Ani-cli is my go to but I need some backups. Thanks in advance!
Edit: I meant as in the program/software/site you use that hosts the anime. Not necessarily the video player. Hope this clears things up.
Okay so, one day, Hayase was released. I tried it out, liked the idea. Anime watching as an program rather then a website, all the anime we want, easily accessible.
Then, the bloat and lack of polish started creeping in. I left issues on github, they got shut down. I post comment on reddit, dev comes in and says he refuses to work on improves to be a good experience for PC users, because he wants it focused on fucking television use. I ask least for some basics like a button to access our anime list be placed on the left bar, or settings to hide stuff we wont use like calendar and live chat, and he just refuses. Any UI layout stuff is also refused for TV remove concerns. (Also who the fuck texts people in a public chat with a TV remote???).
(Sticking out in my mind, i remember asking for at least some basic right click options, and being rejected because tv remotes can't point and right click. No right click menu in 2026 is absolutely fucking insane, this dude just does not understand that the TV and PC versions don't need to be 1:1 functionality, why can't we have some things PC only, rather then they both just suck???, PS layout sucks on TV as well BTW >_>)
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Next, SeaAnime came out. At the time it was basically just significantly worse Hayase, although i don't remember why. However I now see now it updated A LOT, so much so that while i don't remember what all my complaints were or what changed, but i can see deep in the UI customization menu (that is now quite extensive) that theres an option to use the legacy layout, so i'm guessing the entire app got a complete redesign and thats why i don't immediately remember what i disliked so much.
I see they even went overkill and added the ability for users to use custom CSS for UI. When i opened "Marketplace" (plugins search, nothing is for sale, not actually a market place) i was blown away with the support options.
I think one of the things that also stood out to me before was lack of MAL support, but i see support for MAL is now a plugin/extension (or whatever the fuck were calling the things in the "marketplace").
Okay thats a lot of glazing for SeaAnime, time for complaints.
(The forgivable / ignorable complaints)
- Calling your place to download Extensions / Plugins a "Marketplace" with a literal shopping basket for an icon is fucking stupid. Why are you implying users can BUY plugins? To be clear, it does not support the buying or selling of plugins. So why the fuck is this called a market? ???????
- Finding the "Marketplace" is unintuitive.
(The actually annoying stuff)
- Pressing back while a show is open, does not minimize / smallify / go back to the page before you opened the anime. For as much shit as i give Hayase on the regular, even it has a working back button. In SeaAnime, it works everywhere else, but not in a show. Please have a functioning back button like every other PC program.
- NONE of the video players have a right click menu. Please do not copy hayase's bad habits.
- Putting your mouse at the bottom middle and doing nothing does not make the mouse and UI disappear like every other video playing software in existence.
- Torrents auto select, and annoying often pick incorrectly. There is seemingly no setting to make it not do this. The "auto-select" "Setting toggle" that implies it turns this off when on an anime's page, is not actually a setting toggle and the moment you go to another anime's page it auto plays. (When people say vibe coded slop, non functioning basic settings like this is what they mean).
- From the home's continue watching page, there is no way to go to an anime's page. Clicking it force plays it with no option to click the name to go to page, and right clicking and selecting open page auto-triggers the auto-select because it can't actually be disabled and starts playing a show you had no intent on watching.
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So anyway, as far as i can tell, or last researched, there is still no basic anime streaming app that doesn't have tons of infuriating broken / unfinished parts of the app. It is STILL a better experience to just use nyaa then it is to use any of these. That said... you just don't know what you don't know. So, what options otherwise exist? Until now if i wanted something quickly i just sucked it up and used Hayase (It has MANY problems the dev refuses to fix, but SeaAnime making it easy to play the wrong episode and making you jump through hoops just to make sure it's actually playing the correct fucking episode / no back button is PAINFULLLL).
These two screenshots from the exact same episode and timestamp show the technical regression happening right now at Crunchyroll as they transition their localization teams away from Aegisub to a paid, cloud-based software called OOONA.
.ass): Proper typesetting. The translation is seamlessly integrated over the Japanese sign with matching fonts, positioning, and styling.Beyond the obvious visual downgrade, the operational logic behind this shift is completely backwards:
.ass capabilities: Aegisub has been the gold standard for anime subtitling for decades because .ass scripting handles complex sign translations and overlapping dialogue effortlessly. OOONA is built for rigid broadcast captions, stripping away proper typesetting tools..ass files in Aegisub, splitting and merging scripts takes seconds. OOONA forces a sequential bottleneck that guarantees rushed quality or delays.It’s another textbook example of paying customers getting a degraded experience while official platforms actively hamstring the people trying to deliver quality work.
I tried my hand at editing the subs for a new anime that came out yesterday. I'm gonna give all the fansubbers out there massive props because I spent close to 3 hours and when I looked up, I had barely made it halfway through the episode!
Granted, I had to get help from online on how to code text because I knew jack shit. I'll never know how y'all get these subs out so fast barely a day after the episode airs
Keep up the good work 👏
What anime streaming site has the best video quality? Also secondary and not required, but at least a half decadent UI and not that many or any pop up ads (I don’t really use a ad blocker).
i was trying to go watch anime and all of a sudden it said account was suspended. I was wondering if anyone else got their account suspended or it was just mine.
why are they all vibe coded? subtitles dont work have the time, not even in dub, dubbed episodes wont play with dubbed audio, a certain nexus forcing weird click anywhere ads, places charging for it. no honor among thieves i suppose? downloading from the main sites costs like 1gb per episode and takes forever. seems that crunchyroll won bc they know the only effort put in now is vibecoded slop. What alternative even is there besides spending hundreds on storage and downloading everything and just hoping it doesnt take an hour each time. its like pirates just fell right into the trap, AI taking up all the storage and shooting prices up, the anime industry taking down key website pillars, and then developers think AI vibe coded slop is worth using. then you got all the redditors stuck in denial thinking pirating will never go down even if we never work actively to keep things good