There’s been a lot of news about streaming lately. Amidst the mergers and closures, a new streaming platform for anime fans has made its debut. TMS Entertainment has partnered with Future Entertainment to launch TMS Anime and TMS Kids!, so it’s time to take a look.
You may not recognize TMS Entertainment by name, but chances are you’ve watched something they’ve worked on. Although the studio has undergone a few name changes over the years, TMS Entertainment been involved in many anime — and Western works as well.
Millennials may recognize them from shows like Inspector Gadget, Dennis the Menace, Tiny Toon Adventures, The New Batman Adventures, and the first seasons of Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers and DuckTales. Classic anime shows they’ve produced include The Rose of Versailles, Cat’s Eye, and St. Tail. Since 2000, some of their well-known works include Glass Mask, D.Gray-man, Yowamushi Pedal, ReLIFE, and Kamisama Kiss. That’s not to mention long-running franchises like Detective Conan (Case Closed) and Lupin the Third, and they made a splash recently with the announcement of the Fruits Basket reboot.
Even disregarding their work on Western animation, TMS Entertainment has quite a catalog — something for just about every anime fan. So let’s get to watching!
…
Well, that depends. You see, this is their lead-in for their press release:
“Channels Will Be Available Across Multiple Platforms Including Roku, Fire TV and Apple TV, and Will Offer Dynamic Titles for Anime Fans and Kids of All Ages”
But as of right now, “including” seems to be “only”. Got a smartphone or tablet? You’re out of luck, let alone if you have a Chromecast (which is my preferred streaming device). Yes, Roku, Apple TV, and Fire TV are popular devices, but still far behind smartphones and tablets.
In addition, while they do have a YouTube account with Sonic X and Monster Rancher dubs, that’s not much if you want to watch on your computer either. The press release doesn’t say whether or not Android, iOS, or web viewing is coming in the future; even if they are, who knows how long that will be.
Not off to a great first impression.
I downloaded TMS Anime and TMS KIDS! to an older Roku stick (3500R). Both are rated 4.4 stars as of this writing. Full disclaimer: I’ve never actually used the Roku stick I used for this article before…It’s been sitting unopened in a box.
I first fired up TMS Anime. It took over 30-40 seconds on average to start, and it even froze or failed to load once in my limited testing. This seemed to be slightly longer than the channels for Netflix or Hulu and a lot longer than Amazon Prime.
It’s a fairly standard menu where you can browse the series and have a synopsis of each episode. These are the series available:
TMS Anime:
Actually, I am – 13 episodes
Bananya – 13 episodes
Brave10 – 12 episodes
Itakiss (Itazura na Kiss) – 25 episodes
The Pilot’s Love Song – 13 episodes
Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas – 24 episodes
Z/X Ignition – 12 episodes
God Mars – 64 episodes
TMS KIDS!:
Bananya – 13 episodes
Galaxy High School – 13 episodes
Monster Rancher Season 1 – 26 episodes
Monster Rancher Season 2 – 22 episodes
Sherlock Hound – 26 episodes
Sonic X – 77 episodes
Anime has a Most Popular category while KIDS! has Most Watched and Most Watched Episodes of The Month categories. The latter wasn’t particularly user-friendly, as it eliminated the summaries that are found in the normal and Most Watched groupings. 
KIDS! features dubs (minus the oddity Bananya) while Anime features subs. I also noticed that KIDS! has some other recommended channels section while Anime does not.
I also notice some slight discrepancies in the playlist titles and the anime series synopsis. For instance, although it’s called The Pilot’s Love Song on Crunchyroll and the synopsis, the playlist is listed as Pilot’s Love Songs. 
Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas is missing episodes 3 and 22, at least as of this writing.
So I first tested Bananya since it’s so short. I got one ad (for insurance), but later playthroughs had one and a Newsy movie tidbit. After about 10-15 seconds and two ads, the next one loaded. And, uh, there’s an obvious difference from Crunchyroll’s version:
Although the pictures in the menu show English subtitles (and this ANN article says that all but Saint Seiya have subtitles), I could not get them to appear for the life of me. 
On the other hand, it also says that there was a watermark, and I didn’t see one.
Next, Actually I Am. The subtitles seem to be the exact same as Crunchyroll’s. I didn’t see any way to designate a new speaker, and sometimes the different lines appear on top of each other to make it seem like one nonsensical piece of dialogue. Something like:
“Next time I’ll confess
You’re really close to
your friends, Kuromine-kun”
There was the short ad plus Newsy fact at the beginning and three ad breaks during the episode. The last was during the ending credits, and the other two I think were before the eyecatch. The first was about two minutes, the second about four, the third about two and half minutes. Location-based ads, although because of your ISP, it may be much further off than, say, Google’s guess of where you’re at. (“Only 13 minutes away!” the closest store ad of the three proclaimed…more like 1 hour 13 minutes, but whatever.) Got three ads for the same store in a row, and there were other duplicates as well, especially with the Newsy tidbits. Stop telling me about the bees in Candyland, kthx. The ads were kind of jarring since they came up at unexpected times, but I do prefer large ads at once rather than a bunch of short ad breaks.
Final Thoughts
I do think it’s good that these channels are ad-supported. Maybe eventually they’ll have a no-ads option, but I don’t think anybody would pay for such a small selection on either channel right now. Especially since most of these series are currently available on Crunchyroll or YouTube for free. The press release says more shows like Lupin the Third will be added, but who knows what they mean by “the near future”.
Again, TMS has a long history, and I hope they can get some unique titles on here. Series like Magic Knight Rayearth, Aishiteruze Baby, or Devil Lady that can’t be found legally to watch online either because their license has expired, were never to be streamed, or were never licensed in the first. That’s what they need, not just stuff that a vast majority of their audience already can access and has become accustomed to using.
In addition, viewers can start something on Crunchyroll or YouTube on their phone and then continue at home on their TV or laptop. Unfortunately, that’s not something TMS Entertainment’s channels can do right now, and it’s a major strike against them. Otherwise, this channel is destined for a short lifespan.