You can’t even watch it unless you’re there for the stream.
Summary:
- Kaiju no. 8 is releasing on X, and fans feel it’s a suboptimal way to watch the series.
- Not only does the quality suffer from the anime being on X, but you can’t even watch the anime if you didn’t make it to the stream.
- Fans are wondering why it’s being released this way.
If you’ve heard of Kaiju no. 8 (Kaijuu 8-gou) in the past few months, you’ve probably heard about its unusual release format. The anime is just your normal one-cour TV anime, except… it also airs on X (formerly Twitter).
Of course, that’s not the only way to watch the anime legally. It’s also licensed by Crunchyroll in the United States, where most fans will probably watch it anyway. The reason for this is that the X broadcast is a huge mess — even more so than it was initially expected to be.
Issues with the X Broadcast
Originally, fans were confused by the decision to stream the anime on X. This is certainly an unusual way to release a series. Sure, there were YouTube-original series before, as well as anime released through dedicated apps.
But releasing something on social media first is new. X wasn’t really made with the idea of watching long videos in mind, at least initially.
As such, manga fans were practically asking the new viewers not to watch the anime on X and to stick to Crunchyroll (or other legal streaming services in different countries). The reason for this is that the video (and audio) quality on X are way worse than those of dedicated video streaming platforms.
Fortunately for fans — and unfortunately for those who for some reason wanted to watch the anime on X — the X broadcast of Kaiju no. 8 isn’t possible to watch normally anyway.
The anime is only released as a livestream and is not available after that. This is extremely weird, as you can still watch short clips from the episode and cast interviews — just not the episode itself.
This is even worse than fans initially expected it to be. Not only is it a bad idea to release an anime on X, but if you aren’t there when the anime airs, you’re going to miss it. It seems that this broadcast is made for practically no one.
No Reason to Release the Anime Like That
In the end, fans just wonder why Kaiju no. 8 is being released this way at all. Aside from the fact that it’s something that’s never been done before, there’s no good reason to release it, especially with so many factors that make it unappealing to watch on the platform.
The only plausible reasons are either that X is investing in the series, or that the production committee thinks this kind of marketing will be profitable.