Crunchy Roll: The Social & Media Site for Geeks
First there was Napster and it got all of us thinking that we shouldn’t have to pay for music. Now that broadband is more ubiquitous and streaming technology is reliable we’re all thinking we shouldn’t have to pay for movies or cable TV. That’s where sites like OVGuide.com have staked their claim, collecting all the short-lived links and streams around the net of everything from reality TV to the latest theatrical releases. But, you say, what about my discerning inclinations towards anime, drama, and music from Asia? Pull up a seat at the sushi bar, pour a little bowl of soy sauce and dig into Crunchy Roll.
Like many popular community sites, Crunchy Roll was started by a single person — Shinji — as a way to chat and share with his friends. Over time it’s grown into a popular forum with lots of otaku talk and an immense library of everything from modern anime episodes to hard-to-find live action dramas. There’s also a massive collection of music videos from all around Asia and a growing games section with plenty of discussion and even more bizarre video uploads. Most everything is available in a higher quality H.264 format and there’s even a Digg-style rating system and Avatar/Profile controls for this growing social community. They’ve even got several Flash games built into the site including a little RPG that lets you find and buy items to customize your Avatar.
It’s hard to tell what you’ll find at Crunchy Roll. As Shinji describes it “the site changes so fast but throughout all of crunchyroll’s changes, i’ve noticed one thing that’s always constant – it’s a community of awesome, passionate people! The people are what make [Crunchy Roll] rock!” Many of the collections are incomplete and the content is constantly changing as legal issues arise but there will always be something interesting to see at Crunchy Roll. For us it was Romance of the Three Kingdoms, an incredibly expensive collection of VCDs of the 90’s Chinese TV series, and the Animal Crossing anime. Check it out, friend us and let us know what you couldn’t believe you found!
