IRC and anime
2002-03-21 - 2:03 a.m.
Lately I've gotten really into some of the latest anime (Japanese word for animation, pronounce "ah-knee-may," trying not to put an accent on any one part) which hasn't yet been imported for sale in the U.S. Lots of anime is "fansubbed" (subtitled by fans) before local release, some even while a series is still being aired in Japan.
I recently got fed up with how slow or nonexistant my Kazaa downloads have been going (Inu Yasha 57 downloaded about 60M of 70M and stopped for a week), and I noticed lots of fansubs mention IRC informaton, so I took the plunge and got onto IRC.
Downloading from IRC requires learning a lot more than, say, using file-sharing software like Kazaa or a Gnutella client, but I've gotten episodes in 4 to 8 hours that took 12 to 100 hours with Kazaa.
IRC has specific rules for each channel, and finding what you want to download will take some patience, but there are people talking in the channels who may be willing to help you out if you're polite and understanding. I've already seen a few very demanding people get kicked off-channel. Also, many are particular that you don't ask for or offer fansubs of anime that are now licensed--fansubs are intended to grow interest to help convince legitimate translated releases to come out.
I was looking for Fruits Basket and Inu Yasha episodes, but those are licensed now. So, I wound up finding that I could get Kanon, Hikaru no Go, Noir, FLCL, Seikai no Senki I & II, and other things I haven't heard of yet. There's going to be a lot of downloading...
I'm picking up Japanese again just from all the anime I've been watching, so I also found Kanji Step, which has lots of lessons so I can brush up and expand my Kanji knowledge.
