New Streaming Service 'Funimation Now' Launching in the US and UK

North America's biggest anime distributor Funimation has over recent years tried to replicate it's success on home video in the new frontier of streaming. While it's tried to steal market-share aware from competitors like Crunchyroll and Viewster it's perhaps not quite yet achieved quite the level of success it craved. The company hopes to change all this in 2016 as it prepares to launch a whole new streaming service named Funimation Now.

Funimation Now will be a whole freshly desired experience with new sites and apps designed from the ground up. This is probably a good idea considering the criticism levelled at previous versions of the site- although they had already made efforts to improve.  The new site will continue to be home to Funi's library of dubbed and subtitled anime, offered in HD and ad-free to subscribers. Funimation Now will launch in February with brand new apps for android, Kindle, iOS and Windows 10. It will also see Funi's service available in the UK for the first time too- the 'international expansion' the company promised was coming in 2016. The new website will launch in May, alongside updated apps for Playstation and Xbox consoles and Roku.


This is particularly great news for fans in the UK, who have previously had to watch jealously any-time a show they wanted was snapped up by Funi. It seems likely though that rights issues will mean British fans won't get access to the full library (as local rights maybe tied up elsewhere). It's a familiar story for UK fans- still, anything's better than nothing.

It remains to be seen if the new service lives up to it's promise and offers as good an experience as it's rivals. We're sure looking forward to finding out though!

Funimation have also temporarily extended their free trial period from 14 to 30 days, and launched a brand-new logo.

[source  via WTK on Twitter]