Competition has come up for Crunchyroll, at least for Spanish-speakers on this side of the pond: it’s called AnimeBox and it boasts not only a powerful anime catalogue, but also offering everything dubbed into Spanish, not Spanish, since it is a new video-on-demand service from the Catalan company Selecta Vision. In other words, and don’t misunderstand, the contents of AnimeBox can be enjoyed in the original version, but also dubbed.
As is obvious, its main characteristic is also its main weakness, and that is that AnimeBox’s catalog necessarily has to be inferior to Crunchyroll’s, but there is so much anime that has been produced in recent years and continues to be produced, that depending on the tastes and desires of each one, it can be an interesting alternative to enjoy Japanese animation. I refer, of course, to the issue of dubbing.
Because, as is also obvious, there are many anime lovers who prefer it in the original version with subtitles: because they like it better and, above all, because the amount of offer available in this way is large. There are also many dubbed contents, but there will never be so many and especially the new ones are usually hard to come by. On the other hand, and leaving tastes aside, in Spain we have first-rate dubbers and in the field of anime they have been demonstrating this for decades.
Be that as it may, you prefer to watch anime one way or another, AnimeBox covers both; but it was noteworthy that it is one of its main strengths. The other, needless to add, is a truffled catalog of greatest hits of yesterday, today and alwayswhich is often said: in the presentation video you can see fragments of series such as Attack the titans, Guardians of the night, Naruto, Digimon, one piece, evangelion, Ranma 1/2, Akira… And a long etcetera without specifying.
What is specified are their plans:
- Free for rental service, up to one device.
- €5.99 per month with access to all content except premium movies, up to one device.
- €7.99 per month with access to all content, downloads for offline viewing and up to two devices.
All plans include access to Simulcast (Series premiered simultaneously with Japan in the original version with subtitles). In addition, there is an introductory offer at 50% discount “with 2 months free (more than 6 months free with the introductory offer.”
AnimeBox is available only for Spain and Andorra and can be viewed through the web browser or mobile applications for Android and iOS. Enter the animebox official website to see more.
And up to here we can read, because although the service comes from a company with a solvent and well-established track record such as Selecta Vision, distributor of a large part of the anime films that are currently released in Spanish cinemas, the website is top of the line. more shabby and does not include technical information of any kind, nor does it include exact information from the catalog.
We will have to see how they manage to maintain and grow, because at first glance, practically everything that can be found in AnimeBox can be found in other services streaming on the market and I’m not just referring to Crunchyroll: there are more and more anime on all platforms, especially Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, but also Disney+.
