MyAnimeList, often abbreviated as MAL, is an

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

and

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

social network A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of Dyad (sociology), dyadic ties, and other Social relation, social interactions between actors. The social network per ...

ing and

social cataloging application Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives fro ...

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 March 2024, the site reported having approximately 26,417 anime and 68,308 manga entries. In 2015, the site received 120 million visitors per 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 Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

. On August 4, 2008,

CraveOnline Mandatory (formerly CraveOnline Media) is a lifestyle website based in Los Angeles with sales offices in New York City, Chicago and San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial D ...

, a men's entertainment and lifestyle site owned by AtomicOnline, purchased MyAnimeList for an undisclosed sum of money. In 2015,

DeNA is a Japanese provider of mobile portal and e-commerce websites headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It owns the Mobage cell phone platform and also operates other services, including the e-commerce website DeNA Shopping (formerly: Bidders). H ...

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 embedded episodes from

Crunchyroll Crunchyroll is an American Video on demand#Subscription models, subscription video on-demand Over-the-top media service, over-the-top Streaming media, streaming service owned by Sony, Sony Group Corporation. The service primarily distributes fi ...

and

Hulu Hulu (, ) is an American Subscription business model, subscription streaming media service owned by Disney Streaming, a subsidiary of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. It was launched on October 29, 2007, initially as ...

directly onto the site, with over 20,000 episodes being made available on the site. 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, US, and a subsidiary of Japan's largest publishing company Kodansha. Established in July 1st 2008, Kodansha USA publishes books relating to Japan, Japanese culture, and man ...

and

Viz Media Viz Media, LLC is an American entertainment company headquartered in San Francisco, California, focused on publishing manga, and distribution and licensing Japanese anime, films, and television series. The company was founded in 1986 as Viz, ...

, 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 connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

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 union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

GDPR The General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679), abbreviated GDPR, is a European Union regulation on information privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR is an important component of ...

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 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 it had conducted a third-party allotment of , with

Kodansha is a Japanese privately held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha publishes manga magazines which include ''Nakayoshi'', ''Morning (magazine), Morning'', ''Afternoon (magazine), Afternoon'', ''Evening (magazine), Eveni ...

Shueisha is a Japanese publishing company headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Shueisha is the largest publishing company in Japan. It was established in 1925 as the entertainment-related publishing division of Japanese publisher Shogakukan. The ...

, and

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of comics, magazines, light novels, dictionaries, literature, non-fiction, home media, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but ...

, and parent company Media Do collectively investing . On May 31, 2021, it was revealed that Akatsuki, The Anime Times Company, DMM.com, and

Kadokawa Corporation , formerly is a Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate based in Fujimi, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Created as a result of the merger of the original Kadokawa Corporation and Dwango (company), Dwango Co., Ltd. on October 1, 2014, the company has ...

had invested during its initial third-party allotment. On July 26, 2021, it was revealed that

Bushiroad is a Japanese entertainment company, producer of collectible card games and trading cards, and publisher of mobile apps and games, which was founded in 2007 by Takaaki Kidani and is headquartered in Tokyo. Bushiroad created and owns various med ...

Dentsu , simply known as , stylized as dentsu, is a Japanese international advertising and public relations joint stock company headquartered in Tokyo. Dentsu is the largest advertising agency in Japan and the fifth largest advertising agency network in ...

, and other companies had invested , with the total third-party allotment raising to . In October 2021, MyAnimeList collaborated with e-book publisher and parent company 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 is recorded on a blockchain and is used to certify ownership and authenticity. It cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided. The ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchai ...

(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 manga magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' for 245 issues published from 1983 to 1988 and initially collected in 27 volumes ...

'' manga. On May 10, 2023, MyAnimeList went under an emergency maintenance after being hacked with the titles of all anime being replaced with a reference to ''

Serial Experiments Lain ''Serial Experiments Lain'' is a Japanese anime television series created and co-produced by Yasuyuki Ueda, written by Chiaki J. Konaka and directed by Ryūtarō Nakamura. Animated by Triangle Staff and featuring original character desi ...

''. On May 13, the website resumed online activity after restoring its databases. Personal information and data of users was not breached during the hack, however any list updates, forum posts, edits, etc. made ~8.5 hours before the incident would have to be remade. In April 2025, Gaudiy, a Tokyo-based company that specializes in

Web3 Web3 (also known as Web 3.0) is an idea for a new iteration of the World Wide Web which incorporates concepts such as decentralization, blockchain technologies, and token-based economics. This is distinct from Tim Berners-Lee's concept of th ...

and AI technology, acquired Media Do's ownership stake in MAL. On May 7, 2025, Gaudiy proceeded to buy out the remaining shareholders and in turn has become the sole owner of MAL.

Features

MyAnimeList only lists

, aeni, donghua as well as

manhwa Manhwa () is the general Korean term for comics and print cartoons. Outside Korea, the term usually refers to Korean comics. Modern Manhwa has extended its reach to many other countries. These comics have branched outside of Korea by acce ...

manhua () are Chinese-language comics produced in Greater China. Chinese comics and narrated illustrations have existed in China throughout its history. They are usually graphic and can be written for a myriad of genres, including romance, fanta ...

doujinshi , 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 b ...

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

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

s, produce interest stacks, 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 ...

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

Profile

MyAnimelist provides users the ability to customize their personal profiles and lists. Accessible through the dropdown menu under the users profile name, clicking "Profile" and under "Profile settings" and "List style design" users can first change their list style. The provided options are Community designs, and Modern designs. After making a selection, the user is brought to an edit screen in which they can freely customize their list views including cover image, background image, background image style, colors, and customized CSS. MyAnimeList also allows users to change profile customization, to do so the user can navigate to "Profile" then click "Profile settings". After that, two options are given, "Modern" and "Classic". Classic provides the user with a text box to modify the profile's BBcode which allows the user to freely add features to their profile. The "Modern" customization, which can be found
here
allows users to choose a theme which can be edited in "Style Settings". With the "Modern" customization, users can add a image, title, and introduction, along with the ability to show the user's published anime and manga. Furthermore, users have the ability to add certain rankings for manga and anime they enjoyed.

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.

Controversy

In January 2017, MyAnimeList rewrote an anti-

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

article written by a contributor on the site to be more pro-Nazi without notice to the contributor.

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