The Anime fan’s tool kit
Modern Anime enthusiast live in a world filled with high speed internet access, social networking and video streaming. These are things that enable the life of a fan to be a fairly nice and easy one. Whereas in the days of old we of the older crowd had it quite differently. It was simple yet it could be frustrating. All one needed to partake in the gloriousness that is anime was have a tele, a DVD/VHS (kids these days may not know of those) and of course a collection of all the anime you wanted to watch on tapes or disc. These were the simple times when a man would have to go out hunt through movie stores in search of missing links from ones collection, when face to face contact was necessary, welcomed even. We moved like pilgrims in those days scavenging the land for that sweet nectar that we craved, anime.
Whereas in the olden days we fans had to go out of our way to get our fix. Now the fix comes to us, you just have to know how to catch it, the tools of the trade I call them and what amazing tools they are. With the advancement that is high speed internet came large p2p servers and websites. We got video stream in high quality thanks to sites like YouTube. It was only a matter of time until we started to use these new methods to acquire our anime. First of I’d like to add a lot of ways I will mention after this point may not be through the legal channels, but I will always encourage a fan to buy the original content or pay for then through licensed services because it helps publishers bring us more content. OK now that that sticky business is out of the way let’s get started.
Know your collection
As a fan it is very important to know what you have watched and what you plan to watch. We anime enthusiast can go through hundreds maybe even thousands of anime in a measly few years without breaking a sweat. This is why it is important to keep a record of what we watch. In the past we used note books to document what we watched and to keep check of what we wanted to watch. This was a rather daunting task that became natural to us after a time, but sometimes we would make mistakes, forget to write stuff down or document it wrong only to notice our mistake quite sometime later. Now the savior of the organized fan is here and it is Myanimelist.net. This website is a database of anime and manga put there and constantly updated by its user base. Users can then manage their own Personal lists in a nice and easy to understand manner. Your list has five sections; in progress, planned to watch, dropped, complete and on hold. This nice easy to use format allows for us to easily keep check of our ever growing collections and update them as we see fit.
There is safety in numbers
The best part of being an anime fan is being a part bigger society of fans. We all need to meet and get to know other fans and their tastes. As human beings we are naturally social due to our past evolutions of our species to rely on each other for food and protection. This trait has been passed down throughout modern society and even among us fans. Social networks like Facebook and Google plus allow us to show our passion on our individual profiles and communities like never before, but they were just the beginning. Myanimelist.net also has rather robust, but unique social features. Some features are common among other social networks like the abilities to add other users to a contact list and send messages to them. Other are more unique to this type of site like the compatibility bar on users profiles. How this feature works is, it checks all the anime you have in your list and your personal ratings that you have given them ranging between 1-10, and then cross references that information with that of your friends. Friends that have similar ratings to you will have a higher compatibility with you and those that don’t well you know the rest. Users can also set their profiles up with a list of their top ten anime, manga, characters and real people who work in the industry to bring you what you love. With all the social features the site offers from forums to groups, it’s easy to find your place among the community.
Putting on the autopilot
We have all had that moment where you had a series on hold for some time and then picked it up again only to realize that you don’t remember where you left off. Before you would either skim episode by episode until you found the last one you watched. While other times when the old noggin was not working you would just end up starting all over again. With Myanimelist.net this process is not needed. With the help of your anime list and an app called Myanimelist updater you can have your anime list up to date and also be able to continue a series right from the episode you left it at. The app uses your account and whatever video player you use on your PC to get this done and it is all done automatically. First all one has to do is install the small app to their PC. Then log in to their account. From that point the app will start syncing with your list you have on the website to setup itself properly. It will also scan you PC for anime in folders you have selected. The app somehow know the difference between anime and a normal movie and will immediately pop up if new any anime is played on the PC using the video player you select on the initial setup. It will update your list if you start watching an anime and move it to the appropriate section. It will also update after you finish watching a series or finish an episode. You can also conveniently rate and add new anime to your list directly from the app.
Where to get the good stuff
As I stated above piracy is illegal. It does however serve a purpose which we explained in BSP S2E3 (KAWAII DESU FIRE). Personally I use a mix of paid content and sub. The subs usually have better quality, quicker releases and better translations. Most anime fans use subs these days for these reasons, but as a fan we must do our part. I personally keep a Crunchyroll subscription which is a licensed anime streaming site and I buy original content whenever possible. I don’t often use my Crunchyroll account for streaming anime but i keep it to show support to the licensed material. I also have Netflix which does have a good assortment of dubbed anime, though as many of us know dubbed anime is sometimes poison to the ears.
After you have subbed to your desired licensed sites you could start checking out some sub sites and torrents. Horriblesubs is one of the best subs out there and so is Hatsuyuki. Most of these subs use torrents to distribute their content so get familiar with using apps like bittorrent and uTorrent. There are numerous other sites and subs out there for you to choose from, but remember don’t go wild there is only so much you can watch, and you PC’s hard drive does have a limit. One other site worth noting is BakaBT I find it is great for finding old full series especially the Uncensored ones. 😉
OK now that you have made it this far you are now an expert fan in regards to your anime collection. Use all the information above properly and there will be no limit to your fandom. Thank you for reading and have a wonderful Mangaday. 😀
