Finding Anime Online UK For British Fans

The anime online UK situation varies widely from year to year, almost from month to month, depending on a host of factors. For a long time, even as both manga and anime were becoming extremely popular in North America, UK audiences detected only hints of this.

Manga, the Japanese style of comic book, was rarely seen in the country until sometime in 2006, and very few anime series were broadcast. The only solution, for fans of anime, was to watch anime online. And even that wasn't easy at first, until the technology caught up with the growing demand.

There had been a few paltry anime glimmers early on, such as a few series from the long anime list penetrating into kids' television in the UK. Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, One Piece and Dragon Ball Z did make an appearance, but all of those series except perhaps Dragon Ball Z were really tailored for a younger audience.

The only way fans who might have been interested in more complex or adult series could find out about them was through a few anime online UK websites that provided news.

Fortunately, the anime online UK answer to British fans' desire for this type of animation has become much easier to access since the demise of the Anime Central channel.

Video streaming and downloading technologies have advanced in leaps and bounds, and many distributors have now placed entire anime libraries online, on their own video portals or on dedicated channels in places like www.youtube.com or www.joost.com.

It has finally become possible for fans in the UK to watch free anime or even to download and own episodes for a fee. Internet streaming and downloading have finally given UK fans' pent-up desire for more anime a solution.

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Looking For Your Favorite Anime Download

When people think of an anime download, they virtually always think of the sort of websites where anime episodes themselves can be downloaded onto someone's computer, cell phone or other portable viewing device.

It is true that the main purpose of such websites is to allow people to download anime episodes, whether those are free or purchased through an official online portal.

But even though acquiring actual episodes is the main type of downloading, the vast popularity of anime has given birth to several other types of electronic files that can be downloaded as well.

It's now possible to join mailing lists, either for the major distributors or even news sites, and receive notifications of the latest anime news or the release of new titles. As with so many other types of downloads, these can be sent directly to the person's portable device, or to their email account.

They can also go to news sites or online anime stores and download image files that might contain wallpapers for computer desktop backgrounds, or screen savers comprised of images from their favorite series. An anime download can contain many different types of files.

Fiction might be a different sort of anime download, though it would actually be the rarest form. Most fiction written by fans is stored on large sites created for that purpose, like www.fanfiction.net, or placed on personal blogs on sites like www.livejournal.com.

But some stories, with the author's permission, can be downloaded by their own fans. The most common form of download, though, is either a digital file of general anime information or, of course, the anime episodes themselves. This animation genre is so prolific and so interesting, that it keeps its online fans busy in countless different ways.

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Production Companies Compromizing Over Anime Downloads

Illegal online downloads might have started with music, but they certainly didn't stop there. It took longer for video technology to develop, but illegal anime downloads eventually began posing the same problem for anime distributors that song downloads did for the music industry, early in the century.

Once a few people had the digital files from any series, it was easy for these to be uploaded to fan sites, and soon people could watch anime free online, and download the files to their own computers, without any consequences.

Just as Bandai and FUNimation took their hard public stance against illegal anime downloads, another Japanese entertainment company, GDH/Gonzo, began to demonstrate the real road to the successful resolution of the problem.

By joining forces with a fan site that had been strongly criticized for streaming anime illegally, Gonzo allowed the streaming to continue, but made higher quality versions of those videos available for a fee. This might not have eliminated illegal downloads entirely, but it mitigated the problem to a great extent.

It is to FUNimation's credit that they either followed Gonzo's lead, or at least developed a similar plan to deal with illegal anime downloads. The company hasn't entirely abandoned its prosecutorial ways, but it did set up its own video portal, positively loaded with free streaming anime.

It streams vast chunks of its anime library for free, while fans can take advantage of a download-to-own option, one episode at a time. This approach has worked very well to make the company's fans happy, while providing publicity and extra revenue as well. Gonzo may have had it right from the beginning: "If you can't beat them, join them."

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Fan Sites With Free Online Anime

One of the advantages of having free online anime at various websites is that people who can't afford to buy DVDs of whole series or download single episodes can still watch their favorite entertainment genre.

Many networks have stopped broadcasting anime, so the publicity this produced for these products has vanished. It serves the distribution companies well to allow people to watch free anime because it whets their appetite for the products the way TV broadcasts once did. People who can't afford to buy anime are happy beneficiaries of the arrangement.

What some may find surprising is that this online anime isn't always located at the websites of the distributors, even though its streaming is distributor-approved.

The Japanese entertainment and anime production company, GDH/Gonzo, does have its own branded YouTube channel where some of its series run, but it has also made arrangements to provide free streaming anime on at least one fan site.

The usual practice is that videos on fan sites are of lesser quality, and fans who want better quality episodes will purchase them legally.

In the same way that it might seem counterintuitive to provide free online anime in order to increase revenues, some North American distributors are following another practice that might sound contradictory.

The sensible course, in the minds of most people, would be to offer streaming only of series that have been around for awhile and might have run the course of the initial buying enthusiasm.

But some distributors are also letting fans watch anime free that has just been broadcast in Japan. By all these different means, publicity and good will are created, and this can only end up benefiting both the fans and the distributors.

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The Popularity Of Anime Comics

Gen-X'ers and older Gen-Y's grew up in the 1980s, when comic book series cartoons like "The X-Men," "Justice League," "Captain America," "Teen Titans," "Spider-Man," "Batman," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "The Transformers."

As these kids aged, they became adults in their 20s and 30s, creating comic book movie blockbusters to keep the legacy going. The next generation of younger Gen-Y's would look to Japan and China for their comic book series.

They grew up with "Dragonball Z," "Pokemon" and "Sailor Moon." Anime comics came to America with surprising fervor and it's not likely to dissipate anytime soon.

Moreover, the messages in anime comics reach today's youth at a level that traditional DC or Marvel comic books missed. Anime focuses more on emotions, relationship struggles, introspection, adventurous personal quests and the hero's journey; all in surreal, magical surroundings.

Unlike cartoons for kids, anime characters will die and complex relationships are formed. Nothing is off-limits in the anime world, not even sex or violence. People are confronted with deep concepts and provoked to think about the meaning of life. In a way, it's the softer, psychological side of Marvel, blended with the magical, omniscient qualities of a DC superhero: the best of both worlds.

For the male fans, some manga comics are adapted to show sexier heroines -- some in their coy school girl uniforms, others with more Westernized curves and futuristic apparel. Yet for the female fans, plots center on soap opera type stories of love, longing and character development. In fact, women make up half the attendees at the anime comics conventions.

Perhaps the reason for AD Vision's success is that they're all fans of anime comics and manga comics themselves. "Everybody here in some capacity loves anime very passionately, or they love manga," admits John Ledford.

Currently, he's looking at more movie opportunities, particularly for "Neon Genesis Evangelion," thanks to rampant demand from anime fans.

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