Amazon Gets in to Anime with 'Kabaneri Of The Iron Fortress'

Netflix has been aware of the appeal of Japanese animation for some time now. The big cheese in the streaming world moved into picking up exclusive rights to several shows- and will soon be releasing the first truly Netflix exclusive anime worldwide. Now it seems that rival Amazon is getting in on the action, as it has acquired its first anime series for exclusive streaming on it's Amazon Prime Video service.

Kabaneri Of The Iron Fortress comes from Attack On Titan producers Studio Wit, and will debut in April. It takes place in a steam-punk style world on the island of Hinomoto, which is plagued by Kabane- zombie-like creatures with steel hearts. Humans take refuge in fortresses called Stations, which are connected only by Hayajiro- a form of armoured steam-train.

This looks like a fairly blatant attempt from Studio Wit to replicate the success of Attack on Titan, but it should keep you going until Titan's second season finally lands later this year, The series will start airing in Japan initially on Fuji TV. It's not yet clear how soon after this it will be available on Amazon Prime, but Amazon have apparently picked up global rights to the series.

Amazon Prime isn't available in anywhere near as many countries as Netflix- it is currently available in the US, UK, Japan and Germany. Where this leaves potential viewers outside these countries is anyone's guess. Nonetheless, Amazon getting into the anime game is an interesting move. This is clearly a first step to test the waters, but if they find it to be successful, we could be entering a new interesting era in anime streaming. Already anime sites such as Crunchyroll and Funimation are having to compete with the big guns of Netflix, so how another big name entering the fray will effect the market remains to be seen.

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