Streaming really changed the game in the Western anime fandom. Not only did it usher in a new era of availability for anime in the West, it changed the culture here in some pretty major ways.

Not all of them good.

Simulcast streaming (episodes becoming available subtitled online the same day they air in Japan) brought the Western anime fandom into a new age. As more people jumped on-board with Crunchyroll, they started engaging with aspects of the culture that, until then, had only been the domain of fansubbers and those who followed them.

People started paying attention to anime seasonally.

Until that point, anime was something that aired syndicated on Western TV and released on physical media, or perhaps got picked up by Netflix or Hulu years after its initial release in its home country. The only people concerned with anime as it aired in Japan were fansub groups and fans savvy enough to stay up-to-date on fansubs of brand-new anime.

When Crunchyroll started bringing anime out in simulcast format, “seasonal anime” entered the public consciousness, and would only grow into more pervasive a concept as time went on and more people joined the anime community.

Along with that came a fundamental shift in the culture surrounding anime over here.

In a way, everyone knew what the classics were back in the day. In part because they were curated, but also because those shows had had time to gestate, to tumble around in the anime community’s collective consciousness.

With the age of seasonal anime, however, came seasonal anime culture.