this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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Ha fuck… that was my last personal sub… any alternative beside the high seas? I’m seasick…
Honestly, piracy is easier than it ever has been. You can automate torrents or usenet downloads with the *arr suite. There’s a bit of a learning curve to get it set up… But once it’s running, it’s basically just “add show to your watchlist” and ~15 minutes later it shows up on your media list with full metadata, subtitles, etc ready to go.
Plenty of people will suggest stremio, which is… Contentious. It works for streaming by downloading a torrent to cache. After you watch it, stremio automatically deletes the cache. So in day to day operation, it uses very little hard drive space and primarily relies on your internet speed and properly seeded torrents. But that latter part is the problem… Since it deletes the cache, it isn’t actually seeding anything in return. If everyone used stremio, nobody would actually be able to use it, because none of the torrents would be seeded. It’s a sort of mass prisoner’s dilemma.
Technically, you can set stremio to keep a rolling cache of {x} size, and it will hold onto the torrents until you start to download something new and it needs that space. But very few people will expect to hit a 1.0 ratio, even with a decently sized cache.
No one reccomends stremio without real debrid, makes it instant like netflix
The whole point is not to do any setup and maintenance just to watch anime… I already have a job where I have to do that and I was hoping that it would pay for the convenience. My passion is watching anime, not setup downloading pipeline for them.
Lol I can just add it to my phone's torrent client when I have a plan to watch something, then later begin download when I have wifi (or if you have unlimited high speed data, that also works... sort of...), usually like before bed when the phone is plugged in, then wake up and its done downloading.
You can pre-download the next thing you plan to watch before you finish your current thing. Same for TV Shows and movies.
If you don't use your phone for work, you can also just leave it charging and use their wifi (with VPN obviously) to torrent then come come and have it ready to watch, usually unless it has low seeders.
Watch using VLC.
(Afaik, there's no torrent client on iOS, so this is Android only... we'll see what happens with Android torrent clients after 2027... it works for now)
(That's the simplist thing to do. You can also remote into a computer,but that's a bit more complicated.)
There are plain old anime piracy sites, for both downloading and streaming, if you don't want the headache.
The point of the setup is you only need to do it once, you don't set up everything every time you want to download something...
Got any guides for that stuff? Sounds pretty neat
https://wiki.servarr.com/
Google stremio + realdebrid, it's all spelled out step by step on many guides, you basically download the app (on pc, android, tvs) add community repos, add torrentio, click customize, paste your real debrid api key and you're done. Past that you can pick extensions like marvels or other torrent addons to add categories and other sources.
Real debrid you pay like 6$ a month for, it automatically dloads the torrent when you click it or grabs from its cache (almost always cached/downloaded by others)Makes stremio run as fast/smooth as netflix/hulu/etc.
Stremio auto tracks what is watched, keeps history/playback time accurately. It's basically how kodi addons used to be as it's own smoother app.
Never heard of stremio, sounds like it plays the role of a media server, in which case it doesn't have to be streamio? Plex or Jellyfin could work too
Stremio is the "downloader" and the "streamer", so it's both. Plex and Jellyfin require you to download beforehand.
Then you pay for it? Plain and simple. You pay for that convenience.
I am paying for it… it becomes tricky when the disagreement isn’t on price but on replacing fellow human with AI from a country with genocidal tendencies. That’s where I draw my line I guess.
There are classical, "best of all time", titles that an anime lover like you would defintely enjoy. They're not available on Crunchyroll, they're not on Amazon Prime, Netflix, you can't purchase a copy. A few had selected censored releases in VHS, good luck hunting them down.
The thing with piracy is that it's not just a money saving trick used by teenagers, it's also the only way to truly watch the media you enjoy regardless of what some media conglomerate thinks - they no longer get to define how, when and what you're going to watch. You have to do a bit of setup once... yes that sucks, but from that point onwards, you're free.
Those I have, some literally on VHS :) When I was young we had a monthly or weekly VHS of best anime from France which I subscribed to. I like some recent stuff that’s very much available on Crunchyroll though plus it’s an easy way to stay aware of releases and such.
The end goal was always to deprive us of alternatives
There’s always torrents but it was very convenient to just go to crunchy and start something… torrenting and putting it in plex and all… it’s just less convenient
They took our comments and reviews, now they're ruining subtitles, are delayed, etc. The arr stack is starting to be just as convenient if not more.
Lord Gaben said it best, piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem (the people who couldn't afford it weren't going to buy it anyway).
You’re right about comments and reviews… I miss some of that. You’re also right quoting the old Gaben. But still… it seems we can’t keep any nice things for long :-/
Look into setting up an -arr stack. Overseer with radar/sonaar plus your torrent client of choice and a VPN. The setup takes a weekend at most and the final product is honestly easier to use then navigating shitty streaming services now. It actually is more convenient after just a little bit of setup.
Usenet is great also downloads very quickly. Just automate the whole process.
I was doing usenet more than 10yrs ago… not that straightforward, needs a subscription anyway… and the whole NAS + plex or something similar is still needed. I get the idea but there’s a point in life where 10€ per month for the ease of use is very appealing.
I pay around 2 to 3 dollars a month, I bought lifetime index subscriptions.
Hidive is probably the last good one, unless something changed in recent times.
HiDive. Until they get the fuckaround bug.