I am apparently a notoriously difficult person to buy for. Each year my birthday comes around, my family stares at me and demands what I want. This year I decided I’d make it easy for them: just get gift cards to the subscriptions I pay for. Problem solved.

Except, one of those subscriptions happens to be Funimation.

Funimation has gift vouchers… but just not for Australian users.

Digital Gift Cards only valid for customers in the United States and Canada.

Funimation Global Group

Guess we’re going to have to get used to this sentence from now on.

Funimation completed its merger with AnimeLab on December 9, 2021. Our captors demanded we say our heartfelt goodbyes to the Australian team, grasping our wrists as we were dragged away to the awful land of bad video players and no official contact avenues. Goodbye, we said, to the direct Twitter line to content support. Goodbye, we said to our life of luxury. We hardly knew ye. The team that ran AnimeLab has supposedly been delegated to MadMen’s merchandise division in Australia.

Australians are now subject to American content — when it’s not blocked in our region, of course. It is impossible to get a hold of Funimation support in real-time. No contact number, no easy-to-find email address, no direct Twitter messages or @-ing. Everything is done by FAQ forums or a contact form that doesn’t cover everything. Australians are forced, once again, to run through an all-American service utterly blind to what could be. To say it sucks is an understatement.

In the short time we’ve had to deal with Funimation, we’ve had to put up with:

• De-syncing audio and video when casting to Google devices.
• Being overcharged GST.
• Being unable to contact Australian support.
• A player that stops working if you pause too often.
• Being blatantly lied to.

Oof. That last one is a bit of a big accusation, isn’t it? Let me explain.

When AnimeLab announced it was becoming Funimation, both parties involved stated updates would be made to the Funimation player based on AnimeLab’s superior software. Supposedly, these changes were completed.

We’ve recently made significant changes to many of Funimation’s apps that we hope you’ll like.  The AnimeLab and Funimation teams are working together to provide a world-class service that is constantly improving!

Funimation Global Group

If they made changes, it was not on the front end, and the app on every platform remains as jittery as ever. The player looks, plays, and breaks all the same.

As many users before us warned: this shouldn’t have been allowed to happen. An Australian team was bought out by the significantly, willfully, incompetent American conglomerate. Sony, you suck.

To my fellow Aussie users, it may be time to give up and move on to other services.