KissAnime, the beloved anime streaming site and its sibling site, KissManga, the manga site will be shutting down soon.

Official news of the shutdown first hit anime fans as the Kiss team announced on Discord, “All files are taken down by copyright owners. KissManga and KissAnime will be closed forever. Thank you for your supports ☹ Thank you for those years.”

The move to close the sites down comes as Japanese authorities take a more sterner stance on piracy in Japan, clamping down on sites home to such illegal activities. The Kiss sites have been up for nearly a decade. Put in this context, it is almost impressive that the sites have survived for this long despite governmental pressure.

More recently and likely reason for the clampdown is found in the Japanese Parliament’s decision to enact the proposed Copyright law, prosecuting individuals who knowingly download and illegally procure manga, magazines, and academic works, on the internet especially.

Despite the illegal nature of the anime and manga streaming activities, the Kiss team enjoyed an outpouring of love, support and adoration from fans greatly appreciative of the sacrifices made to allow them to watch anime freely. Fans took to social media to post funny and heartfelt posts in the wake of the announcement.

https://twitter.com/Killuasdriipp/status/1294530533381345280?s=20

Far from a novel occurrence, the Japanese authorities have also halted the well-known manga hosting platform Manga Rock, forcing it to shut down permanently. This sort of treatment likely to be suffered by many similar websites shortly.

Big, Big, Big, Big sad for anime and manga fans. But such is the nature of the Internet, I am sure another site, maybe along the lines of makeoutanime and makeoutmanga will sprout into the vacuum left by Kiss’s absence.