Editor's note on legality: The legal landscape for anime streaming varies widely by country. Some services discussed below are licensed and legal almost everywhere; others sit in a legal gray area or are clearly unauthorized depending on your jurisdiction. This article is informational and historical, not a how-to guide. Viewers should verify their local laws, support creators where they can, and remember that licensing arrangements change often. Our site is against piracy and recommends legal alternatives whenever possible.
If you have ever typed anitube into a search engine hoping to find a familiar Brazilian anime hub, you are not alone. For years, Anitube was the most visited Portuguese-language anime portal on the web, and even today, search data shows that hundreds of thousands of people every month are still looking for it. Many of them land on this article through that exact search.
The honest answer to "Without Anitube, what are the best sites to watch anime?" has changed a lot over time. The early 2010s looked very different from today: anime streaming was dominated by fansub-driven portals, torrent trackers and a handful of ambitious pirate sites. The mid-2010s brought a wave of takedowns and domain seizures. By the late 2010s and into the 2020s, large licensed platforms like Crunchyroll, Netflix, HIDIVE, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video had absorbed most of the demand that those older sites used to serve.
This article walks through what happened to Anitube, how the streaming landscape shifted, and what honest options exist today for viewers who want to watch anime, whether they are looking for legal services or simply trying to understand the history of the scene.
Contents 7
What happened to Anitube?
Anitube was, for most of the 2010s, the most accessed Brazilian pirate anime portal. At its peak, it reportedly reached more than 50,000 simultaneous users, a remarkable number for a single-language site. Interestingly, a noticeable share of that traffic came from inside Japan itself, where users would watch anime with Portuguese subtitles, sometimes even on commuter trains. The site had clearly become something bigger than a local niche project.
That scale drew attention. Around 2016, reports emerged that the original operators had sold the domain, and the new owner restructured access so that the site was reachable only from Japan. From that point on, the Brazilian version of Anitube effectively went offline, while a Japanese-branded version reportedly continued to receive tens of millions of visits per month.
Since then, a long series of clone domains have appeared. They use similar names, similar layouts and similar branding, but they are not the original Anitube. Their goal is straightforward: capture the organic search traffic of people who still type anitube into Google every month. Viewers should treat those clones with caution, since the content on them is rarely curated and the ads can be aggressive.
You can also explore this topic further in our related reading:
- 20 Sites to Watch Anime Online (Free and Paid)
- 5 sites to watch Korean drama for free
- Dubs Anime – Complete list of anime in Portuguese
Where to watch and download anime today?
Our site is against piracy, so the recommended path is always a legal, licensed service. The two services that consistently come up in any serious discussion of anime streaming are Crunchyroll and Netflix, and for good reason.
Crunchyroll is the most complete dedicated anime platform available outside East Asia. It simulcasts most of the major seasonal shows within hours of their Japanese broadcast, often offers both subtitled and dubbed versions, and includes a substantial back catalog of older series. It also carries manga, and has been expanding into theatrical film distribution in selected markets. For anime fans specifically, it is the closest thing to a one-stop service.
Netflix has invested heavily in anime production and licensing, partly because anime performs well in regional catalogs around the world. Its library changes a lot by country, but it is one of the few mainstream services where you can find both classic titles and Netflix-original anime series like Devilman Crybaby, Baki, Castlevania, and more recently, Delicious in Dungeon and other licensed hits. Netflix also offers offline downloads, which is useful for travelers or anyone with a slow or capped connection.
Beyond those two, viewers in 2026 can also turn to HIDIVE (a smaller Crunchyroll competitor with a strong library of older and more niche titles), Disney+ (which carries Studio Ghibli in many regions, plus selected anime series under its Star brand), and Amazon Prime Video (which holds licenses for several major franchises, including some exclusives). Each has regional differences, and the catalog in Brazil is not the same as the catalog in the United States, Japan or Europe, so it is worth checking what is actually available locally before subscribing.
Anime sites in the mid-2010s: a historical popularity snapshot
The ranking below is preserved for historical and cultural context. It reflects monthly visit numbers that were publicly reported at the time the original version of this article was written, around 2016 to 2017. The list is presented as a snapshot of what Brazilian anime viewers were actually using back then, not as a current recommendation, and not as an endorsement. Several of the domains named here have since gone offline, changed hands, or shifted their business model, and a number of them hosted content without proper licensing.
If you landed here looking for a current list, our newer guide, 20 Sites to Watch Anime Online (Free and Paid), gives a more up-to-date picture of both licensed services and the kind of gray-area portals that still exist today.
For the historical record, here was the rough mid-2010s ranking:
- Superanimes — roughly 14.1 million monthly visits, online streaming.
