Before we begin, I should
make one thing absolutely clear: while this is a guide to
getting anime for free or very little, I in no way condone
piracy of any sort. I own all of Kare
Kano fansubbed, but I'm the first in line to get the
domestic DVDs, and the same goes with Furi
Kuri and a number of other titles. People invest years
and millions of dollars to make anime, and the least we
can do is give them a few bucks. Never, ever get
fansubs of a show that is licensed in The West. I don't
care how much of a penniless college student you are, hell
is a very hot place, and I think that you'd rather be out
30 bucks for a DVD then burning there for all of eternity.
That being said, there are a lot of shows that are not licensed
for distribution in North America, or where ever you are,
and those shows are fare game.
Fan Subs
In order to properly give
you the secrets to getting cheap anime I should give you
a very basic introduction to the terms and logistics of
the underground anime distribution network. It all starts
in Japan, where many people work many hours to make a show.
Someone tapes that show and it gets sent to someone called
a fansubber. These gods among men translate the entire show,
subtitle it, and add translation notes and culture notes
as necessary. Then these tapes, called masters, are given
to another group of demigods known as distributors (often
these people can be the same divine beings as fansubbers).
A distribution (or distro) is a webpage where a fan such
as yourself can look at the distributor's selection and
order copies of the masters for a very low price, usually
ranging from 4 to 6 US dollars per tape. This cost covers
the physical cost of the tape and shipping, along with a
few extra pennies for the distros and the fansubbers to
get new equipment, pizza, and beer every once in awhile.
Well, probably just equipment.
There are a few variations
on this theme--one of the most important ones, which I'll
come to later, is digisubbing. This is like fansubbing;
in fact, digisubs are just fansubs on your computer in .avi
or .mpg format. To get these you'll have to get onto IRC,
but first we'll start with the basics.
The first place to start is
the Anipike.
You can't get any shows here, but before you can get something
from a fansubber, you'll need to know what show you want
to get. Some other good places to hear about the latest
shows are the AnimeonDVD
forums, AnimeNewsNetwork,
Anime clubs, and having otaku
friends.
Now that you've found a show
that you like, it's time to go snatch it. In this case,
we'll use the example of Kodomo no Omocha aka Child's Toy,
a very good show that for reasons beyond me hasn't been
licensed yet (though Tokyopop
has the manga as "Kodocha") and which is widely
available at most good distros. The first step to finding
a distro that carries it is a simple Google
search. In this case I would search for "Child's Toy
+ Distro," and to my surprise and pleasure I would
find a vast amount of hits for this. Click on any of them
and you'll be at a distro, but try to find one that's been
updated recently (which would tell you they're still distributing;
never send money to a distro that may have stopped distributing
and has just left their page to rot on the net!). Because
I am currently sans Internet, I will concoct a
fictional distro by the name of "Bad Jew's Amazing
Anime Distro." If a Google search fails to turn up
anything, check out Fansubs.org,
which features a huge database of which distros carry what
shows.
The concept of a distro is
fairly easy: first check the List, which is, as the name
implies, a list of all the anime that the distro carries.
This distro of my own creation has the first 3 volumes of
Child's Toy (a volume is usually 3-4 episodes). Now check
around the List a bit more; the anime is cheap, so pick
up anything with a cool-sounding title and you might just
be pleasantly surprised.
The next stop on this journey
of low-budget anime is the Rules page. This will give you
an explanation of the cost, rules, and other things you
should know before ordering. My rules stipulate that you
have to e-mail me with what tapes you want, I'll e-mail
you back with a total cost, and you'll then pay me via Paypal.
You follow these directions, I reply, and there you go:
12 episodes of the most crackhead anime this side of Furi
Kuri.
Just keep in mind that distroing
is not these distributors' day jobs. Remember that you are
getting anime for at-cost prices, so DO NOT COMPLAIN
ABOUT LONG DELAYS. Expect a wait from anywhere
between a week and a month for your tapes. There is no way
to speed up the process; in fact, e-mailing the distros
frequently will only delay your tapes further, as every
second replying to your complaints is a second that your
tapes aren't being recorded.
IRC
For an alternate universe
sort of situation, let's say that you're at college and
you just spent your last 5 bucks on chicken wings. You don't
have money, but you have one fast Internet connection and
a computer. You're in luck, and so is everyone else with
a high speed connection (those still hobbled with the curse
of dial-up take heart, never underestimate the bandwidth
of VHS in the mail)--digisubbing is your path to free anime.
You'll need an IRC agent like mIRC
for PCs or Xchat
for Macs
and Linux, but while
IRC is a fairly complicated system, getting files isn't
too bad once you get used to it.
