I thought I'd convert a subtitled anime scene into an animated .gif and post it, but when I tried converting it, not only did the quality go WAAAAAAY down, but the file size went WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY up. (from 5mb all the way up to 188mb)

I tried it with both online-convert.com and zamzar.com. Anybody know a better way?

That's the way gifs typically are from my experience. I used iWisoft Free Video Converter to make a gif I posted on here before. It's not the most reliable software, but it gives you some control over the quality and size of the gif. Unfortunately, the only way to decrease file size is to make the gif smaller and lower quality.

That about sums it up, yeah. As far as I'm aware, GIFs are just large in file size. This is why I don't mess with them more; I've yet to find a way to make them compact and clear.