Resources

General Guidelines

Getting anime outside of Japan and in a language other than english used to be a non-trivial matter only a few years ago (as I live in Canada I'll focus only on experiences in this part of the world). Only a small subset of shows would make it over here, and of those only a handful would turn out well after they're through with translation and voice dubbing. However, several companies have noticed the latent interest and realized that the market exists, so they have started to translate and publish a lot of content (anime and manga alike). The quality of translation and dubs has been going steadily up since then, and these days even obscure stuff - or strangely, even stuff that is so japanese that it's hard for non-japanese to grasp is being published - makes it over here. Finding anime is nowdays nearly as easy as finding western material - it's in major bookstores such as Chapters (well, in Canada there is only Chapters anyway) and in big box retailers that sell video content such as Future Shop and London Drugs.

How to go about this?

This is the way I go about dealing with anime. Let's talk in terms of various scenarios.

Scenario 1: I want to watch something, but I don't know what. I do know that I want to watch something good though!

So you want to watch an acclaimed series? Let's say that we want to limit ourself to series that have completed airing in Japan; it makes things easier. We should pick a good review site such as THEM Anime. Now you can either browse by genres you're interested in, by ratings or simply randomly pick something from the list - if you're a newbie, you probably know jack about what types of anime there are. For a newbie, it's probably the best idea to simply sort them by rating, read a few reviews and note genres of ones that looked interesting. Whichever way you go about it, choose something that interested you. If you can't make up your mind it's likely safest (culture shock wise) to choose some of many action titles (assuming you're a male).

Now that you have the title, the first thing would be to find out if the series has been licensed in your region (say North America). Licensed means that a legal business entity in your country (e.g. a company) has acquired the license to publish the show in your country. If you used a good review site you should be able to see this information in the review itself (if the reviewer is not in your region, that info is probably next to useless though).

Now comes the hard part - you need to find a place that will rent you that series. You could also buy it, which can be a viable option in some cases but it's not a good idea if you're new to anime. Anime can be very expensive so rentals are by far the best choice. If you end up liking it, you can then take your time and find a good deal somewhere. Yes, you could also download it from the web - but I'm not going to condone such things, and I'll give you reasons why (not simply 'because', because if you lived outside western countries, you know that the issue is not as black as white as a lot of people seem to believe). It's because you have access to huge library of titles at very reasonable cost. For example, if you live in Canada, you have the option of renting from zip.ca, and if you live in USA you can use Netflix. This is no endorsement by any means - there may be other ones that I don't know about. But the prices and terms of rentals are very reasonable and the selection is HUGE. Selection and availability are by far the most important thing if you want to watch anime - it's very unlikey even a big rental store will have much in the way of anime on its shelves! An online rental place will have just about everything that has been released - a critical requirement.

And if that's not enough, the quality of picture and video on official DVDs are far superior to any fansubbed stuff out there. The quality of translation is also very likely to be better, if not much better than what's out there on the web. Therefore, if you're in North America, find a good online rental site and be done with it. This is also the only way you have to support the company who made the show you watch - even though they won't see much of it, but that's another story.

Scenario 2: I have the name of the series and I want to find detailed information about it.

Be it old or new, you can go to Anime News Network or to Anime DB to find out year of release, number of episodes, related series (e.g. prequels and sequels) - or even such details as what voice actors did what characters, what were the names and lenghts of episodes, what were the airing dates and what are the names of opening/ending songs. Anime News Network has much more accurate ratings and typically more detail about the series, while Anime DB has more information regarding available fansubs and their status. If neither of these sites has the information you need, you might as well give up - or find yourself a netpal in Japan...

Scenario 3: I'm interested in a series. I want to watch it but it's not available in my region (usually it's very old or it very new).

What you're talking about is an unlicensed series. Well, in that case your options are very limited (assuming you must see it) - unless it has been released on DVD somewhere else in the world, in the language you speak. I'll say it first - even if the series is unlicensed, downloading from the web is technically illegal. The difference is that you can only be sued by the original Japanese copyright holder rather than a local one - thoguh I guess in pratice it makes a lot of difference. Other than downloading, you can get it from EBay. Sometimes - in rare cases - these are original Japanese or Asian releases, meaning official. In most cases though, they're pirated. If you want to nitpick, since you can't really know whether what you're buying is official release or not - sometimes even after you have it in your hands - getting content this way may let you sleep at night. After all, it's the job of the government and Ebay to hunt pirates. If you donwload from the web though, you're violating the copyright for sure. Assuming you want to find a fansub, you should first go to Anime DB. Now I know I said their ratings tend to be way out of whack. But we're not going to look for series rating, rather for fansub rating! Right there, on every anime's page there is a list of fansub groups that are working on it, how far did they get (including dates of last updates!), are they still working on it - and what do people say about quality of their work. You can either read comments (though mostly they go like this: "this sub sucks" - "no, that sub sucks!") or simply pick a group that has the highest rating (assuming you don't see you favourite group on the list).

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