MyAnimeList, often abbreviated as MAL, is an

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

and manga

social network A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for ...

ing and

social cataloging application A social cataloging application is a web application designed to help users to catalog things such as books, films, music albums, etc. owned or otherwise of interest to them. The phrase refers to two characteristics that generally arise from a mul ...

website run by volunteers. The site provides its users with a list-like system to organize and score anime and manga. It facilitates finding users who share similar tastes and provides a large database on anime and manga. As of 2008, the site claimed to have 4.4 million anime and 775,000 manga entries. In 2015, the site received 120 million visitors a month.

History

The site was launched in November 2004 by Garrett Gyssler and maintained solely by him until 2008. Originally, the website was called AnimeList, but Gyssler decided to incorporate the possessive "My" at the beginning, following the fashion of the most important social network in those years: Myspace. On August 4, 2008, CraveOnline, a men's entertainment and lifestyle site owned by AtomicOnline, purchased MyAnimeList for an undisclosed sum of money. In 2015,

DeNA Dena (in Luri and fa, ) is the name for a sub-range within the Zagros Mountains, Iran. Mount Dena, with length and average width, is situated on the boundary of the Isfahan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad and Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Prov ...

announced that it had purchased MyAnimeList from CraveOnline, and that they would partner with Anime Consortium Japan to stream anime on the service, via Daisuki. MyAnimeList announced in April 2016 that they had embed episodes from Crunchyroll and Hulu directly onto the site, with over 20,000 episodes being made available on the site. In January 2017, MyAnimeList rewrote an anti-

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

article written by a contributor on the site to be more pro-Nazi without notice to the contributor. On March 8, 2018, MyAnimeList opened an online manga store, in partnership with

Kodansha Comics Kodansha USA Publishing, LLC is a publishing company based in New York, USA, and a subsidiary of Japan's largest publishing company Kodansha. Established in July 2008, Kodansha USA publishes books relating to Japan, Japanese culture, and manga, ...

and

Viz Media VIZ Media LLC is an American manga publisher, anime distributor and entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1986 as VIZ LLC. In 2005, VIZ LLC and ShoPro Entertainment merged to form the current VIZ M ...

, allowing users to purchase manga digitally from the website. The service originally launched in Canada but later expanded to United States, the United Kingdom, and several other English-speaking countries. MAL became inaccessible for several days in May and June 2018 when site staff took it offline for maintenance, citing security and privacy concerns. The site operators also disabled the

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

for third-party apps, rendering them unusable. The moves were done in an effort to conform to the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

GDPR The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of EU privacy law and of human rights law, in parti ...

program. MyAnimeList was acquired by Media Do in January 2019; with their purchase, they announced their intention to focus on marketing and e-book sales to strengthen the site. On September 25, 2019,

HIDIVE Sentai Filmworks, LLC or just Sentai, is an American entertainment company owned by AMC Networks. Located in Houston, the company specializes in the dubbing and distribution of Japanese animation and Asian cinema. Its post-production arm is S ...

and MyAnimeList announced a partnership which would incorporate MyAnimeList's content ratings into HIDIVE's streaming platform, while exclusively providing MyAnimeList users with a curated selection of embedded HIDIVE content for free. On February 18, 2021, MyAnimeList announced Kodansha, Shueisha and Shogakukan have started investing in MAL. In October 2021, MyAnimeList collaborated with e-book publisher Media Do to release ''Fist of the North Star Manga Fragments: Dying Like a Man'', a series of

non-fungible token A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, that is recorded in a blockchain, and that is used to certify authenticity and ownership. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the b ...

(NFT) products based on the ''

Fist of the North Star is a Japanese manga series written by Buronson and illustrated by Tetsuo Hara. It was serialized in Shueisha's ''shōnen'' manga magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' for 245 issues published from 1983 to 1988 and initially collected in 27 ' ...

'' manga.

Features

MyAnimeList lists anime (Japanese animation), aeni (Korean animation), and donghua (Chinese animation). Similarly, MyAnimeList has information on manga (Japanese comics),

manhwa (; ) is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons. Outside Korea, the term usually refers to South Korean comics. is greatly influenced by Japanese Manga comics. Modern Manhwa has extended its reach to many other countries. ...

(Korean comics),

manhua () are Chinese-language comics produced in China and Taiwan. Whilst Chinese comics and narrated illustrations have existed in China in some shape or form throughout its imperial history, the term first appeared in 1904 in a comic titled ''Cu ...

(Chinese comics), as well as

dōjinshi , also romanized as ', is the Japanese term for self-published print works, such as magazines, manga, and novels. Part of a wider category of '' doujin'' (self-published) works, ''doujinshi'' are often derivative of existing works and created ...

(fan comics) and light novels. Users create lists that they strive to complete. Users can submit reviews, write recommendations,

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...

s, post in the site's forum, create clubs to unite with people of similar interests, and subscribe to the

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

news feed of anime and manga related news. MAL also starts challenges for users to complete their 'lists.'

Scoring

MyAnimeList allows users to score the anime and manga on their list on a scale from 1 to 10. These scores are then aggregated to give each show in the database a rank from best to worst. A show's rank is calculated twice a day using the following formula:

R = \frac

Where

v

stands for the total number of user votes,

S

for the average user score,

m

for the minimum number of votes required to get a calculated score (currently 50), and

C

for the average score across the entire anime/manga database. Only scores where a user has completed at least 20% of the anime/manga are calculated. In February 2020, MyAnimeList updated its scoring system to prevent vote brigading.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Anime and manga fandom Anime and manga websites Internet properties established in 2004 Online film databases Otaku Social cataloging applications

History

Features

Scoring

See also

References

External links