Type of shows: Primarily Japanese anime, although there are also other Asian shows like drama, fashion and food programmes.
Platforms: Web, Wii U, Chromecast, Xbox, PlayStation, iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Apple TV and Roku.
VPN needed: No
Premium membership: US$6.95 to US$11.95 a month via credit card or PayPal
Crunchyroll was founded in 2006 by a group of University of California, Berkeley graduates. The service has since established itself as the go-to source for Japanese anime.
It hosts 25,000 episodes of officially licensed content, including blockbuster series such as One Piece and Attack on Titan.
Although Crunchyroll focuses primarily on Japanese content, the company has a multi-national reach, with offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Tokyo. Its website also comes in more than 10 languages, including Arabic, French and Italian, although there is no Chinese version. Most of the animes have English subtitles.
On the home page of Crunchyroll is a selection of popular animes, and clicking on each item brings up a list of episodes.
For some videos, non-premium users can access a full-definition 1080p stream, but for most shows, they are limited to lower resolutions such as 480p. Premium subscribers also can enjoy additional features such as being able to pop out videos into another window, ad-free streams, a wider variety of content and earlier access to the latest shows.
Streaming on Crunchyroll is smooth. Signing up for the service is a straightforward affair, as it does not require users to subscribe to a VPN service.
Besides the shows, Crunchyroll also has a host of other content. On the page for each anime are tabs to navigate to associated reviews, comments and merchandise in its online shop. The shop sells a variety of items such as posters, towels, mugs and chopsticks.
It also has a forum and a news section, where regular contributors post the latest anime buzz.
