Eighty-Six Anime Removed from Netflix, Crunchyroll AND Amazon

Article at a glance:

• Eighty-Six, a massive fan favorite, has vanished overnight from Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Amazon Prime with zero official explanation and a literal 404 page where its legacy should be.
• With the series purged across all major platforms and physical Blu-rays sold out, fans are left in a “dead zone” where legal access is officially non-existent in affected regions.
• Coming on the heels of major security hacks and licensing failures, this incident proves once again why the “Steam of Anime” is desperately needed and why piracy remains a necessary evil for preservation.

And people wonder why piracy is so commonplace in anime media. Eight-Six, a beloved anime, has been removed from Crunchyroll, Netflix, AND Amazon Prime. You literally cannot stream the anime legally at this point. I don’t know what happened. There has been no official announcement regarding this, and so far, it seems like Eighty-Six is the only anime affected by this disappearance. Between the recent Crunchyroll hack and this incident, I don’t think I even need to justify piracy anymore.

Again, I don’t condone piracy, but there are multiple reasons why it is so commonplace in anime and manga media in particular. And this coming in right in the middle of Crunchyroll’s massive piracy purge is poetic too. So let’s get started.

So what happened?

Earlier today, people started noticing that 86 had disappeared from Crunchyroll. Many people online claimed that the anime disappeared mid-episode. See, the thing is, even when CR loses licensing rights to an anime, they still have a page on the website, which just says something like content unavailable. Meanwhile, 86 is just GONE. If you try to go to the anime’s page on CR, it will return a big fat 404. If this were just CR, we could’ve chalked it up ot a technical issue. We all know that CR can be a little silly at times.

But then it got removed from Netflix AND Amazon Prime as well. So yeah, if you live in an affected region, there is literally no legal way to stream Eighty-Six. There has been no official announcement from either of the streaming platforms. So it remains to be seen what exactly caused this.

My Thoughts

I mean, what do I even need to say? I have made several articles in the past going over why piracy is sometimes justified in the anime/manga media. And this is just another argument in my favor. How many more points do people need on the graph to draw a line? We really, really do need an anime/manga equivalent to Steam or Spotify. And if not that, the physical media should be more accessible because the Blu-ray copies of Eighty-Six are literally sold out on Amazon, lmfao.

Even putting piracy aside, you can’t make a better argument for physical media, too. You literally can’t watch this anime legally right now if you’re in regions affected by this. And then some people wonder why most anime fans despise Crunchyroll. I don’t even know what to say because this comes like barely 2 months after the huge CR hack that leaked GBs worth of PII, including credit card info. But this is getting repetitive, so I’ll stop here.

That is all for now

Let me know what you guys think in the comments. This is yet another Crunchyroll L. Crunchyroll Ls seem like a dime a dozen these days. So yeah, that’s all I have to say for now. I will take my leave here; there is stuff I need to take care of. See ya!

Also, check out my thoughts on the 2nd Prettiest Girl Anime so far here!