One of the larger anime piracy streaming sites, Anime Kai, has officially shut down on May 10 2026 due to a fire incident at a third party data center in the Netherlands.

What happened

The fire caused major damage to the data center’s power supply infrastructure and took down the file-hosting service(MegaUp) Anime Kai and other privacy streaming websites that were relying on for storing and streaming videos.The developer ultimately decided this was the final straw amid other issues and felt this was the end. The site displayed messages such as “Sorry, our data center has been burned 🙁 We’re no longer able to provide the file hosting service.” The developer also urged regular visitors of the website backup and export their watchlists and find a new website to watch their favourite anime.

Broader impact

This new shutdown isn’t particularly surprising however albeit a very sad turn of events for Anime Kai, there’s been a wide crackdown as of late for anime streaming websites shutting down due to increasing pressures from Japanese studios holding rights and anti-piracy groups intent of closing as many of them as possible. Anime websites such as HiAnime,9anime and Aniwave have all shutdown for the aforemention reason.

If you ask me, piracy is completely justified for the reason that companies nowadays have gotten very comfortable providing a terrible service to their paying customers and people keep searching for better alternatives with these free streaming websites that go above and beyond to provide a service worthy of supporting whether by donations or other means of support.