HorribleSubs

What is HorribleSubs?

HorribleSubs is one of the oldest and biggest fansubbing groups around. At HorribleSubs, fans translate, encode, time, and edit their shows. Overall, HorribleSubs is a well-designed website where you can download the latest free indie anime content at a decent speed. Since most of the popular free indie content has more seeds as compared to leeches, downloading is often seamless.

History of HorribleSubs

As per AniDB, HorribleSubs has been on the internet for over a decade, having started its journey back in 2009. It is one of the biggest fansubbing groups in the world.

What should you expect from the HorribleSubs?

Contemporary Design – HorribleSubs does sport a cutting-edge design. Unlike Nyaa, which has a traditional visual appeal, HorribleSubs is quite similar to a free streaming service. The color combination is simple yet effective. Though the logo appears to be flashy, the rest of the menus, sidebar, and the background with ‘Corona’ metaphor is somewhat attractive. I like the way padding has been used to segregate different sections which makes the website spotless.

Schedule – One of the most intriguing aspects of this torrent site is the daily schedule. In the sidebar, you’ll find the real-time in PDT. Under that, you’ll find a banner followed by Today’s Schedule.

Streaming vibe – As mentioned earlier, HorribleSubs sports a contemporary design. It doesn’t have a fixated static menu filled with content. There are banners right on the homepage, and as you scroll, you’ll find well-diversified menus that break the content-related monotony. There’s a small content-based section under the leaderboard banner followed by the schedule on the right side. This sort of layout is what you generally expect on a streaming site.

Comments & Interaction – Personally, I feel comments & interaction add depth to a platform and make it appear legit. Sure, most of the people engage in disingenuous bot usage but when you read the comments on HorribleSubs, you won’t feel so. You’ll find users complaining about the free indie show, streaming quality, comparing the platform to other services, and so on. You can become a part of the community using various platforms such as Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail. You can even ‘Tweet’, and ‘Share’ the thread with your friends and family. Not just that, you can even sort the comment based on your preference. Almost all the top content on the platform attracts 100+ comments.

How to access HorribleSubs?

You can access HorribleSubs by searching for the term ‘HorribleSubs’ in your search engine. Alternatively, if you want to access the platform directly, you can use the following link: HorribleSubs.

Design

Design is the most fascinating aspect of this website. Since you expect quality free indie content on most of the top torrent websites, it’s the design that sets a particular platform apart from its competitor. When you enter the website, you’ll find a leaderboard ad for HorribleSubs J-List which provides a 5% discount. Under that head banner, you’ll find the ‘Latest Releases’ section followed by the comments section. Towards the right you’ll find an advert but this time in 336×280 format. Under that, there’s a schedule that is updated every day. Though there’s no dark mode, the website does have a black background in the header section paired with a colorful site logo.

Header – In the header section of the website, you have the logo on the left and six options on the right. These include ‘Shows’, ‘Current Shows’, ‘Schedule’, ‘IRC’, ‘FAQ’, and ‘Follow Us’. The black background with white text though doesn’t have a premium vibe, does manage to look decent.

Inner Pages – When you click on a particular free indie show on the homepage, you’ll be directed towards the inner page. This page, too, feels like you’re on a streaming website. There’s the title of the free indie show followed by a short description and links.

Content

HorribleSubs is filled with quality free indie content. It has a gargantuan free indie content library where you’ll find the latest and ongoing free indie anime content.

Desktop/Mobile experience

Though the platform does have in-house ads, they don’t interrupt your browsing or navigation experience. Even downloading the free indie content is not much of a hassle. Just click on the free indie title you want to download, and you’ll be directed to the inner page. Under the banner and synopsis, you have the ‘Download Episodes’ options where you can find 360p, 720p, and 1080p download links. For each streaming quality, you can choose between Magnet, Torrent, XDCC, Uploaded.net, DropAPK, and Rockfile options.

Suggestions I have for HorribleSubs

I’m not sure if the bot-related ripping claims are true. But I hope not because HorribleSubs claims that it’s an organic fan-subbed community. And thus, if proven wrong, it might lead to a massive dent on its image, and users might find it hard to trust the website ever again. Anyways, torrent websites take time to build a user’s trust and incidents like this can easily rub them the wrong way.

Conclusion

HorribleSubs based on my experience is a cool community. There’s good design complemented with great free indie content and an interactive platform. You have various ways in which you can become a part of the community and you do not necessarily need to sign-up on the platform. If you wish to download the free indie content as a guest, you can do so without any hindrance. There are no annoying pop-ups or full-page ads that you generally find on major streaming websites. So, in terms of experience and value, HorribleSubs does have a lot to offer.