So for those of you who have lives and friends and see the sun more than once a day, unlike me. There is a new streaming anime service out called Neon Alley. It is a service that is being provided by Viz Media. It is a fairly interesting idea with nearly unlimited potential to become awesome. However, that being said, I cannot really say it is worth paying for right now. Well that is unless you have the money and want to support the industry, like me.

There are two really big flaws in this system. The first is that it is only on the PS3. I am fine with the Web and PS3 or even just the web. However, putting a channel solely on the PS3 just to put it on the PS3? That really kind of annoys me. What if I want to watch it at work or something? I mean I am paying $7 a month for it. Plus what if I do not have a PS3? Why couldn't the put it on another TV box or something like that? So right there are you are cutting your potential user base off. Then there is the fact that it acts like a TV station

Yes a TV station, you cannot choose what anime you watch. You get to watch whatever the network has deemed to be worth watching at the moment. Again, not a bad idea, this is something that will save the company money in the long run. On demand services are really hard to make and take a lot of effort to implement and maintain. I can completely understand why they did what they did. The problem I have is looking at the schedule. For instance, I checked through the various days of scheduling. Basically the system repeats the same thing over and over again all week long. Now you would think with an anime network that they could at least advance episodes everyday. I guess that would be too inconvenient for people though. Even still, if I have to wait a week to see a show that has shown me the first episode 10+ times. That is really going to piss me off. Even if Viz is still working out the details for showing the shows.

Overall though it has a lot of potential. Maybe in a year when Viz manages to get things running and working and has lots of shows so they can show lots of different anime all day long maybe this network will work out. Who knows right, after all there have been worse ideas. Also those of you expecting reviews.. yeah that turned out to be more difficult than I was expecting. it is going to have to be a little longer.