Here you can find where and how to indulge your anime itch and find out just what is it is about this art form that's so great.
The thing to know, right off, is that anime is both an expensive and time consuming hobby. There are soundtracks, manga (comic books), art books, magazines, and toys, as well as pencil boards, posters, wall scrolls and other merchandise you can get pertaining to the shows. However, even if you don't buy the merchandise that goes with the shows, there are still new shows coming out all the time, not to mention old classics to be seen as well. Anime DVD's and videos are also more expensive than their American counterparts. There's people to pay to dub the voices over in English, translators to pay, as well as people and equipment to pay for subtitling the show. All this makes building an anime collection an expensive prospect.
The first thing you'll probably want to do before you check anime out, is know what you want. Since anime is mostly not rated, the discriminating viewer will want to do their homework first. There are several places on the web where you can do research. AnimeNfo.com is an excellent place to find out about shows, and Anime Web Turnpike is a site with the largest collection of links to sites with information about various anime shows. If you have kids and are worried about what you want to see, there are a few web sites that look at anime from the judicious parent's point of view, and give exactly what the content of various shows are. The best place to go is The Parent's Guide To Anime. If you'd like, magazines are also good places to read reviews and get news on the very latest shows. Netwtype USA and Animerica are the best magazines to read. Newtype USA even has a sample DVD with each issue that has the first episode of various series for you to try. If you'd rather get anime news for free, then try out Anime News Network.
Once you know what you want, the most obvious way to try anime is, of course, buying or renting them on video or DVD. Most local video stores have some anime, but usually not a very good selection in my opinion. It's a place to start, though. If you really want to rent, then you can find a good selection at Netflix, where you can rent by mail and with no due times. The place to go if you want to buy is your local multi-media store, like Media Play or Hastings, where they sell videos as well as books, soundtracks, and computer games. If you have no such places available, then the next best place is to buy online. The best places to buy are at Animenation.com, Anime Castle, and Robert's Anime Corner Store. E-Bay also has a selection of anime for sale if you know what you want. Of course, there's also always Amazon.com
If you're like me, and have no money and too many shows you want to see, then the thing to do is download free fansubs. These are anime shows that have been translated and subtitled by fans who have the knowledge of the language and the equipment to subtitle it themselves. These are readily available many places on the web. The best place I've found is BitTorrent. You simply download a client and then you can get started. You then have to do web searches for pages that host the links for the shows you want. A few good sites to try are Boxtorrents.com,Animesuki.com and Anime and Manga BitTorrent Links. It can take from a few hours to a few days or a week to download, depending on your connection. It takes a lot of patience. However, if you want it for free, this is the way to go. If you want another way, there's also a download system called Kazaa Lite. I recommend Kazaa Lite because it lacks the intrusive worm that Kazaa has, which lets THEM use YOUR computer's processor and track you. Downloading anime from Kazaa takes awhile, too. Again, how long it takes depends on your connection. To download this way typicall isn't any faster than with BitTorrent.
Now that you know where to find what you want and where to go, the next thing to do, of course, is enjoy the show! I hope this helps you get started enjoying this wonderful art form!