While you may not have noticed, there are many different places out there to choose from when downloading or watching anime. Many larger websites such as Youtube delete anime once they find out it’s been uploaded to their site to make sure they don’t get into any legal trouble. Other sites such as CrunchyRoll embrace download-able anime episodes, however they delete anime that have been licensed by a company so they can be released in North America.
Many people seem to have trouble finding the best websites to download anime episodes, so I decided to compile a list of websites and a quick overview of how good they are. Of course all websites change overtime, so please keep that in mind. Smaller anime download websites seem to shutdown quicker then larger sites, or become abandoned, so lets try to take a look at some larger anime episode websites.
CrunchyRoll.com-
As mentioned above, CrunchyRoll embraces download-able anime episodes, but delete any anime that has been licensed. They host their own video player, anime uploads, and have a very large community of fans. CrunchyRoll also has live action foreign TV programs and often show up at conventions to give out t-shirts or advertise the website.
Not only that, but CrunchyRoll has tons of video game previews from different systems. The great thing about CrunchyRoll is that they have anime previews for you to watch, so you can check out anime series that you may like to watch. In terms of scale, CrunchyRoll is one of the larger websites hosting anime episodes that can be watched.
You won’t find well known anime like Bleach on this website, but you will find anime like Vampire Knight that have yet to be licensed. Their video players quality comes in three different settings so it’s sure to work for anyones computer without problems, and you can even watch anime in high definition.
Youtube.com-
Though this is not one of my favorite places to watch anime, Youtube is sometimes great for rare or little known anime episodes. The only bad thing is, that most of the episodes are split into parts to fit Youtube’s video upload rules. The quality of anime episodes on Youtube also tend to be discouraging, but if all else fails just use Youtube.
Veoh.com-
With larger videos able to upload on Veoh, it makes it better then Youtube. Many anime fan subbing websites upload their anime videos to Veoh because of its video quality and longer videos. Even anime movies can be uploaded to Veoh.com, however it is important to take note that you need to download the websites video player to be able to play movies.
That player is called VeohTV, and turns out to be very useful. It actually allows you to download anime episodes to your computer to watch whenever you want, and hosts a variety of “On Demand” television shows by big name companies such as NBC or CBS. If your looking for anime, make sure Veoh is one of your first stops.
ZomgAnime.com-
Being a smaller anime based website is hard, but Zomganime seems to pull it off well. While you cannot download anime from the website, you can watch them on the website through Veoh or Megavideo players. That’s right, since this website doesn’t have the resources to create it’s own video player, it uses embedded video players from other websites.
Course the good thing about that is, they are good about updating the website everyday when a new anime episode is released. Zomganime also features a chat where you can talk to other anime fans while watching your anime of choice. There are websites just like this one everywhere, but this is perhaps the most user-friendly of the smaller anime websites.
Megavideo.com-
Just like Youtube or Veoh, Megavideo has anime episodes that can be watched online. However Megavideo is sort of a rebel when it comes to major video sharing websites, they tend to have a lot material that could potentially get them in trouble, including licensed anime. If your a paying member of Megavideo you are even able to download the anime that you watch, of course I don’t recommend that.
The quality of Megavideo anime episodes tend to be great, but it also depends on the quality of the video before it was uploaded, remember that. The only complaint one could have about Megavideo is the fact that videos sometimes take forever to stream on the website. Obviously before you can be shown the anime, your computer has to first download the anime through the video player, and this website takes some time doing that.
Subwire.com-
For those of you that insist on downloading anime, check out Subwire. This website provides links to all fan subbing websites and keeps track of anime episodes subbed recently. If you check back every day you will see a huge list of anime and manga that have been translated, and if you check each anime series profile you will see how many episodes have been released.
Subwire comes in handy when your looking for anime like Chaos;Head, because it becomes difficult to search through around five or so sub group websites each day for every anime you want to download. Subwire also has links to most of the downloads, although you must use torrent programs to download the anime. For most of us that isn’t a problem and many would recommend using a program called UTorrent.
