What Legal Alternatives To The Missax Platform Exist?

Lately my focus has been to support creators directly. That means I tend to use smaller sites that are legal and creator-friendly. I can find and buy a wide range of artbooks, doujinshi and even commission artists for digital artwork on Pixiv, Pixiv FANBOX and Booth. I use Patreon and Ko-fi for support of creators who put up exclusive mature work for their patrons on these sites.

For licensed adult manga, I follow FAKKU because they actually get creators paid for their work and produce high quality translations of the books. The typical suspects for mainstream anime (Crunchyroll, HiDive, Netflix, etc.) contain official releases of most titles (including some OVAs), and there are also plenty of titles that receive official release on Blu-ray from mainstream retailers that can be purchased and streamed (legally) with aUNCHstream code. Even though buying legitimately is almost never the cheapest way to get a fan service-filled anime, it’s worth the extra cost to support the creators of the anime and prevent your fandom dollars from ending up in some shady dude’s wallet instead.

I’ve been being slightly more picky about what I stream and buy, and tend to support channels and platforms that properly license content. For standard anime, I’ll usually go for subtitled simulcasts on Crunchyroll or HiDive, but often turn to Netflix or Amazon Prime for more exclusive or older series – including some of their OVAs, which can be R-rated. Subscription models for these services are generally very easy to sign up for, with excellent translation and high video bitrate.

For people interested in legal adult manga and the like, I highly recommend checking out FAKKU, who translate and sell all sorts of licensed hentai manga, including some of their titles as streaming content and even physical copies of the manga. On the Japanese side of things, DLsite is sort of the hub of legal doujinshi (self-published content by independent artists), adult visual novels, and even some kinds of eroge (if they are sold legally). Most of the developers for these kinds of products have their own pages on the site where they can list all of their releases (official and otherwise) and get paid for them. For short-run works by indie creators, you can support them on Pixiv Booth and earn them money on FANBOX, on their own Ko-fi, Patreon, or Gumroad, for example. Then there are all of the physical anime collectors out there – they should look for titles released by Sentai Filmworks or Discotek Media on Blu-ray, for example, as these help to support the smaller licensor.

Of course, there are trade-offs (region locks, prices for licensed content, etc.), but jumping through hoops to provide support to the creators behind the things you enjoy to indulge in while also being respected by the community at large is more than worth it, in my opinion.

Above all else, I want services that actually pay the creators of the anime. For mainstream anime, there are plenty of services to choose from, and they all have their strengths. For a huge library of anime and the ability to watch new episodes simulcast worldwide, you can’t go past Crunchyroll. Of course, not all of the anime on Crunchyroll is available to stream for free, but if you sign up for a free account you can watch as many of the free episodes as you like. Netflix, Hulu, HiDive, and Amazon Prime Video also have a lot of great anime, some of which can only be streamed on that particular service.

For more adult-oriented manga and some of the anime I listed earlier, the best place for me to find licensed material is FAKKU. They are a group that has licensed and translated a lot of hentai manga and they now also stream some of the titles as well as sell the translated work as digital volumes. Another place to find some Japanese adult material is on the DLsite. It is a direct marketplace for doujinshi, adult video games, and eroge. Region-locked material is clearly labeled as such, though. There is also a growing amount of adult visual novels available on Steam in various regions (e.g. ‘Nekopara’ in some regions). For physical releases of more adult titles, look to Sentai Filmworks, Discotek, and Media Blasters on Blu-ray.

And hey, while this is slightly off topic, there are also several ways to support individual artists, and those generally are pretty seamless. I can personally vouch for Patreon (of course), Pixiv and Pixiv FANBOX, Booth, and Gumroad, all of which allow you to support individual creators directly for a certain amount per month (or per post, etc). Again, note that these will be subject to the standard rules of legality and region restriction, as well as the artist’s chosen method of age verification, but where it exists, supporting creators directly is easily worth a bit of logistical hassle.