Below is a picture of a basic
IRC screen. I use Xchat, but this remains the same for most
programs.
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The bar on the bottom is where you input all the commands
that you want, and where you chat if you get in a conversation,
which is called the input box. The big black area, called
the main window, is the space where you see everything happening
in the room. The lens flare is there because I think lens
flares are cool, and I'm writing the article.
First you'll need to find
a digisubber channel. The best-known digisubber is Elite-Fansubs
at #elite-fansubs@irc.enterthegame.com (at the end of this
page, I have a nice appendix of some well known anime channels
and some good servers, check it out after words). Now, don't
choke in your own fear-bile looking at that address, as
all it means is that you'll be joining the channel (or chat
room) #elite-fansubs at the IRC network Enterthegame.com.
Your first step is to get on an enterthegame.com server.
Each IRC program has a different list of preconceived servers,
which you can look through, but the universal command to
get on a IRC server is the command /server. So, in order
to get on the enterthegame server, type into the input box
/server irc.enterthegame.com
In the main window you'll
see a lot of junk, as long as you don't see something like
"Connection Refused" you've made it on. You can
either see a giant list of all the channels on the server
by typing /list
or, if you know
what channel you want, which we do, you would type /join
#channel name. Since we want to get to Elite-fansubs, type
in /join #elite-fansubs
and then press enter.
A new window will open, an
#elite-fansubs channel. There will be a lot of people here,
usually around 800, so it will take a few seconds for you
to properly join the room. Once you join and you see the
channel's message of the day and a list of all the members,
type "!list"
in the command prompt. This will generate a huge list of
all the file servers that are connected to the room.
By the way, some channels
have certain rules you have to follow. the Elite-Fansubs
room asks that you wait in the room for 5 minuets before
getting a list of the servers, and also that you don't do
a @find
command. @find is a tool that lets you automatically search
through all the servers in the room for a specific title,
however this puts a lot of strain on the server. If you
break the rules, you'll most likely be banned from the room
for anywhere from a few minutes to for ever, so be careful.
If its your first time in a particular room, type in !rules
for a complete
list of all the rules.
Let's look at one of these
servers individually, in this case my fictional sever called
"Badjew's Server of DOOOM!"
[Badjew][Fserve Active] Triggers [/ctcp I love
ham] Message [Hope you all like eating ham!] [users 0/5]
[sends 0/1] [queues 0/5]
The first set of brackets
is my IRC nickname; if you want to message me, that's who
you want to talk to. The second bracketed thing is called
the CTCP trigger. You are going to want to copy everything
in-between the brackets into your command prompt when you
want to gain access to my server. The message is just what
it says, usually it advertises special restrictions on the
server or what's on it. The forth bracket is how many users
are accessing the server--a user is the person who owns
the server, and you can safely ignore this. Sends and Queues
are the all-important numbers. Sends lists how many people
are being sent anime, and Queues are how many people are
in line to get something sent to them. You will never, ever
see a free server, but look for a server that has room in
the Queues line. You can tell there's room when the number
before the slash is smaller than the number after it. Also,
be sure that the server message doesn't say anything like
"For Admin and Ops only," which means that the
server is reserved for the higher ups in the digi-sub world.
So, you've gotten very lucky
and you've found a server that has no one on it. Quick,
man, type in "/ctcp
I love ham" and
get into my server. Depending on what program you're using
there will be a window asking if you want to accept an invitation
from Badjew's Server of DOOOM! to join a chatroom. Accept
this, and now you'll be in my server. You'll see my message
of the day which would be (if I had a server) something
along the lines of:
Don't you hate orphans? Me too. Anyway's, the commands
are dir, get and cd. Have fun kids!
The first thing that you should
do is type in the command "dir".
You don't need to use a slash or a !, just
"dir".
Now you'll see a list of all the folders:
Magical Shopping District
Ebichu
Go!
One Piece
Now, let's say that you want
to get Magical Shopping District, one of Gainax's
newest shows. Type the command "CD
Magical Shopping District"
and press enter. This will take you to the Magical Shopping
District folder of my server. Don't be scared by all the
commands, all you're doing is basic command line file navigation
on a UNIX-like system. You're halfway to being a hacker
already. The CD
command means
"change directory", and will put you in the folder
you want to be in. If you want to get back to get back up
to the main folder, type in CD
..
