Friday, October 14, 2011

Anime Contamine': How to Get Back into Anime a.k.a. Come back into the Light!


The Comicpalooza Blog wants to welcome LT Tran on board with our brand new anime column!  Read, enjoy and give feedback to him for future articles!  And without further delay....
    
     Hello, fellow geeks! For a good while now, I was invited to write an anime column for the Comicpalooza website and for a time I haven't sent anything to the administrator not because I didn't want to but it's mostly because I had no idea what to submit to the blog.  Also, it didn't help that work tended to get in the way or the pure and simple fact that I ran out of energy to write anything after a long day of physical labor (I is lazy, har har har).  So what did I decide to write as an inaugural article for this anime column?  See title above.
   Now I'm sure that many comic book fans out there are into anime and manga. I for one, are into anime and can't really get into manga because it's such an expensive hobby to keep up with.  Unless you have a subscription to Shonen Jump or just have a huge coffer of money to spend it on books from Barne's and Noble's manga section.
   Now, let's get into the meat of this article, How to get back into anime AKA come back into the light.  I decided on this topic because I know that there are a lot of you out there that used to be very into Japanese animation and have pretty much lost touch with this special media.  Either, A) you started a family (a life), B) lost interest (shame on you), or C) just too busy with work and other interests (not really an excuse).  If you fit any of the criteria above and may still have a passing interest about anime or wish to get back into it but don't know how.  I'm your man.  I'm here to help! 
   Thankfully, we live in the age of the internet, getting back into the genre takes a few keystrokes and a couple of mouse clicks away.  If we lived in any other age I would've gone through the pains of actually scouting out real world locations for vhs stores that have a decent anime selection; good thing we don't.  Alright, digressions aside, let's get to it.  I will recommend three websites that will help ease you back into the anime world. 

Animenetwork.com  Not only can you keep up with the latest of anime series released in the US but you can watch some of the shows being simulcast in Japan!  There is a monthly subscription fee of $6.95 per month.  There are options for dubs or subtitles.

Crunchyroll.com  Sometimes, some shows won't appear on animenetwork and the reason why is mainly because this website probably nabbed exclusive streaming rights to some of the shows.  Price: 6.95 per month they also have Asian dramas as a separate streaming service. If you want to cover all your bases subscribe to both if you feel like you need to rekindle your ocd of anime. 

Finally, there's Netflix.  Believe it or not, Netflix definitely has the largest anime selection anywhere either through their dvd catalog or through their streaming library.  Of course, they're not the cheapest.  To get a dvd and streaming option you'd have to fork over 15.98 a month (that's more than a WOW monthly subscription!)  or just 8.99 a month for just the unlimited streaming.  However, despite the price they tend to keep up pretty well with some of Funimation's recent dvd releases and back catalog.

Now all websites do feature a ratings and comments for viewers to browse through in case you can't decide on what to watch first.  If you want any recommendations, you can send me an email and I will compile the most common questions together in to a feature article coming out soon! 

Send questions and comments to evildrtran@yahoo.com

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