This guide goes over how to locate and download anime. This was, long ago, a very tedious task but thanks to services like YouTube and applications like Bittorrent it’s now easier then ever before to download anime. The only pre-requisite is broadband as anime runs between 170-210 megabytes an episode and file sharing services will demand you to upload in order to get any kind of decent speed.
Finding Anime
Locating unlicensed anime is easy, if you want to use BitTorrent. Services like Boxtorrents, AnimeSuki, and Scarywater all have lists and lists of unlicensed anime available for download. Services like Baka-Updates and Tokyo Toshokan offer lists of updated anime recently uploaded to various trackers.
If you don’t want to use BitTorrent then things get a little bit rough. If an anime is unlicensed then you’ll be in luck and can probably find the fansub group’s IRC chat room and download it from an XDCC bot. If it’s licensed (which most fansub groups then drop it from their bots) then you’ll need to find a popular anime download IRC channel and use the various file sharers there.
If IRC is too sour for you then you have a few more options. A few sites offer FTP and HTTP downloads for cash. I don’t believe in these services (as most fold up quickly) but it’s an option. If that doesn’t do it for you (still) then you can just search for the anime’s name on YouTube which may have it uploaded.
Finding licensed anime is a little harder (not very very legal) and it’s not something I really want to go into. I won’t give advice on locating licensed anime and will just instead say if you want something licensed then you should research how to find it on your own.
Before you go searching out for licensed anime please see below for the legality issues on it.
Downloading Anime via BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a program that is the new-age Kazaa. You install a program which can them open and parse *.torrent files that can connect you to other users who will send you the file (and what you download you will send to them). You’ll need broadband in order to make the most of it (I rarely hear torrent success stories on dial-up) so it isn’t for everyone.
Setting up BitTorrent is really easy and there isn’t much to it! Following these instructions you should be set to download anime via BitTorrent in minutes:
- Download and install a good BitTorrent application. You have two options, one is “BitTorrent” the 100% official torrent client. It doesn’t control your upload speed which can be a big limiter for DSL users. That’s why I recommend uTorrent. uTorrent is a small torrent client that has a few more options then the default BitTorrent client and is just better overall.
- Locate on a torrent site the anime you want to download then click the link. It should ask if you want to open it (in which case click yes, but make sure it’s a *.torrent file, if you aren’t sure then save it to your hard disk). When it’s downloaded and opened it’ll open your torrent client automatically.
- Choose the location of where you want to save the anime files and click whatever button to let it go! If you have a client like uTorrent then you can choose other things like giving files priority or choosing not to download certain files.
- Wait until it finishes. On a decent broadband connection on a very popular torrent you can expect 15-30 minutes an episode. On torrents with very few peers you may take much much longer.
- After it finishes, leave the download window open a little longer so that others can share as well!
It’s really that simple, although I’m just giving a pretty vague overview. Simply download a client, find a torrent file, open the torrent file and let the client do all of the work!
That said, there are two very important terms when it comes to BitTorrent. One is “seeds” and the other is “leechers”. Seeds are people with complete copies who are doing nothing but uploading and leechers are people who have yet to finish their download. If a torrent has no seeds then none of the leechers will finish. It’s very important to make sure a torrent is healthy before starting it.
Downloading Anime via IRC
Downloading anime off of IRC is a tricky topic. There are two ways to get anime, one is off of other peoples fservs and the other is off of XDCC bots. I’m going to assume you’ve already found an anime channel (which is probably an entirely new guide, but try to google anime and irc and see if you can find something).
XDCC
XDCC is basically bots who have a set list of sendable files. IRC channels will likely list who their XDCC bots are in the topic and will generally give you an offsite list of what they contain and the commands to use them.
XDCC bots do different, but the most comment commands are:
/msg BOTNAME xdcc list
This command should give you a list (or a URL to the location of a list) of what anime is available to download. You’ll see it generally in a format like
#1 18x [120M] [FlyingOrange]Orange-kuns_Vacation_Trip[4823dE].mkv
The first number is the number to use with the xdcc send command (see below). The second one is how many times it’s been downloaded. The [120M] is its size, in megabytes. The [FlyingOrange] part would be the sub group while the rest of it would be the animes name.
/msg BOTNAME xdcc send X
Replacing BOTNAME with the bot and X with the number from the xdcc list (see above), this command will have the anime sent to you. A pop-up will ask if you want to download it, say yes. If you have something downloading it’ll put you in the queue. If the bot is full then, well that too will put you in the queue until a spot opens up to send it to you.
That’s the only two commands (list and send) that matter. There is the remove command which removes files from the queue if need be.
FSERV
“FSERV” is a file servicing feature inside of mIRC and many mIRC scripts. Users will join a channel and turn on their fserv which then allows people to browse their computers and download files.
It is a very long and tedious process to explain every little bitty workings of FSERV so I will just give this brief overlook:
Join a channel and make sure !list is allowed then type !list in the main channel. You’ll get spam from a ton of people. Each spam has a description and a trigger. Use that trigger to have them open up a DCC chat session with you. From there use their commands (type help or it should give you a list of commands like ls for directory listing and get for getting a file) to download the files.
If their send slots are full then they will put you in a queue. In this situation you’ll need to stay in the channel until they are ready to send it to you. You can close that window though have you have elected to download something.
Summary
If you need additional help on these two subjects then use a search engine. I’m not going to try to replace the massive amounts of guides out there on this same subject. I did, however, want to make a decent guide on how to get anime in this modern day considering the amount of those guides who still reference getting RM (real media) files from multimedia sites.
Just remember to have a good virus scanner and some decent knowledge before you begin downloading too much anime. Never open EXE files or anything that doesn’t end with some kind of media extension (avi, mkv, etc.).
Legality of Downloading Anime
Downloading unlicensed anime through the Internet is considered by the community as an alright thing to do. It contains a ton of grey area as far as the law is concerned and really doesn’t take any money out of anyone’s pocket since you can’t watch or buy it here in the states.
Licensed anime on the other hand is similar to downloading music, T.V., and other things. It’s a violation of the DMCA and tons of other things, although it’s not as mainstream as say the latest movie in the theater. Most fansub groups stop subbing anime when it becomes licensed due to anime licensors having a history of going after the groups that continue once an anime is picked up.
Here is pretty much a good idea of when to and not to pick up a series. If it’s available on DVD then you should go out and pick up the DVDs. NetFlix and tons of other low cost rental services even rent lots and lots of anime, so there isn’t really an excuse of being able to get the DVDs. If it isn’t available on DVD (and won’t be for some time) then download it, but delete it once DVDs are available. If it appears on T.V. then just watch it on T.V. (it’ll be better then watching downloads anyway).
As always, I’m not responsible for your actions based on this guide. If you download anime and then Orange-kun comes and kicks you in the crotch for doing so I’m not responsible since you should be informed enough to know that downloading stuff for free is generally very bad.
