Downloading Anime - A Guide

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Downloading Anime: A How-To
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Step 01: Finding an Anime to Watch
-- Recent Anime: AniDB [http://ani-db.net] has a good list of what the season's anime is for the time.
-- Old Anime: Ask your friends on what's good to watch. Google also helps.

Step 02: Finding a Download Method
-- Torrents: If you're patient, and don't mind waiting maybe a week or so, TokyoTosho [http://tokyotosho.info] and NyaaTorrents [http://nyaatorrents.org] are the best place for recent anime. Tons and tons of seeders. If you don't know how to torrent then just go and download uTorrent [http://www.utorrent.com] and use that, dead simple.
-- Direct Downloads: There are a hell of a lot of these, just look around in Google or ask your friends for recommendations. This is better for older anime since torrents of old anime will likely have not that many seeders.
-- Advanced Googling: See Extra Bonus Step at the very bottom.
-- XDCC Downloads: These are really really good for recent anime, and are explained in Advanced Step 4.

Advanced Step 03: Tracking a Fansub Group
-- The fansub group is the group of people that gives the Japanese moonspeak of anime its English subtitles. The name in brackets at the front of a usual anime torrent/download is usually the name of the fansub group.
--- Example: [Nuke]_To_Aru_Kagaku_no_Railgun_-_01_[1280x720][F8448B15].mkv. This is subbed by the group Nuke, at [http://nuke.enigmaticentity.com] (Go watch Railgun by the way, it is many levels of awesome.)
-- Google the fansub group's name with the word "subs" -- for instance, "Nuke subs". If this fails to turn up anything substantial ("Nuke subs" just turns up results for nuclear submarines, by the way) use MyAnimeList's fansub group search. [http://myanimelist.net/fansub-groups.php]
-- Go to that group's website and stalk them for their releases.

Advanced Step 04: XDCC Downloads
-- This is by far the best way to download anime if you don't like torrents and such.
-- Download PChat Portable, an IRC chat client [http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/pchat_portable] that doesn't need to be installed, it just copies some files.

Step 04-A: XDCC Downloading from the Main News Channel
-- Open up PChat Portable, and fill in name, nickname, whatever.
-- Join the Rizon network, just scroll down a bit to find it.
-- You'll be asked if you want to join a channel. Choose to join the #news channel.
-- The News Channel usually only has recent anime, and it's the best place for it.
-- Type in "!find nameofanimeyouwant", example: !find railgun 01. You'll get a list of pink names giving you file names with #XX in front of them.
-- Now, choose the file you want, and type in "/msg thepinkname xdcc send #XX", replace thepinkname with... the pink name of that person, and #XX with the number in front of the file. Example: "/msg Ginpachi-Sensei xdcc send #101".
-- Done correctly, you'll then start downloading, hooray!
[Warning: the !find command can and WILL flood you with choices.]

Step 04-B: XDCC Downloading from a Fansub Group
-- Find the fansub group's IRC channel. It's usually on the Rizon server [irc.rizon.net], which you can join by using PChat Portable. The channel will be in the format of #channelname, for example #Nuke, in the example above. Fill in nickname, real name, whatever.
-- You'll be asked if you want to join a channel. Join the group's channel.
-- You're in the group's channel now. There are several ways that these channels advertise their XDCC numbers, like the News channel above. Read the opening statement of the channel to see how the channel works with its XDCC numbers.
-- Sometimes it's the same as the News channel: you'll be asked to use !find, or sometimes @find, or something like that. Do that like the things above.
-- Sometimes it's a thing called a packlist, which is a special webpage for searching out XDCC numbers for that specific channel. Go there, search for stuff you want, get back the XDCC number, use the method above again.
-- Sometimes they just give you the XDCC number at their website. Woohoo.

Extra Bonus Step: Advanced Google Search
-- Add "site:rapidshare.com", "site:megaupload.com", "site:mediafire.com", "site:hotfile.com", etc to the end of your searches to search through that download site only. It's useful. Example: "railgun 01 site:mediafire.com". Boom, instant awesome.
-- This also works for a lot of other stuff. Go wild.

[Any questions, you can ask Amir Fuhaira. Facebook or e-mail or whatever, no MSN.]