Just a quick update for those of you watching Chrno Crusade. Episode 22 is out from Animeforever either in torrent form or from their irc channel, #Animeforever@irc.rizon.net. The bad news is that episode 23 will not be out until June 2, that and this episode is extremely sad. Go and get it and remember to leave your bittorrent windows open for as long as possible so you are not an evil leech. :)

For those of you sticking with the Inuyasha saga (anything over 150 episodes deserves to be called a saga), there are currently three places to find new episodes.

1. Anime-Kraze is still subbing it but they are pretty far behind. They just released the special episode 147-148. They also have torrents for older episodes if you need to catch up. Hit their bittorrent tracker page for the torrents or visit their irc channel at #Anime-Kraze@irc.rizon.net.
2. The next place is SaiyaMan’s bittorent page. The most recent episode they have subbed is episode 146, but they also have torrents for episodes back to 128.
3. A place I just found this week, InuYasha4Ever. They are supposed to have an irc channel as well as the bittorrents, but I didn’t see it when I looked. Anyway, this group is the furthest ahead because they just released episode 150. EDIT: Don’t believe the tracker when it says zero seeds and zero peers, it’s wrong.

I prefer Anime-Kraze’s subs but the other two are not too bad, especially if you want the newest episodes right now.

SPOILER WARNING (don’t read if you don’t want to know): For those of you happy that Kikyo fell off a cliff into molten lava, watch out, you’re not going to like where episode 150 is going…

Edit 2: Updated Animeforever’s links to point to the new site at Animeforever.org.

Since I haven’t posted anything in a while, this will be a big conglomeration of all the things I’ve been meaning to post but haven’t.

First up–job hunting. After the phone interview from Hades, I was invited to an onsite interview. The three hour interview actually turned out to be SIX technical interviews with six different people. Any of you who have experienced technical interviews know how much this sucked. Anyway, I thought I did pretty well and the interviewers seemed interested. However, about a week later I got the “you’re so talented, you’re going to have a great career–just not with us” email. Then NI called and wanted to have me in for another interview since they are hiring again. Today is my interview, from 3 to 5, so I’m just wasting time now so I don’t start to get nervous. Which is why my blog is miraculously getting updated today. :)

Second–the new Zelda. Nintendo showed some video from the new Zelda game for the GameCube at E3 and it looked AWESOME! I liked the cartoony look of Windwaker, especially since the face and eyes were so expressive, but the new game has a more realistic feel. Not to mention, Link looks hot in the new game. ;) (see what I mean) If you haven’t already, check the screenshots and the video from Nintendo’s site. I don’t think a release date has been set yet, but it should be out sometime next year.

Third–Fullmetal Alchemist has been licensed by FUNimation. This is good news and bad news. The bad news is that all the fansub sites have stopped subbing the show and taken down the torrents. The latest episode I have seen subbed is 31. You can still find alternative torrents by doing a search at DownloadAnime. The other bad news is that when it is finally released here in the US, it will be too expensive for me to buy. However, the good news is that FUNimation is planning to air the show on Cartoon Network starting in October. For those of you that don’t know what Fullmetal Alchemist is, a trailer is available at the official FUNimation site, FullmetalAlchemist.com. This is one of my favorite anime shows and well worth checking out.

Fourth and finally–I have tomatoes! Both of my plants are starting to grow tomatoes. Mr. Stripey is another story… I’m not sure why tomatoes are already growing seeing how the plant is still about six inches tall, but oh well, the sooner the better. The tomatoes are still very small, the biggest is the size of a large marble, but it’s progress and at least the plants are not dead.

Once again I am home safely with Dustin. The visit with my family was nice, but I am very, very happy to be back into the world of fast internet connections. To all of you out there that are still using dialup, you have my sympathy. I almost think the week I spent with my Dad with no internet was better than the pain of having internet that was too slow to use. Maybe I’m just not a patient enough person or maybe I’m just spoiled into thinking when I click on a page, it should load sometime this century.

Anyhow, enough ranting. The real reason I’m so happy to be back to broadband is that I can once again get up to date with the anime I missed. I am not really one of those strangely obsessed, scary, anime-is-my-life fans, but I do have a couple of shows that I like. Seeing as how I am still able to communicate with the outside world, I feel that it is my duty to enlighten you to some of the great anime showing in Japan right now.

While I don’t really have a favorite anime, there are three currently airing in Japan that I’ve been sucked into. There are, of course, many more than three actually showing but these are the ones that caught my eye. I could give you a summary of the plot, but I’ve decided I’m just too darn lazy to do it. So you can do what I do when I want to know about a new anime. Go to http://www.animenfo.com/ type the name in the handy dandy search box and voila! information. If that anime hasn’t been licensed in the U.S., it’ll even tell you some of the groups fansubbing it (more on that later). Finally, what you have all been waiting for–the list: Chrno Crusade, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Inuyasha. If any of you happened to watch Inuyasha on Cartoon Network, purge that horrible dub from your mind and download it in the original Japanese.

If you don’t speak Japanese, don’t worry. There are hundreds of groups out there that will get the anime from Japan and subtitle it so all of us English speakers can understand it. Most, if not all, do it for free. Very nice of them, huh? The following are my current three favorite fansub groups:

http://www.animeforever.org/ (Chrno Crusade, beginning of Fullmetal Alchemist)
http://www.anime-kraze.net/ (Chrno Crusade, Scrapped Princess, Last Exile, Inuyasha)
http://a.scarywater.net/sonchou/ (later episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist)

Alright, now that you know where to begin, you need to know how to actually get the anime. The easiest way is to use bittorrent. My favorite bittorent client is TorrentStorm (http://www.torrentstorm.com/). Just look around on the sites above until you find the releases section and click the bittorent links. Easy as pie. The other way, and generally faster way, especially for newer anime, is to download it from IRC. If you have no idea what IRC is, then you probably want to stick with bittorent, at least in the beginning. For those who know what it is, the three sites above all have channels on irc.rizon.net and most have really fast xdcc bots.

On a totally unrelated note, Dustin and I have been playing a new computer game called Sacred. Dustin has written up a little review and it’s well worth your time to go read it:

Every Bug is Sacred

Edit: Updated Animeforever’s links to point to the new site at Animeforever.org.