Claymore 14, All Hail Crunchyroll

Morning! Just a quick update before I run out to an early morning meeting (ugh). First of all, I have a short review in this week’s Manga Minis, for volume fourteen of Claymore, a series I like a lot and one of the few shonen series I have reviewed at MR. If you missed my review of volume thirteen back in December, here it is! It was actually my very first review for Manga Recon. Oh, the nostalgia.

Secondly, I just want to take a moment and appreciate Crunchyroll. We originally bought a membership in order to watch new episodes of Shugo Chara!! Doki as they came out, but yesterday we started watching three new series (we’ll probably keep going with two of them) which were being simulcast here at pretty much the same time as in Japan. It was exciting, seriously. I mean, this is what we’ve all hoped for, right? That someone would start to provide legally what was previously only offered by fansubbers–subbed anime available here at the same time (or shortly after) its release in Japan. Hell, I’d have gone for episodes aired even a month or so afterward–that’s still a huge improvement over the years-long wait for dubs I’m not going to watch anyway–but I admit there was something kind of thrilling about knowing we were watching at approximately the same time these episodes were airing for the very first time. Thank you, Crunchyroll, thank you. You are awesome. It’ll be interesting to see how Funimation’s Fullmetal Alchemist streams stack up!