But times changed. Video libraries started booming, and I realized I could score entire seasons of Naruto for pennies. Majestic Plaza was filled with pirated copies of every TV show and movie known to man. But their anime collection was pitiful.
By the time Zai Plaza unseated Majestic Plaza as the home of pirated entertainment, things had changed again. Data rates had grown so friendly that we could find and download anime from the internet. We had no use for video libraries.
Also, the anime community in Uganda was saturated with anime. All you had to do was attend any one of the many anime-themed gatherings that would happen around town every few weeks and you would depart with a hard drive filled to the brim with anime. We are a generous lot.
We can talk for hours about the nerdy things we love. More importantly, we want you to share in our excitement, which is why any anime fan you contact today won’t hesitate to gift you with their anime collection.
I should point out that, despite the fervent interest in anime, Uganda has done nothing to support the industry. This is because we watch most of our anime for free, or at least we used to. While the internet is filled with several avenues that you can use to access anime, for the longest time, most of us relied solely on KissAnime.
However, various governments have gone to great lengths to eliminate platforms that share pirated content. Pirate Bay was among the first giants to fall a few years ago. Now KissAnime has joined it in the grave. Most of us were shocked to learn that Kissanime.ru was gone. Copyright owners forced the platform’s administrators to delete all their data.
I was in the middle of an episode of Run with the Wind when this happened. But is KissAnime the only website that allows you to stream anime for free? No. But the internet is a minefield, and finding trustworthy sources of free entertainment that won’t assault your computing device with malware is no easy task.
To be fair, Uganda has come quite far in the last few years. We now have the means to stream anime legally. But the transition won’t be easy. We have spent far too many years consuming the medium for free.
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