I would just stream thing for free. If you feel bad about if, or if you like something a lot, you can always look into supporting the studio or franchise directly. Paying crunchyroll to "support anime creators" is like paying Apple to "support software creators" or paying Netflix to "support IP owners".

On the production end these companies leech off of and suppress whatever industry they "serve", expanding endlessly off of revenue signed away over the holy auspice of x platform owning server equipment that has already paid off. The maintenance of that equipment being a LUXURIOUSLY scaled expense, too, that even lower class paycheck-to-paycheck hobbyists can handle at their own scale despite struggling to exploit it and despite getting NO volume discounting or sweetheart service rates EVER.

You'd be paying for Netflix/Crunchyroll/Amazon etc to hire more HR, DIE, ESG people while they squeeze out creators by hiring streeties to produce garbage standing on the last leg of whatever franchises and intellectual properties they can hooover up.

Platforms are just middlemen blackmailing/exploiting the people who create what you want to consume. They are the trolls that got a job standing at a bridge someone ELSE built, demanding money from people crossing either way, complaining about how heckin expensive it is to stand at a bridge, and reinvesting every gold coin into paying more trolls to stand at more bridges (and charge more per bridge whenever possible).

Any time they spend big money it is NOT on platform/equiptment upgrades but on competing against creators in PRODUCTION efforts. Any normal business would be reinvesting to expand the function of their business so they can offer it at the most competitive possible price to as many clients as possible. By contrast, these platforms reinvest outside of the scope of providing or improving their platform service, spending it with the intent to consume and replace their own clients and business partners. Like a cancer.

Tldr crunchyroll is cancer