This past week, there were a couple of new partnerships formed. I thought about covering those, but for me, one idea stood out: is ANiUTa in trouble already?
First came Tokyo Otaku Mode’s announcement that Premium members (which costs $14.99 for 90 days) could, instead of getting $16.50 in TOM points with their membership renewal, get an ANiUTa subscription. Considering ANiUTa is $4.99 a month, it seems silly to not go this route. Even if you’re not a big Tokyo Otaku Mode shopper, it still gets you a couple of extra benefits like manga chapters.
Then, at their big convention, Crunchyroll is opening up the Super Fan Pack level to everyone.
.@Crunchyroll announces the Crunchyroll Super Fan Pack! You get access to Crunchyroll, @WatchVRV, @aniutaUS, @Utomik, @MunchPakSnacks, and @jnovelclub! Along with discounts from @RightStufDeals@crunchyrollexpo #CRX #CRX2018 #Crunchyroll #CrunchyrollExpo #CRPanel
— The Geekly Grind (@TheGeeklyGrind) September 3, 2018
This had been in beta since the beginning of the year, but now it will be open to everyone by Q4 2018 and will cost $14.99 a month.
I know ANiUTa wants to get a footprint in the door, but two deals only a month after launch…?
Well, I decided to check out the service and see what, if any, of my concerns in my original article had been addressed. Time for a test run!
The ANiUTa App
I downloaded ANiUTa onto my iPad Air 2. Obviously, it’s geared toward phones, but it still worked.
Unfortunately, it looks like most of my fears came true.
First, ANiUTa is for the United States only. Sorry, other English-speaking countries, including our neighbors to the north.
The app has 10,000 songs, which may seem like a lot until you realize the Japanese site has over 50,000. ANiUTa US launched with only two labels out of the 10 in Japan, so there’s a big gap there.
Free users can sample songs for about 30 seconds. Some start at the beginning while other samples feature the main chorus. That’s to be expected, but I’ve read some users thought there was a way to listen to all songs for free with ads.
Now, I had heard some things about the search in Japanese, and I had concerns about the English version. But if it costs about the same as the Japanese version with only 1/5 the content currently, the money must be for all the trouble of making it user-friendly, right?
Quite frankly, no. In fact, I’d say the search is pretty terrible.
A lot of the songs are romanized but have no spaces. That means if you only know a couple of words in the title, you won’t be able to find them. Even if you just type in the start of the title, you will get no results. So if you want the song “hikarinonakade”, you have to type the whole thing. Oh, but if you want “Hikari no Uta”, then you need the space. Suzuko Mimori’s song? “Hikarino Melody”. So, basically, you have to memorize when you need the spaces or not.
Luckily, some songs have a couple of chances to get hits. For instance, YuYu Hakusho: Ghost Files had some songs covered by the voice actors of the series. So you have “deidorimuzyeneresyon” on one set, the same song and by the same artist on her own album (along with the cover version by Koenma) as “Daydream Generation”. “Fuwa Fuwa Time”, which I listed as an example in my first article, is listed as both “Fuwafuwa” and “Fuwa Fuwa”. Names of the singles and the actual tracks themselves may be different, with one having spaces the other not.
Plus, even though there are several different systems and with their own rules, the names of the songs are done in ways that a lot of people aren’t going to be familiar with. It’s not a matter of being right or wrong; it’s a matter of convenience. “Rakuen” (paradise) as “rakuenn”. バロック, if you go strictly by the reading, would probably come up as barokku. It’s listed in ANiUTa as barock, but the actual word it’s approximating is “Baroque”. I checked two dictionaries, and the only result for バロック was Baroque.
But it doesn’t matter, since the song I’m referring to comes up as yaminobarock, so searching for Baroque, Barock, or Barokku is pointless since it won’t come up anyway!
Well, at least it’s the full title, unlike one song which ANiUTa names hanatocyou. Cyou/chou (butterfly) is up to personal preference, but here’s the issue: the actual title is 花と蝶のセレナーデ. That means it should have been listed as “hanatocyounoserenaade” or something along those lines. I guess it makes it easier to search, but who knows how many other songs have their titles abridged.
Others, I hope you brushed up on your Japanese; some songs like えがおのオーケストラっ！(“Egao no Orchestra!” or “Orchestra of Smiles!”) has both its name and artist listed in Japanese. And if you type in 笑顔, the kanji version of “egao”, you’ll get a lot of other results, but not “Egao no Orchestra!” Even just searching for an artist is much easier if you recognize their name in kanji, although you can type their name in English.
Playlists are a bit of a mess as well. Yuki Kajiura is listed twice, with only her album Sound of Foggy London showing up in one list and everything else in another. Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has two playlists, and still songs that are on ANiUTa are missing from them.
While I’m on the subject of Mermaid Melody, where’s one of the original character songs, “Ever Blue”? The three-person version is on there, and the other two songs on her single are available, not to mention her later-released solo song. So it’s definitely not a matter of a rights issue.
Continuing with magical girl series, remember that Precure concern I had? Start searching for it in English, and ANiUTa will recognize the series.
Just one problem: it suggests things that are not actually available to listen to.
I could not find a single song from the metaseries available to play.
Lots of famous anime series are missing of course, but there are ways to get your fix. For example, “Moonlight Densetsu” is available as a cover by the original Sailor Uranus, and J-pop and seiyuu fans will likely find some of their favorite talent.
Of course, users can browse by the year an anime was released and then the anime’s title. That’s pretty much the only way to find anything reliably. The downside is that if you just want to explore other songs by an artist or voice actor you enjoy, that may be hard to do. Voice search was okay, and it was probably the most reliable and easy way to pull up a track in my experience. For some, like the earlier “Egao no Orchestra!”, Apple’s voice search had trouble with my pronunciation of “orchestra”. However, if you’re listening in a public or shared space, you can’t just keep whispering into your phone.
On the other hand, it sounds like search issues aren’t exclusive to ANiUTa US, so it’s hard to place the blame solely on the people who adapted the titles.
Is ANiUTa Worth It?
Anyway, most likely, ANiUTa is trying to boost their membership numbers by teaming up with Tokyo Otaku Mode and Crunchyroll et al, and this would be used as evidence as to why those other labels should allow their libraries online. It’s probably a good choice, as although 10,000 songs is a lot, by the time you take out anime that doesn’t have much of a — if any — American fanbase (Lucy-May of the Southern Rainbow, Chibi Maruko-chan) as well as the OSTs (which are nice, but hardly the draw of something like this), ANiUTA’s catalog gets much smaller. They have some popular series, but 1/5 of the Japanese app at almost the same price? Yeah, I can see people dropping their subscriptions after a month or two.
Now, is it worth it as a bonus? For Tokyo Otaku Mode, since users are giving up their $16.50 cash back, it’s like paying $1.50 for three months for current Premium subscribers. That sounds pretty good. However, for those who hardly ever order from the site, the extended-life TOM points, 10% off shipping, manga reading credits, and game crane plays still may not be worth the $14.99.
Currently, Crunchyroll has about 1 million subscribers, although some of those are outside the US. Ellation, Crunchyroll’s parent, is likely going to keep pushing people toward VRV. It gets them an extra $3 a month, and although it has significantly more content, people can only watch so much per month. It’s the same thing with Super Fan Pack: it’s a great value technically, but they’re hoping people won’t be able to take full advantage of everything. Still, J-Novel Club is a nice addition to a Crunchyroll membership, and that means about $4 for VRV (which is already $3) and everything else, including ANiUTa.
Which, quite frankly, is about the only way I’d subscribe to ANiUTa at this point, as it needs either to make things more user-friendly or greatly expand their library.