There's a multitude of IRC networks, the older 
and more popular being EFFNet, DALNet, and 
UnderNet.

To be brief, this is what is required:
1) An IRC Client like mIRC.  It will 
require some simple configuration before it is 
useable.

2) IRC server information.  mIRC already has 
multitude of servers from the various networks
preset upon installation.  In this case, you'd 
want to connect to a Newnet server.  I've found
that the most relaible are irc.bootsector.org and 
irc.aohell.org  If they are not listed, you can
edit the server list accordingly.

3) Chatroom (channel) name.  You can get a 
listing of all available rooms using the /list
command.  If you already know the room name, you 
can enter it immediately using the /join command.
In this case, you would /join #anime-cel

mIRC contains plenty of help files to figure out 
any other commands and basic IRC useage....

Generally, I'm in after work:  ~00:00 to ~03:00 
or ~05:00 EDT