After the end KissAnime era in previous years, many anime fans who wanted to watch anime not available on legal streaming services (Crunchyroll and Funimation), or simply couldn’t afford it, turned to other illegal anime websites.
One of these illegal websites was AnimeKisa, which was praised by many because of having no ads at all. According to traffic analysis by SimilarWeb, this website was getting 18 million visitors per month. AnimeKisa totally depended on users’ donation to keep the servers running. However, it looks like not many people donated to them, as they have shut down with the following message on their website:
If you’ve been here since a few months ago, you probably remember us running a donation campaign. Ever since we removed ads a year and half ago (excluding third-party ones that are impossible to remove), AK’s wallet dried up, thanks to your donations we were able to extend AKs life for a few months. It has been 3 long years, it was great while it lasted, but AnimeKisa is never coming back online.
One thing that is annoyingly common between these pirate website is the unlimited number of ads you have to go through before you reach the destination. AnimeKisa was probably the only website that was breaking this norm, and providing relatively good service to anime fans (still morally it was wrong). So, many fans took to Twitter to express their grief. One Twitter user tweeted:
This has been my go to anime pirate site for a few years now. I remember being worried a few months ago when they were asking for donations, but once they stopped asking I completely forgot and stopped worrying. RIP AnimeKisa, you will be missed.
As quoted from the AnimeKisa website earlier, they are never coming back online again. Now fans will have to search for another ‘good’ pirate anime site with no ads, but that will be most likely difficult to find.
What are your thoughts on AnimeKisa shutting down? Let us know your opinion in the comment section below.
