Wakanim was launched on 27 February 2009 after YouTube appeared in France in 2007,[1] and broadcast its first series in October 2010, The World God Only Knows.

[6] In October 2013, Wakanim began expanding overseas, with the service extended to the United Kingdom in partnership with British distributor Anime Limited.

[15] In September 2017, Wakanim announced that it would be available for the German-speaking regions with subtitles and dubs in cooperation with the AkibaPass service.

[21][22] On 24 September 2019, Aniplex and Sony Pictures Television announced that they were consolidating their international anime streaming businesses, with a new joint venture, Funimation Global Group, LLC., with Funimation general manager Colin Decker leading the joint venture.

[24] On 1 March 2022, it was announced that Wakanim, alongside VRV's and Funimation's SVOD service, would be consolidated into Crunchyroll.

[25][26] On 11 March 2022, Crunchyroll and Wakanim announced that they would suspend their services in Russia due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[28] The videos are DRM protected which the playback takes place via a proprietary HTML5 player called JW-Player version 8.11.8 (as of February 2020).