Remember the years of running home from school to get to the T.V. at 4 o’clock so you could watch Toonami—sating your addiction to DBZ, YuYu Hakusho, .hack// or Tenchi Muyo? Maybe you skipped the afternoon dose and went to sleep early—then woke up at 1 a.m. to watch Adult Swim, viewing hours on end of Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Outlaw Star and InuYasha.

Sadly, cable hasn’t been keeping too well with the anime—Toonami is long gone, Adult Swim has been taken over by Family Guy and Metalocalypse, and it’s getting harder and harder to find a reliable source for anime. With the transition to digital cable, things haven’t gotten any easier, and most people these days use satellite or some other company which offers hundreds of channels. Who has time to skim 900 channels to find that one channel which airs reruns of Sailor Moon at midnight on the second Tuesday of each month? Not me, that’s for sure.

Luckily, Comcast has come to the rescue! Rising in popularity, Comcast offers a few hundred channels, both in basic and HD; with a subscription, you get even more fantastic features. The saviour for us anime fanatics is Comcast On Demand. With On Demand, there are many trailers, movies, dramas, and cartoons offered for free viewing. Those with even the most basic subscription get many fantastic anime sources for free!

On the main menu, there is a section called Cutting Edge. Here, you can find Adult Swim, Anime Selects, Funimation Anime, and Anime Network, all of which host a variety of series from their source producers.

Adult Swim, backed by the subsidy of the same name under Cartoon Network, is home to shows such as Ghost In the Shell and Death Note.

Anime Network, back by AD Vision, offers Azumanga Daioh, and an ever changing selection ranging from Get Backers and Full Metal Panic to Wedding Peach.

Anime Selects, backed primarily by AnimeTV, a subsidy of Bang Zoom! Entertainment, features the widest variety of series including Ouran Host Club, Aquarion, xxx Holic, Gundam Seed, and GTO—and that isn’t even a fifth of their list.

Funimation Anime is the newest addition to the family; being backed by Funimation, it carries titles from a vast range of producers, including ADV and Bandai. Titles include Devil May Cry, D. Gray-man, Case Closed, Jyu-Oh-Sei, and many more. The catch of having such a variety of titles is that, for now at least, you can only get the first episode of most series for free. After that, its $0.99 per episode—but this is a worthwhile price for those who prefer their 48” HDTV over YouTube.

There are other sources for anime hidden among the many tabs of Comcast On Demand. The Indepent Film Channel hosts an IFC tab under Cutting Edge, and offers an Anime HD channel; additionally, the Kids section on the main page has about 20 sub-sections you can skim through to find Code Lyoko, X-Men, Dragonball, Gundam spinoffs, and other go-between American cartoons and anime.

Each section tends to update weekly, so watch out—you wouldn’t want to watch everything in one night and have to re-watch the pilot for Ghost in the Shell every night for a week until they update. Check back often, and don’t forget to explore your On Demand options to find those hidden jewels!