When you type "CD
Magical Shopping District"
you'll see a list like this:
Sysreset: Magical Shopping District
Type in DIR
for a list of
all the files in the folder:
Magical_Shopping_District1.avi [129 megs]
Magical_Shopping_District2.avi [152 megs]
Magical_Shopping_District3.avi [124 megs]
Magical_Shopping_District4.avi [130 megs]
You'll want to see the first
episode, so type in the command "get
Magical_Shopping_District1.avi".
This will tell the server to send you the file. Again, depending
on what program you're using it will either ask you to confirm
the download or it will start automatically.
Or it would start automatically
if there weren't ten thousand other people trying to get
this file. Hope you like waiting, because that's what you'll
be doing. These servers can only put up around 10 to 20
kilobytes a second, and these are files that are easily
over 150 megs. Leave your computer on for the night, watch
some Eva, sleep, repeat. Just let it sit; as long as you
stay in the main room (you can leave my server page by typing
exit,
or I'll automatically kick you after a minute or two, its
good form to leave as soon as your finished) the file will
get to you eventually.
Bittorrent
Bittorrent
is the nicest thing since sliced bread. With out getting
into to too much detail, Bittorrent is a kind of P2P (Peer
to Peer) system that allows high bandwidth files like, say,
anime episodes to be downloaded easily with out taking up
too much bandwidth form any one person. The problem with
distributing anime is that the files are large. While most
cable providers won't begrudge their users a few gigabytes
everyone in a while, when they see a user sending out a
terabyte (one thousand gigabytes) a day, they're not to
happy. Bittorrent is a system that lets one person, a "seed"
send out a file, and then everyone who is downloading it
helps everyone else who is downloading it. While you don't
get monster speeds, its nice and constant.
The first step
to using Bittorrent is downloading the Bittorrent client,
which you can do here.
They exist for every major operating system; Windows, OS
X, and Linux, so everyone can share in the wealth. Download
it and install it. Then, download a torrent file. There's
no step 3! A torrent file is a small file with instructions
on what to do. Open that, and bittorrent automatically does
the rest, an amazing system.
There are a
few problems with it, so be careful. First off, Bittorrent
is great for new anime, the cutting edge stuff. There are
plenty of sites (listed at the end) that will have torrents
for the latest fansubs. But, if you want old stuff, like
the beginning of a series that has already been fansubbed
for awhile, or an olde-but-goodie that's been out on the
'net for a while, your out of luck, you'll have to go through
IRC to get it. Secondly, this uses a LOT of bandwidth. While
your downloading the file, your also uploading it. So, if
your 're on a bandwidth restricted ISP, watch out. My general
rule of thumb is that I'll use about 2.5 times the bandwidth
as the original file size. So if I download a 100 meg file,
I'll use 250 megs of bandwidth. If you're short of bandwidth
but want to use this anyway's, be sure to close the Bittorrent
window as soon as the download is finished. While this isn't
nice to everyone else downloading, some times its necessary.
Peer
to Peer and Others
There's a third method for
getting cheap anime that I'm not sure I can support, and
that's ebay.
You can easily find VCDs (CDs that will play on most DVD
players or computers equipped with Windows
Media Player [shudder] for PCs or VLan for Macs) of
most anime out there. Maybe it's just me, but I've never
been a huge fan of anime via ebay; I've been screwed over
multiple times on ebay, but never by a fansubber, and I
pay only one or two bucks per episode for a fansub, but
pay a lot more for anime from ebay. But, as long as you
don't buy any licensed anime, I won't hunt you down and
kill you like the dog you are.
And there you have it: three
ways to get some of the newest and coolest anime at a fraction
of the cost. If none of these methods work, as a last resort
you can always try downloading shows from a peer-to-peer
network such as Kazza,
Gnutella or Direct
Connect. The problem with this is that you'll have a
hard time finding more esoteric shows, it takes a very long
time, and you can't be sure of the quality. But it's always
an option, so remember it when you're at your wit's end
trying to get a new show. Watch out when downloading anime,
or anything, off a P2P network. There are a lot more virus
on P2P networks then on IRC or bittorrent, so make sure
you're downloading something that ends in .AVI or .MPG (or
some other video extension) and no .VBS or .EXE which means
that's its a horrible virus, like syphilis.
There's nothing cooler then
belonging to a niche community that's so well organized
there's an entire underground logistical distribution system
that can get shows translated and subbed in a few weeks--particularly
compared to the months or even years needed for commercial
distributors. Just remember that distros are a double-edged
sword. A popular fansub will get licensed quickly, but if
everyone gets it from the distros, there will be no licensed
anime. So I'll say it one last time: if you get bootlegs
of anime already licensed in America (or whatever country
you're in) I will hunt you down and kill you, you filthy,
Satan-serving beast. Now have a nice day. 
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