Various admins have suggested that Zoro was rebranded to Aniwatch following some DMCA issues and a change in ownership.
The popular anime streaming site, Zoro, did not announce its rebrand to Aniwatch before it happened. But it is likely that a change in ownership or one too many DMCA notices brought on this change quite suddenly.
Why did Zoro to change to Aniwatch?
If you sat down to watch anime on the fan-favorite free streaming site, Zoro (Zoro.to) sometime last week, and realized that you were being redirected to a new site called Aniwatch (Aniwatch.to), you are not alone.
Zoro did not put out an official statement confirming a rebrand, but the Admin ‘Mr.Born2Help’ confirmed in the Zoro Discord thread that the site had been acquired by a new team.
Some old Zoro viewers are still skeptical about why such a popular site would rebrand so suddenly without official notice.
But since the new Aniwatch site has retained all of the old user login information (and even the watch lists of some lucky users), it does seem likely that a change in ownership could have been the reason why the website has been completely changed.
This was most likely brought on by DMCA issues, as the Admin ‘Hyper’ explained on Discord.
Pirate sites often jump domains to get around DMCA notices
Pirate sites like Zoro often jump domains unexpectedly when they have received too many Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notices.
Receiving too many of these notices bumps a website down in Google’s ranks and can cause significant issues when it comes to advertising revenue. This is also what caused the original Aniwatch.me to shut down.
Why would Zoro have wanted to move away from its One Piece branding?
Regular users may not even have noticed it, but the original Zoro site had a lot of One Piece references.
From the name of the site, which is inspired by One Piece character “Pirate Hunter” Zoro, to all of the One Piece-focused images and branding, it was somewhat strange that a site which contained so many shows would focus its branding so clearly on just one.
It is entirely likely that the original Zoro’s owners simply wanted the site to be more universally appealing (and possibly avoid some copyright infringement claims in the process).
The new site has some teething issues
Though the new Aniwatch site is quite similar to the old Zoro site, it does have a brand new interface.
However, these upgrades come at a cost. Some users have already complained that this new site takes longer to load, has difficulty loading content on the Brave browser and features more pop-up advertisements than the previous site.