The great thing about online Anime downloads is that it can be somewhat free and legal. A lot of people don’t know but you can get an anime online for free and it can be legal because countries are so slow to license new anime’s.

This means you can get an anime from Japan that is currently showing over there on T.V and is not due to hit your country for 3-4 years and download it online totally free and legal. The Anime will not be licensed in your country yet meaning as far as any government authority is concerned is does not exist yet. Which is great for you as there are many new anime shows brought out everyday and there’s no way they can license them all in time.

Remember the free stuff is the unlicensed stuff so things like Naruto and Bleach are illegal as they have been very popular and licensed in most countries by now. 

 I’ve been a big fan of Anime shows and have even done a bit of fansubbing in the past and from working with all those other fansubbers and translation groups out there you can get a good insight into where the best place to get your anime from are.  

Basic P2P

 Basic peer to peer is a classic way to get your Anime episodes and this is fine if you can verify the source and the quality. The problem with P2P is the speed of the download depends on who is online and there’s nothing worse than downloading a file at 2kb/per second it will take you forever to get your daily anime fix.  

With that being said P2P can still be a great way to download anime especially between people you know off anime forums or chatrooms.  

Torrents

 Torrents are a great way to download anime , and there are many good sites out there I primarily use www.torrentz.com and www.mininova.com was a very sad day when supernova went down that site was like Christmas everyday.  The only problem with Torrents is that you can have the same problems you have with P2P this is unverified files and sometimes extremely slow speeds due to people being very selfish with there upload speeds.  

Torrent programs also have a lot of problems getting through firewalls and blocked ports. So if you’re having troubles with your firewall remember to allow exceptions on your torrent downloading programs. For blocked ports its best to do some searching on how to access your router and unblock certain ports for your torrent downloads.  

Private Torrent  

Private Torrents are probably the best way to download anime. In order to get onto a private torrent tracker you have to join a private torrent site. Sometimes this is free if you can make it into the registration before the spots run out and sometimes they require a fee of around 10 dollars U.S a year which I can tell you can definitely be worth it when your getting back maximum speeds and very high quality releases.  

A private torrent community is a very close and sharing community and people will never be selfish about there uploading speeds as this improves there ratio and in turn lets them get files quicker and faster.  

Irc / Mirc 

If you haven’t heard of Irc or Mirc its time to give it a try as this can also be a great resource to download anime episodes from. Mirc channels are chat rooms which also allow download off file servers. Most fansubbing groups will be running a Mirc chat room so it’s great to jump on chat with some anime fans and grab the latest releases that way.  

Join Fansubbing Groups 

Another way to get your anime episodes is to join a fansubbing group either as letting them use your file server as a dump server for anime, or offering your services as a translater or editor or something similar which will then give you access to many private FTP’s with lots of great download anime. 

For the best quality and releases a private downloading community is the best resource. I had a friend who joined one which cost around $20 a year and I’ve regretted not signing up every since, but then again some of us are too cheap to pay for anything. For more info on exclusive downloading resources try this. 

NOTE : Remember before downloading off the internet always verify that you are infact download totally 100% legal content otherwise you taking money away from hardworking anime studios. If you don’t know what you’re downloading is legal or not find out before you do anything else. All the internet resources I have mentioned can be used in a safe and legal manner. A great site for manga I love is www.onemanga.com incase you haven’t heard of it you probably have.