- Animakai — roughly 5.7 million monthly visits, downloads and online.
- Animeai — roughly 5 million monthly visits, online; known for a recurring banner to close.
- Animes Orion (Animesorion) — roughly 4.9 million monthly visits, online.
- Punchsub — roughly 3.8 million monthly visits, online and download, with relatively light advertising.
- Anitube.xpg — roughly 2.3 million monthly visits, a clone domain explicitly positioned to capture Anitube's lost audience.
- Anbient — roughly 1.9 million monthly visits, download-focused.
There were many more portals that did not make the list. Some were heavy on ads, some had minimalist designs, and others served very specific niches like old-school OVAs or licensed titles that the big platforms had not yet picked up. The reality of the scene was messy: fansubs subtitled episodes, then other sites re-uploaded them, and the original creators sometimes saw little or no return from the process.
A note on fansub and torrent communities
Outside the Portuguese-language portals, there was a parallel ecosystem of international anime torrent tracker communities. Groups such as fansubber, ANSK, MDAN and OMDA were (and in some cases still are) volunteer-driven communities focused on distributing subtitled and sometimes raw (Japanese-only) releases of new anime episodes. Their work helped fill the gap that licensed platforms had not yet covered, especially for less popular or simulcast titles that did not have an official English or Portuguese release.
These communities typically operate as private trackers, which means access has historically required registration, sometimes an invitation from an existing member, and ongoing contribution to the community through uploading and seeding. We will not link to them here, both because the addresses change frequently and because the legal status of participating in a private tracker varies by country. They are part of the cultural history of how anime fandom organized itself online in the 2000s and 2010s, but they are not services that we recommend using today, and viewers should look into their local laws before engaging with any of them.
On the open-torrent side, nyaa.se (and its successors) became a well-known index for anime torrents, particularly raw Japanese releases, but also OSTs, manga scans, fan-made image sets and game rips. Nyaa was never officially licensed, and it has had long stretches of being inaccessible, with mirror sites and successors popping up in its place. It is part of the historical record of anime fandom online, but, like the private trackers, it is not something we recommend in 2026.
It is also worth remembering a few earlier sites that shaped the Brazilian and international anime scene before the major portals took over. Hinatasou and Hyuuga were known for being unusually clean and ad-light, and animalog has the distinction of being the first anime site many older Brazilian fans ever used. None of these are active today in their original form, but they are part of the cultural memory of the community.
Tips for watching anime today
The good news is that, for most viewers, the practical question of where to watch anime has a much cleaner answer in 2026 than it did ten years ago. A few habits that go a long way:
Start with one or two licensed services. Crunchyroll and Netflix between them cover the majority of seasonal simulcasts and a large back catalog. If you watch anime regularly, the cost of a single Crunchyroll subscription is lower than a single manga volume, and it directly supports the studios producing the shows you enjoy.
Check regional catalogs before subscribing. Anime libraries differ sharply by country. A series that is on Crunchyroll in the United States may be on Netflix in Brazil, or on HIDIVE in Europe. Anime News Network and MyAnimeList both publish region-locked availability information that is updated regularly, and they are the most reliable way to know which service has the show you want in your country.
Use official downloads and offline features. Both Crunchyroll and Netflix let you download episodes for offline viewing. For travelers, people with capped mobile data, or anyone whose internet is unreliable, this is a much better experience than relying on a free streaming portal that may or may not still exist next month.
Be skeptical of clones and aggregator domains. Many of the names still floating around the anime streaming space are short-lived clones, rebrandings, or domains that exist primarily to monetize ads. If a site you have never heard of is asking you to register, install a player, or disable your ad blocker before you can even see the episode list, that is a strong signal to leave.
Support the creators when you can. Anime studios operate on thin margins, and even a single subscription makes a difference. If a particular series means a lot to you, watching it through an official channel is the most direct way to help ensure that more series like it get made.
A short conclusion
The era of Anitube is over, and so is the era of a single Brazilian portal dominating anime streaming. The streaming landscape that replaced it is more crowded, more licensed, and frankly more reliable than what came before, even if it is also more fragmented by region and more dependent on subscriptions. For most viewers today, the right answer to where to watch anime is a paid, licensed service that fits the shows you actually want to see.
That does not erase the cultural history of the fansub and pirate era, which is part of how the global anime community grew up online, but it is a good moment to encourage readers to support the industry when they can. And for the curious, the short video below sums up a bit more of the history of anime fandom on the web.
And for you, which anime service or community do you actually use in 2026? Has the move toward licensed platforms changed what you watch, or do you still find yourself hunting for older shows that the major platforms have not picked up?
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