Fansubs vs. official streams: how I used to watch anime in 2005 on dial-up

Back then I'd wait 4 hours for a single 40MB episode of Naruto to download on my family's dial-up, and half the time the subtitles were translated by a teenager who guessed half the lines. These days I just click Crunchyroll on my smart TV and it's in 1080p with actual professional subs. Anyone else miss the thrill of hunting down a raw from some sketchy IRC channel?

3 comments

3 Comments

murphy.aaron1mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, I spent whole nights on IRC trying to grab One Piece episodes too.

ninaowens1mo ago

Wait you actually got a full episode through IRC without it timing out or someone's bot DCC failing at 99%? I remember trying to grab a 175 MB episode of One Piece and my connection would just die on me after like 4 hours of waiting. I think I only successfully got like 3 episodes total before I gave up and found a different way. The struggle was real with those mid-2000s fansubbing channels.

sean_cooper581mo ago

And the bots that needed 100% ratio to even start the transfer... brutal stuff.