With a tip from pimp, I ventured into Shareparadise.net (the Megaupload and co. link sharing forum) for anime direct downloads, and indeed, there they were.

Actually, I’ve featured Shareparadise.net before, but a few changes have occured since then - including the addition of these direct downloads and a link-sharing system. But I’ll leave the new link-sharing system for another post (since not many people will be interested in that).

1) Shareparadise.net [Direct Downloads Section]

• Speed: Very Fast
• Content: Tenshi na Konamaiki and Tactics
• Posting Requirements: None at the moment
• Update Frequency: Unknown
• Video Format: .avi (High Quality)
• Note: Requires free registration, but that’s it - at least for now. The direct downloads do not seem to be subjected to any points system - yet. A short HOWTO on the direct downloads is available as a forum thread. And one more thing, the episodes are compressed as .rar files.

Lol, my pronouncement of doom was a little premature after all. Anime-treasures.com is up again, with a mirror for emergencies (anime-treasure.com) too.

All of us should thank the fact that Rainy is in download obsession mode because we now have another anime direct download site(s) at our disposal. A small warning though: A username:password is required to access the site(s), and you’ll have to get this from Vision-Anime’s IRC channel (#vision-anime) on Rizon (irc.rizon.net) by typing a special trigger (the trigger is advertised once in a while, so you’ll have to lounge around in the channel to get it).

1) Vision-Anime’s Direct Leech 1 and Direct Leech 2

• Speed: Fast
• Content: Vision-Anime’s archive, i.e. for anime.dwin.com: Daphne in the Brilliant Blue, Shura no Toki, DN Angel, Hellsing, ROD TV, Tokyo Underground, Hack Sign, Senki Muryou | for zporkz.info: Nothing at the moment
• Update Frequency: Unknown
• Video Format: .mkv (High Quality)
• Average File Size: 210 mb
• Note: Vision-Anime split up their DDL site into two: one at http://anime.dtwin.com (Direct Leech 1) and another at http://zporkz.info/down (Direct Leech 2). But Direct Leech 2 seems to be empty at the moment.

Don’t get turned off by the username:password requirement. It really isn’t that difficult to get the user:pass from Vision-Anime’s IRC channel.

Arghh… Doooom is near. Anime-treasures.com is down, with a big sign saying:

Account for domain anime-treasures.com has been suspended

My personal opinion is that the host they were using did not allow serving of copyrighted material, of any country whatsoever. But, it could have been due to a lack of $$$ too, I guess. Hopefully it’s temporary though…

Title: Kyou Kara Maou
Year: 2004
Total Episodes: Unknown
Categories: Comedy, Adventure
Fansubbed Version Watched: AnimeOne
Episodes I Watched So Far: 59
Episodes Available ATM: 59

Kyou Kara Maou is a mix of comedy, adventure and shounen-ai. It’s about a male, black-haired (yes, that’s important) teenager, Yuuri, that gets pulled into an alternate world, where he is deemed as the Maou (Demon King?) - i.e. ruler of Shin Makoku - because of his black hair (nah, it’s just one of the reasons). With a Demon King, Shin Makoku can’t be normal of course. It’s a kingdom of Mazoku - long-lived, magic-using, human-like beings.

Once in a while, he does get pulled back to his home dimension - by falling into water, from puddles to fountains. But while he’s in Shin Makoku, there’s never a calm moment. From a male fiancee (yes, male), Wolfram, that Yuuri somehow picks up when Yuuri slaps him, to an obsessive bishonen advisor that cannot get enough of Yuuri, we are treated to light-hearted comedy. In fact, even on Earth, he has to contend with a fantasy-loving mom (with a tendency to dress guys in dresses) and an ever-absent dad.

Of course, being a comedy doesn’t excuse KKM from having a plot. That plot involves humans and Mazoku being eternal enemies, an almighty Original King (the very first Maou) plotting Yuuri’s path behind the scenes, and Yuuri himself transforming into a magic-wielding Justice-obsessed Maou. That’s about it for the first season, I think.

Personal Comments:
The first thing I have to say is don’t worry about the shounen-ai as its just part of the comedy. That said, Kyou Kara Maou initially looked rather promising - with the comedy that is. But over the first 39 episodes, it got rather stale. So, I looked around, and I found that I wasn’t alone. Check out Cinnamon Ass’ summary of episode 8 (KKM was dropped right after this summary) where you have this:

KKM! is in danger of getting stale. The Wolfram engagement joke is wearing thin, frankly, although that nightie is really quite astounding… and while there are some interesting bits of political plotting going on they’re not really developed much - fair enough, this is a fairly light-hearted series as it is, but it seems a little one-dimensional and predictable.

So, it’s pretty much 39 episodes of snail-like plot and character development. The second season gets slightly more interesting with a few plot twists, but barely so. You’ll really have to like comedy, or have nothing much else to watch in order to enjoy Kyou Kara Maou - especially since it’s going to be one of those very long series.

Anime Blog Toshokan’s (ABT) successor - blog好き - is up, and with a new domain too. But it isn’t accepting new anime blogs for the time being:

Please note that currently blog好き is closed for new feeds as my first priority is getting the old feeds working right. I will re-open submission probably early February.

Truthfully, I never used ABT much in the past since AnimeBlogger.net Antenna covered all my anime RSS feed needs. But there aren’t many quality anime feed aggregators around. So, blog好き will surely be on my bookmarks list.

The post title is probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but I feel it conveys my old (and negative) opinion on Fansub.tv. In fact, if I still held the same opinion on Fansub.tv, I would probably not feature this relatively slow site (3 KB/s was the norm when I first used Fansub.tv, even during the off-peak period).

But recently, I tried Fansub.tv again after pimp commented that he could sometimes get around 50KB/s from it. Surprisingly, I found that I could get somewhere between 20KB/s to 40KB/s during the off-peak period (US night time).

Yes, that isn’t fast if compared to many of the direct download sites we have now, but for a relatively huge anime direct downloads repository - with no posting or even registration requirements - it’s pretty good.

1) Fansub.tv

• Speed: Slow (must download during off-peak period, or die of slowness)
• Content: Recent episodes from most fansubs put on Bittorent, plus a few older series (e.g. Kashimashi, Hotori ~ Tada Saiwai wo Koinegau, Suzuka, Pani Poni Dash!, Air, Eyeshield 21)
• Update Frequency: Very regular (as new episodes are released through BT)
• Note: You’ll have to wait after selecting to download an episode as Fansub.tv puts you in a download queue. But if you download during the off-peak period, the wait should be minimal.

Chiisana.net is down temporarily due to lack of bandwidth this billing month. According to their site announcement:

Due to lack of bandwidth for this billing month, we will not be distributing any more anime this billing month! The 15th of each month is the beginning of the new billing month, so we will start distributing anime again then, please come back then!

In addition, Chiisana.net’s admins answer a few oft-asked questions, like why Chiisana.net is in Japanese. So, while waiting for the 15th to come by, give the site a visit to find out the truth behind the mysterious Chiisana.net.