Useful links and tips

I think that some people – especially people who are new to anime – might appreciate this. Please help me expand this list and add other helpful tips to it.

Downloading anime:

First of all, the godly site of anime downloads is Nyaa. If you’re looking for relatively new anime or anime that are very popular, this is a safe bet. Pretty much every subgroup hosts their releases on Nyaa.

If you want an older anime, what I often do is look up which groups have subbed it and look if they’ve got it on their site. MyAnimeList lists which groups have subbed an anime and usually also offer links to that group’s site.

In case the groups don’t offer torrents on their sites (which some groups do because of copyright stuff) you’ll have to google. Major torrent sites like The Pirate Bay usually suck for anime, they’ll only have really popular series. Sometimes it’s a good place to find older popular stuff though. Anyways, “[insert series name] torrent” is usually the way to go if the above methods have failed. I guarantee though, there isn’t an anime that I haven’t been able to download and except if it’s really old and obscure you should be able to find anything (as long as people have ever subbed it).

How could I forget about irc bots? Maybe because I never use them, but a bunch of fansub groups host their files over irc. This is a good guide on how to download these files. It’s a good way to get anime when the torrents don’t have any seeds.

Watching anime:

Especially 10-bit anime can be a pain in the neck for some computers. I’ve had trouble with a watching anime too recently. Thanks wavedash from Reddit for helping me out in this thread.

Basically, the first thing you want to try is CCCP with Media Player Classic (which comes with CCCP). This works perfectly in almost all cases. In case that doesn’t work, try out what wavedash mentioned.

Anime databases and useful sites:

• Myanimelist as mentioned previously. I’ve got an animelist too – it’s great for keeping track of everything you’ve watched and want to watch. I keep it up to date all the time too.
• Anime News Network is a great place for your daily anime/manga/otakustuff news.
• AnimeDB is another site with a lot of information.

Legal anime streams:

• The big one is obviously Crunchyroll. Crunchyroll licenses a bunch of anime that you can watch subbed for free on their site and their selection keeps growing which is awesome.
• There are a few other ones, but the problem is that they’re US-only. Funimation streams One Piece, there’s Hulu, NicoNico. I don’t know a lot about them because they don’t allow me to watch from Europe, so you Americans can check them out yourselves.