Hello friends, welcome to AnimeBuff! If you want to join in discovering anime, learning about anime culture & keeping up with what’s-upcoming in the anime universe, subscribe below:
You can check out my other articles and follow me on Twitter too!
What’s Up in Anime?
Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see, something that could be done better or just to say Hi!👋 Email me at kiran@animebuff.co or leave a comment below.
Now to today’s piece 🤝
This is you.

This is you wanting to watch anime.

This is you watching anime.

Today it’s so simple, right? Before, it wasn’t like that.
I’m 10 years old. School has rotted my brain; I’ve been cooped up in a classroom all day with nothing to do with all my energy. After school, I walk over to the local daycare where I spend the next 2-3 hours finding a way to entertain myself.
The computers are not for surfing the web and most of the children there are pre-K (corralled in a separate part of the daycare), leaving a smattering of kids from 5-10 years old to hang out.
Unless you were looking to be best buddies with a first-grader, you were kicking it alone.
After multiple rounds of stale saltine crackers & that scrumptious watered-down lemonade1 at the local daycare, into the late evening my mom finally, finally picks me up.
On the drive home, I pass out2 and wake in the driveway. I dash out of the car, grab a snack, get a small lecture on doing my hw, wait for my mom to be distracted, and then hop on the computer.
Today’s the day! I diligently work through the mental list of my favorite shows3 & try the variations of search terms to tease out the one link that’ll lead me to those sweet, sweet 22 minutes of dopamine.
Naruto eng subbed online free. Naruto season 2 episode 1 english subbed online free stream. Nothing? Wait, is today Thursday or Friday? What day is the episode drop? Is it today? Is it at this time? Am I simply too early?
Sites open with the 20th Century Fox opening and then the Sign up Here! pops up or start playing with just enough content to convince me that this website has the new episode drop.
After signing up, I realize it’s just the recap that’s played at the end of each episode, hinting at the next episode that’s releasing the following week.
Of course, it doesn’t help that my 10-year-old brain has a much lower filter for internet garbage and a sincere desire to watch my tv show at any cost. I had yet to build the resistance that we adults possess to Internet bullshit. Spam site sign-ups galore occur.
Soon, finding reputable online sites is simply trial and error. Many times, I simply hit a dead end or get the rug pulled out from under me.
Ah! I’ve found it. Huh, it’s on this weird site Dailymotion. Ah, it’s all in Japanese with no subtitles, what am I supposed to do now?
Or Hey! This must be the one. Oh…it’s just last week’s episode but renumbered. (😐️ At least they got the click.)
After an hour and a half of keen digging, I resign myself to Miniclip games and play Commando 2.4
You see, I had no real concept of what I was doing; I was just trying to find the show that I wanted to watch; the show that wasn’t on cable tv channels that my brother had introduced me to.
And so, these notions of supporting the artist/studio or piracy hadn’t really crossed my mind. I just figured give it some time and the episode would pop up. The people on the other side just need some time to process the show and post the sub.
And so, finding that episode was often a game of just Guess-and-Check. To truly understand what it was like, imagine Guess-and-Check was how you went about life.
You wake up in the morning.
Yawning, you get out of bed, put on your slippers, walk over to the bathroom, lower the toilet seat and unleash that sweet brown gold into the depths of your ceramic throne.
Oh, sweet baby Jesus.
You had that spicy Chinese food from the questionable place that you know you shouldn’t have gotten takeout from but is the only place open late.
I knew it was spicy going in but how can it be spicy going out? as you reach for the toilet paper.
Your fingers hit a box where your roll once was. There, where your toilet roll was, is a box.
On it, is a label that says, “Guess & Check!” Huh? You open it and there’s no toilet paper inside but a note, Dropping next week! LOL.
“Goddamn it, I’m just trying to take a shit!” you shout to the ceiling, shaking your fist at the otherworldly powers that have taken your toilet paper.
Such is the experience of searching anime when I was 10.
Truth be told, I imagine that there were some sites around that I could have paid to get easy access to the shows. After all, Crunchyroll launched in 2006, more than 7 years earlier.
But you forget that I was 10 years old. A broke 10-year-old. And so, in an Asian household, this was my experience of asking for money for an online subscription for watching my shows.
Me: “Hey Dad.”
Dad: “Hey son.”
Me: “....”
Dad: “What is it?”
Me: “I’m going to go study now.”
Dad: “Good son.”
Yeah, that shit wasn’t gonna fly. In fact, it didn’t even take off 😆. Asking for money to subscribe to a streaming platform wasn’t gonna work (even more so since we had cable and streaming platforms were incredibly shady back then).
So the next time that you are flipping through your endless catalog of every variety of anime on your phone while you sit on your ivory ceramic throne relieving yourself, appreciate the days in anime when finding anime was not so easy.
When it involved hours of trying different web searches, signing up to spammy sites, and clicking on falsely titled episodes only to be left with the stain of disappointment.
- Kiran
If you like this, check out Courtney’s newsletter. A great take on anime.
If you liked this piece, make sure to subscribe by adding your email below!
Kiran’s Gems 💎
Where to Watch
Demon Slayer
Stream: Netflix (2 Seasons), Crunchyroll(2 Seasons), Hulu (1 Season)
Fullmetal Alchemist
(N/A), however Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is on Crunchyroll.
Naruto
Netflix (5 Seasons), Amazon Prime Video (5 Seasons), Crunchyroll (5 Seasons)