to the present.

A message was posted on the 15th of August at 11:20 AM, the support team of the leading free illegal anime streaming site KissAnime posted a message :

It came as quite a surprise to me.

I was surprised that the site I used for years has been taken down, not because it was taken down but because KissAnime did a great damned job evading successfully for years and suddenly their gone.

Soon enough I realized that it didn’t really matter for two reasons:

This was bound to happen. The future of illegal sites will never and shouldn’t sway upward. I knew this, everyone knew this.

So, the question isn’t why, it’s when.

The second reason was that while KissAnime was my favourite streaming site, it wasn’t the only illegal website.

As long viewers need to pay to watch anime, illegal sites will exist. There are many and in fact soon enough another will pop up, better than the past.

The provision for me and millions of others entertainment will always exist but eventually they too, will disappear, just like their predecessors.

Scrolling through Reddit, all I could see were comments of how grateful everyone was for the very existence of KissAnime.

It was stupid. Grateful?

The existence of sites like these damage the comic industry. For providing free access to the viewers the creators suffer a loss.

It was stupid but….

I felt the same.

I too was grateful.

Without the existence of these websites I probably would have studied more.

Without them I would have spent my precious time on more important matters.

Without them my present situation would be different.

But, without them I would have been a loner.

I would have lost all those moments and memories living alongside characters that don’t exist, rooting for characters that aren’t alive.

A stupid thought indeed,

But I do not regret my decision.

In the end, I am grateful.

R.I.P

Related posts:

As part of the Transition Finance for Farmers series, Benedikt Bösel and myself discuss something rarely covered, the profitability of regenerative and non-regenerative farmers. Does a farmer need…

I have purchased an M1 MacBook Pro in April 2021 and I believe it is an extremely valid machine to do basically anything. With the primarily goal in mind to do deep learning and extensive…

Back in the early school days, I remember myself as a shy kid. Added, I was pretty weak in academics. My grades typically were around the last five places of our entire class. I felt pretty dumb, and…