Naruto-kun

I'm a big fan of anime. I don't always say that up front because there are so many misconceptions about anime. Anime is Japanese animation, a very wide genre. There are television shows and movies geared toward all age groups. Some shows are appropriate for little kids. Some shows aren't appropriate for anyone. Ick! Although most anime does not have ratings, it's pretty obvious which ones adhere to the standards of my church. I have several favorites, including Trigun, Rurouni Kenshin, Azumanga Daioh, and Escaflowne.

Naruto is right up there. You may have heard of the show. I first saw Naruto as a fan sub years before it was licensed for release in the states. The main character, Naruto (of course), is endearing, the plot is engaging, and the animation is high quality. The English language version is rearranged, badly dubbed, and they add the words "Believe it!" to everything Naruto says. Irritating. The worst part is that the English release is over 2 years behind the Japanese releases. So unless I want to wait 2 years for the English releases, I have to continue to download the fansubs.

So every Thursday night in Japan someone records the show off of Tokyo TV. The team translates the entire episode, adds the subtitles, and encodes the file into a compact, high-resolution format. They then make the file available for download through a format called bittorrent. In less than 20 hours. For free.

And that's how I get my weekly fix. Every Thursday night, my computer is busy downloading the next episode. Occasionally, the show takes a week off. Man, those weeks are hard. But you usually get a double-episode special the next week. Woo hoo!