All Anime World deliberately did not offer any downloads of its own, which was likely one of the reasons the site never achieved the reach of many other anime portals. O-kun and I live in a country where copyright law is enforced relatively strictly. That’s why we decided from the very beginning not to offer any copyrighted content for download. Instead, we focused on information, reviews, image galleries, and useful resources, all without violating applicable laws.

From 2000 to around 2005, the legal selection of anime available in the Western market was still very limited. Many series and films were not licensed outside of Japan at all or were released only years later. As a result, numerous private fansub groups emerged that added English subtitles to anime and distributed them for free. Distribution initially took place primarily via IRC and FTP servers, and later increasingly via BitTorrent.

BitTorrent, which became established in the anime scene around 2003, worked differently from conventional downloads: While downloading, parts of the file that had already been received were simultaneously shared with other users. Many users were unaware that they were not only downloading but also distributing content at the same time—a circumstance that could have legal consequences in many countries.

In the early 2000s, the Streamload service also played a role. This was an online storage service that allowed users to upload large files and share them via download links. Since the service stored the content centrally and users simply downloaded the files, this method differed significantly from BitTorrent from a technical standpoint. In particular, downloaders did not have to redistribute the files to other users at the same time, which is why many found Streamload to be less complicated by comparison.

Today, the situation has changed fundamentally. Streaming services such as Crunchyroll, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and HIDIVE legally offer a large portion of the current anime lineup via subscription. As a result, the importance of traditional downloads has declined significantly.

Nevertheless, fansub groups and torrent websites still exist today. There are several reasons for this:

• Not all new releases are licensed outside of Japan.
• Older titles often disappear from streaming platforms and, in some cases, are neither legally available for streaming nor on DVD or Blu-ray.
• The content is spread across numerous streaming services. Anyone who wants to watch as many series as possible would have to subscribe to multiple services at the same time.
• Fansubs often appear much earlier than official translations or offer languages for which there is no official localization.
• Some fansub groups restore older or rare releases that have not been commercially available for years. While such projects remain in a legal gray area—or may even be illegal depending on the country—they are often viewed within the anime community as a contribution to the preservation of older works.

This text was translated by DeepL