Have you guys heard that My Anime List has had a few issues lately. They are in fact continuing to have a few issues… It’s a scoop, from me to you!
I don’t in fact need that much help remembering if I’ve seen a show or not. I guess I’m not yet to the point where I’ve seen so many I could conceivably rewatch one without noticing. However, I do like listing things and I really enjoyed looking up other people’s lists and ranks. It a great and very quick way to get an idea of a person’s preferences. Since that particular feature has been unavailable for some time, it’s forced me to find an alternative that would allow me to share my list with others easily without having to reenter all my MAL list.
I’m thinking that a few of you may be going through the same thing right now so I’m here to share with you my experience with AniList.
The first thing I did was look up options that would easily let me import my MAL profile and whittled them down to those that seemed the most popular (since these types of platforms are really more fun with more users). I was left with the following options:
To be honest form there I chose purely on looks. I liked the flexibility of AniList’s layout. The soft colours and clean layout appealed to me. I didn’t try out any of the other platforms (for now) so I can’t say much about them. I’ve added the links so you can check out for yourself what you like most. I have to admit Kitsu and Notify.moe are very intriguing too.
For my part, I am really enjoying AniList. Transferring my MAL info was a breeze. I simply exported my list from MAL’s website, extracted the zipped file ad uploaded that directly to AniList. When you create your profile, there’s a handy dandy little page that let’s you just drag and drop the file and everything is ported over including ratings. It took a few minutes at most.
As I mentioned, AniList does offer a bit more flexibility which is nice. You can play with themes and colours and have several different ways to display your list, there are also many filers for those with impressive watch. I’m superficial so this is a plus as far as I’m concerned. What’s more though is that you have several options (which you can change at any time) on how the information in your list is presented.
As I mentioned, AniList does offer a bit more flexibility which is nice. You can play with themes and colours and have several different ways to display your list, there are also many filers for those with impressive watch. I’m superficial so this is a plus as far as I’m concerned. What’s more though is that you have several options (which you can change at any time) on how the information in your list is presented.
What I mean is that you can choose for instance if you want the original Japanese names of shows, the English titles or both. I use English titles on this blog because I thought it would be easier to know what shows I’m talking about for English speakers who watch on Crunchyroll like me. So sometimes I get confused when someone shoots out the original title of one of my favorite series. Having the option to have both is useful.
You can also personalize your ratings system. I was often frustrated with MAL’s 1 to 10 scale since I found that way too many shows fell into the 7 category and they really weren’t equivalent. With AniList you can keep that scale if it works for you, keep the scale but add the possibility of .5 marks, switch to a % scale, a 5 star system or simplify the whole thing with a 3 simley system. Additionally, you can subdivide ratings by adding specific categories such as characters, story, visual, audio, enjoyment, or whatever you want to add in…
If you’re one of those folks that loves going into detail, it’s great. So far I really just imported my MAL list so all my ratings are flat 1 to 10 scores but I’m looking forward to playing with it more, since you can then filter using all these variables.
Of course you know me. The real fun here is the stats. Like MAL, AniList allows me to see how much of my life I’ve wasted with a compiled time total of anime watched:
I can still identify favorites (I know …I know):
But this is the real fun stuff…
First, I can see my watching profile in history. As you can tell I really concentrated my watching habits on anime that came out in 2016. However, I seem to have really enjoyed the two shows from 1988 and 2003 I saw as those are big rating years! On the other hand, I am not a fan of 2007 anime… All things considered, when you factoring the large amount of 2016 shows I’ve watched, it’s pretty impressive that the score remained that high.
This may be my favorite. The genres and tags section. This will show you how well you know yourself. Unsurprisingly, As far as times watched goes, I concentrate on shows which are considered Comedy, with a steep drop off at action, then another step down for Drama. Adventure and Fantasy rounding off the top five.
At the very bottom we have Horror (I told you I don’t know many horror animes…), surprisingly Magical Girl (I haven’t put Sailor Moon in my list yet…), Music, Mecha and Ecchi.
However if we look by score, it seems I most consistently enjoy Thrillers, Horror and Magical girl shows. With Supernatural and Fantasy close in tow. And rather dislike Music, Slice of Life (???), Mecha, Romance (I knew it) and Ecchi. Slice of Life is a real surprise to me as many of my favorites fall into the category, but I guess it’s so wide that it catches a few less enjoyable titles as well. I’m also surprised by how low Comedy and Psychological are. I went to see the details and it seems that “comedy” also includes the romantic comedies so that mystery is solved…
As for the Tags – I watch Shonen, School amines with male protagonists who have super powers and/or magic and in a pinch I’ll also watch female protagonists. I stay away from police, Aliens, Work, Idols and memory manipulation. This has nothing to do with anime it’s just a smart rule to live by.
This said, I love Anti-heroes, delinquents, gangs in anachronological order and alternate universes. Which makes sense. But dislike Post apocalyptic (really?), reverse harems (REALLY?) with idols, love triangles and of course traditional harems…
That very low score for the post apocalyptic tag got me curious so I had to investigate further. From the animes in my list, it’s associated with the Evangelion franchise, one movie I disliked and rated much lower than the rest, AoT which I liked, Shelter which I loved, Akira and Yuki Yuna both of which I enjoyed a lot and Aachi wa Ssipak. This is what’s bringing the score down drastically.
You can get similar stats on the voice actors that feature most frequently in animes and those that are in the anime’s your rate the highest. Staff members, a stat I found particularly interesting since we rarely hear about them yet they can make a drastic difference. Makoto Yoshimori has the same tastes as me since he provides music for so many of my favorite shows. I’ve been admiring Takahiro Kishida designs for some time. Apparently Masafuimi Mima is my favorite sound designer…
Anyways, I’ll spare you the rest. Point is that I found all these random little facts fascinating. I’m going to try to find some time to populate my library a lot more and put in better details, so I can get more significant results out of these stats. Maybe we can compare again in a while and see if my tastes have changed!
Do you guys have an AniList? Can I stalk it?
