Definitely one of the more self-explanatory URLs around. This anime direct download site has been fast for me. Found it thanks to a comment made on an earlier post.

While it doesn’t automatically update based on the latest episodes released on BT, there’s still a lot of variety and relatively frequent updates to keep you busy.

1. anime2leech.com

• Speed: Quite Fast
• Content: 11 ongoing (e.g. Kaze no Stigma, Zombie Loan, etc.) and 33 completed anime series (e.g. 12 Kingdoms, Saiyuki, School Rumble), plus 4 OVAs (e.g. Initial D, Alien 9, etc.) and 7+ movies (Beyond the Clouds, Toki wa Kakeru Shoujo, etc.).
• Update Frequency: Quite Frequent
• Video Format: High quality file formats, e.g. .avi, .mkv, etc.
• Note: Free registration required, but forum posting is not mandatory to access downloads.

An admin from AkiraBlaid recently emailed me on some of the changes the site has gone through since last year. After checking the site out, I had to agree that there were some important changes since my last review, including:

• Episodes are no longer compressed into .zip files
• Download speeds seem markedly higher than before
• A few more anime series than before

However, episodes are still re-encoded to achieve smaller file sizes - which is a good thing if you prefer getting your anime dose quicker and don’t mind the minor quality loss.

1. AkiraBlaid

• Speed: Quite Fast
• Content: 4 ongoing (e.g. Naruto, Bleach, etc.) and 9 completed anime series (e.g. Beck, Shamanic Princess, Death Note), plus 2 movies (Ninja Scroll and Full Metal Alchemist). Also has a 8 manga series (e.g. Trigun, Ichigo 100%, etc.) and couple of anime OSTs.
• Update Frequency: Average
• Video Format: .avi, .mp4 [MQ to HQ (not the usual HQ due to slight quality loss from reencoding)]
• Note: Free registration required, but forum posting is not mandatory to access downloads. Optional pay-for premium media available.

I’ve been trying to clean up the archives, looking for dead sites and preparing to update the site lists. But in the mean time, here’s another anime DDL site.

To be honest, I don’t particularly like Anime Realm’s low (50KB/s) speed cap considering the range of uncapped (or with higher caps) anime direct download sites you can access, but if that is in the best interest of its community, then there’s no harm I guess.

1) Anime Realm

• Speed: Below Average to Average (there is a speed cap of 50 KB/s, as explained in their forums)
• Content: 35 completed (e.g. Genshiken, School Rumble, FMP, etc.) and 10 ongoing (e.g. Devil May Cry, Claymore, Kenichi, etc.) anime series.
• Update Frequency: Average
• Video Format: .avi (HQ), .rm (LQ to MQ), .rmvb (LQ to MQ)
• Note: Free registration required, but forum posting is not required. Max. of 2 simultaneous connections.

This is another anime direct download site that I would put on my favourites list. Frequent and timely updates for ongoing series, plus pretty fast download speeds always make my day.

Unlike most sites that host their own anime, Anime Sharing uses its forum as its download “platform” (normally seen for sites that host anime on free file hosts like Megaupload), but that’s just my pointless little observation.

1) Anime Sharing

• Speed: Quite Fast
• Content: Most recent episodes from most ongoing series, 22 completed series (e.g. Chobits, Basilisk, GunGrave, etc.), and 13 movies (e.g. Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo, Ninja Scroll, etc.)
• Update Frequency: Frequent
• Video Format: High Quality (HQ) file formats, e.g. .avi, .mkv
• Note: Hassle-free for new episodes of ongoing series. But free registraton required to access completed anime series (forum posting is not necessary).

This site is pretty bare, plus the admin recently announced that future site updates shouldn’t be expected. But it does still host a few episodes from Kekkaishi and Freedom.

In total, there are actually less than 10 eps on the site, but if you happen to need a few missing episodes here and there, an extra source never hurts.

1) kINTO’s DDL

• Speed: Above Average
• Content: Some episodes from Kekkaishi and Freedom.
• Update Frequency: Low
• Video Format: High Quality (HQ) file formats, e.g. .avi, .mp4
• Note: Hassle-free, i.e. no registration or forum posting required to download episodes.

This site should be pretty self-explanatory from its name. Pity it’s only filled with Seirei no Moribito at the moment.

So, if you happen to want to catch up with that series, well…

1) Anime-Kraze DDL

• Speed: Above Average
• Content: Only Seirei no Moribito (14 episodes) at the moment.
• Update Frequency: Unknown
• Video Format: .mkv (HQ)
• Note: Hassle-free, i.e. registration or forum posting not required to access downloads. No download accelerators allowed.

Sorry for yet another season of sporadic posting (not too bad, only two months this time :))

Anyway, here’s another good distro site for you to download the latest anime episodes (something like Anikei or Animorc). I’ve been using ADC for a while (the free section of course), and they often seem to get the latest eps up soon after they are released. Speeds are pretty good too.

1) Anime Download Center

• Speed: Above Average to Quite Fast
• Content: Anime episodes released in the current month, from series such as Mushi-Uta, Kaze no Stigma, Lovely Complex, etc.
• Update Frequency: Very Frequent
• Video Format: HQ file formats, e.g. .avi (HQ), .mp4 (HQ)
• Note: Hassle-free, i.e. no registration or forum posting required to access free downloads. But there is an optional paid section.

Well, that’s one (relatively) long title, so I hope it makes sense. Just to make sure I don’t get flamed in the comments or via email, here’s the criteria I used to pick the sites in this list:

• I use them almost everyday. Yeah, me/mua/watashi, so this list is certainly going to involve some degree of subjectivity, even if I always try to judge objectively!
• They are fast. I get a minimum of 200 KB/s speeds, and an average of 400 KB/s on these sites, even during rush hours. Some of these sites can push episodes to me at above 1 MB/s, even if they are US servers serving to poor little me in London. These speeds are based on a approximately 15-20 mbit (edu) connection.
• They update frequently with the latest episodes, hence the distro classification.
• They are mostly hassle-free, with free registration being the biggest hassle involved.

And in no particular order, the sites are:

• Anikei.com: As reviewed earlier, this site is fast (on both free servers, and the donor server too BTW), and I can normally grab a recently released episode from this site not very long (tens of minutes to a couple of hours) after its release. I tend to grab manga from Anikei as well.
• Animorc.net: The same thing here. I tend to get even faster speeds here compared to Anikei, but that’s probably because Animorc caps the no. of download slots available (still more than enough slots though). Again, the latest episodes are available very quickly, and for me, if I can’t find something on Anikei yet, it tends to be available on Animorc already, and vice versa.
• Rorikonjyanai/404 Not Found: I definitely get the fastest speeds from this site (up to 1.7 MB/sec so far on DDL3), but while they host more anime compared to either of the sites above, update frequency is lower. So, if there’s a recent series I happened to skip, this tends to be the first place I go to to get myself updated.
• fourzerofour: Not only does fourzerofour.us give me great speeds, the latest episodes are also available very quickly after release (e.g. I got Ikkitousen Dragon Destiny Ep. 10 here before it was available from the rest of the sites above). It’s a bit of pain that download accelerators are not officially supported, but I haven’t found it to be an issue so far.

Of course, there are times when some newly-released episodes from a particular series are not available on these sites even after 24 hours, e.g. I still can’t find Manabi Straight Episode 10 on any of these sites yet, but such cases tend to be pretty rare, and you can always torrent or subscribe to a paid server like [Download] Anime if you really need your anime fix ASAP.

Again, this list is just my list. What about you guys? Which anime direct download sites do you frequent for the latest anime episodes?