We need to talk about Anime (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

We really hate having to make this post, but we need to tell you what's going on with the Anime channel & what that means for Demon Slayer / Hunter x Hunter moving forward.

Right now, the Diegesis Anime channel has two active copyright strikes that came directly from Sony Music Entertainment Japan.

These are not the normal copyright claims we've dealt with a million times as reaction creators that are within the platform. Copyright strikes are actual DMCA takedowns, so an actual legal request of removal under federal copyright law, meaning under YouTube's own policy they must federally comply with this request. Reaching three active copyright strikes can put not only that channel, but associated channels at risk of termination as well.

So another strike doesn't just affect our Anime channel but puts others potentially at risk too.

Meaning it can potentially put Diegesis as a whole at risk.

Every anime upload forward would be a gamble.

Which really fucking sucks.

We have genuinely had a lot of fun building an anime community with everyone. We love anime, and we loved getting into Demon Slayer, and the few the previous shows we covered. So this is not happening because we all of the sudden don't want to watch anime anymore.

The reality for us is that anime has been some of the most difficult content we've ever tried to safely share on YouTube.

We’ve found that anime reactions can be heavily edited, cut down significantly, handled more carefully around the source material, and structured so that our continuous commentary stays at the center of the video... ALL THAT and they can still be claimed regularly. We can accept that. We can even accept that the majority of these videos may not be monetized over time, which was largely our experience with Attack on Titan.

What we cannot justify is asking an editor to dedicate substantially more time and care to these projects, above what is already a high editing standard across our other content, only for us to still end up with an actual copyright strike against the account. At that point, all of that additional work still doesn’t protect the channel from the much bigger risk we’re trying to avoid.

At this point, we cannot support projects that carry this level of risk onto to everything else we do.

So for now, we are stopping uploads on Diegesis Anime.

What happens with Demon Slayer?

We have officially finished Season 1 of Demon Slayer on Patreon.

The Season 1 Full-Length Watch Alongs and Early Access reactions (what is left of them) that we've already produced are there, but we will not be continuing Demon Slayer beyond Season 1.

There will not be a Season 2 from us for the foreseeable future, unless Sony reaches a point where they are willing to allow creators to share, discuss, and build community around their work in a transformative way without putting entire platforms at risk.

We know that's probably really disappointing for those of you who were watching along with us, and it's really disappointing for us too. We obviously did not start this series expecting that we wouldn't be able to finish it. We are no strangers to demonetized videos, and honestly, we would not mind continuing a series even if some uploads couldn't earn revenue. We deal with that all the time. But multiple full copyright strikes against the channel are an entirely different level of risk, and that is simply too much for us to responsibly keep gambling with.

At that point, we're not talking about losing ad revenue. We're talking about DMCA takedowns directly from Sony Japan, potentially losing our channels, being sued, or worse. Both. And that is incredibly frustrating when our intention was never to reproduce or replace the original content. We created these reactions as transformative commentary and as a space for people to watch, discuss, and build community around something we all enjoy.

What happens with Hunter x Hunter?

We will finish Season 1 of Hunter x Hunter on Patreon as Full-Length Watch Alongs for everyone who has already been following that series with us.

However, we will not be producing edited YouTube reactions for Hunter x Hunter, and once Season 1 is finished, we will not be continuing further for now.

We wanted to at least finish out the season in full-length form for the people who have already been watching it with us rather than just disappearing halfway through.

So what are we watching instead?

We're not slowing down! ❤️

Ted Lasso, The Bear, Andor are just a few currently on the horizon and will be finding a place in our schedule over time.

New shows still operate like they normally do with Main Channel reactions + Patreon, including the content you guys are already used to getting from us.

And we're honestly REALLY excited about them!

We know that some of you found us specifically because of anime. Some of you joined Patreon because you wanted Demon Slayer or Hunter x Hunter. Some of you subscribed to this brand-new channel and were excited to see where we were going to take it.

We do not take any of the support we receive lightly.

We just have to say, thank you! Always! Wherever you're interacting with us we have so much gratitude to be learning and enjoying media with so many of you.

Thank you for watching with us, recommending anime, moveis, shows, anything to us, commenting, joining Patreon, subscribing to the new channels, and giving this whole experiment a chance to try to be something in the first place.

We really hope you'll find something you enjoy enough to keep hang out with us, even if anime was originally what brought you here!

And we also arent saying here that we will never watch anime again the current stikes on the account just have our hands tied.

Maybe and in the event that the copyright landscape around anime and anime reactions changes someday. Maybe we reach a point where we feel like we can safely share this kind of content again without putting the rest of Diegesis at risk we will happily dive back into these shows.

If that happens, we'd absolutely begin to revisit it.

But right now, we can't responsibly keep doing it.

Protecting the whole of the community and the spaces that allow us to share all of this content has to take priority.

This is definitely not how we wanted the Anime channel to be paused or end for now, especially this early into sharing, but we would rather make the hard decision now than learn what happens after strike number three.

Thank you guys for understanding, and thank you for continuing to watch with us ❤️

Maple & AriannaTeam Diegesis