In December last year, I wrote a short post on pay-for-use anime direct download sites/FTPs - featuring a couple of the more established ones, i.e. [Download] Anime FTP and National-Anime.
Right after that post, I subscribed to a few of them to see whether or not they actually fulfill the promises they print on their index pages (e.g. hundreds of anime series, fast speeds, etc.).
So, now that I’ve garnered sufficient experience to answer that question, here’s my first review on a paid anime direct download site/FTP:
1) Background:
- Name: [Download] Anime FTP
- URL: http://danimeftp.com/
- Age: Approximately 2-3 Years
- When I Started Subscribing: Dec. 2005
- Still Subscribing: Yes
- Transparency: High (open forum available)
- Background Rating: 4.5/5
Background rating is based only on age of site/FTP and transparency level. Any site older than 1.5 years with a high transparency level (e.g. open forum available, reasonable negative posts not moderated away, etc.) merits a 4.5/5 rating. This rating exists because the older, more established and more transparent a site is, the less likely it is to encounter problems or close down in the near future.
2) Content:
- Type of Content: Unlicensed Anime, Manga, J-Dramas, K-Dramas, and OSTs
- Content File Formats: High Quality (HQ) file formats (e.g. .avi, .mp4, etc.) only
- Total Size of Content: ~4TB
- No. of Anime Series: ~400
- No. of Anime Movies: ~50
- No. of Drama and Live Action Series: 50+
- No. of Manga Titles: 80+
- No. of OSTs: 1000+
- Content Rating: 4.5/5
Content rating is based on the depth, diversity, and above all, total amount of content provided by the site/FTP, relative to similar sites out there. [Download] Anime is clearly one of the largest repositories of anime and drama, but its lack of licensed anime pulls its overall rating down (only slightly though, since you should be getting licensed anime from DVDs).
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