Never used MAL. Anilist is my only tracker.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Welp. See ya folks. Kitsune/AniList are good options with Kitsune being open source.
Kitsu being open source
Hmm, they have an api, and after a couple minutes of playing around with it I was able to figure out how to map an AniList id to a kitsu url. So, I might add kitsu links to rikka's posts in a future version.
Nice while it lasted
That makes having a MAL account just feel icky now.
"Blockchain, AI"
This just screams of a company that's out to exploit for maximum profit at the expense of their (L)users.
I just exported my MAL list, and I suggest others do that too, as a backup. (View your list, there is an export button at the left side)
I don't exactly know what this news means and I dont intend to stop using MAL immediately, but if this is a signal for the beginning of the end for MAL then I wouldn't be surprised if they remove the export ability at some point, to try and stop people from leaving.
Yeah, I have no intentions of staying. I'm planning on exporting the list and then deleting my account because even though this might not turn out to be a bad thing, I don't trust it. I've heard of open source alternatives and I think I'm just gonna go to that route.
I was already using Anilist, but now it's time to remove my MAL account I guess
I'm glad I've moved over to Kitsu years ago.
The date it posted on this site doesn’t convince me it is a joke, and even if it is, it’s not funny.
Found this posted on March 28 elsewhere:
I mean I was using Anilist but this still sucks.
I've been using MAL since I started watching anime, and I've never explored or looked for alternatives. Besides MAL and Anilist, what can I check out? I basically need just the tracking, I've never used the social part
I suggest Kitsu. It has a nice API and it's great to use with open source apps like Nekome or Kitsune.
I'm interesting finding potential alternatives too... as there's a few features of MAL I'm not too keen on. Not only that, but I'd like to track my #anime, #manga and #LightNovels separately!
I'm looking at AniList right now, doesn't look like there's a LNs section so you may skip this one...
The LN section is for some reason merged with the manga section.
This has thrown me for a loop before when messing around in the api. These really need to be separated, but I guess there are quite a few changes that need to happen in the backend to make that happen.
@WaifuWatcher @tor just looked it up and #bookwrym has japanese light novels. Would love a manga/anime fork, bookwyrm is great
I wish mangaupdates/bakaupdates did anime too. It’s the best aggregator. No bullshit, no ads (probably, if there are any they disappear with Adblock), straightforward design straight out of like 2005. Given their relationship with scanlation groups they could also have a pretty awesome database of fansub releases potentially.
Would be so much better than those random spreadsheet websites where some discord channel decides the best release with no criteria they are willing to share publicly and erases the existence of all others like seadex and sneedex.
But even if they didn’t I still would prefer to just use that for everything. It’s just a comfier website. I hate MAL, anidex, etc
It just icks me that MAL is above Mangaupdates on google search
That’s part of the appeal to me, baka doesn’t bother with the SEO game
The moment they start putting some AI shit on that site I'm migrating to something else.
It's a shame because I really got used to their rating system and UI. It might be outdated but it's clean.
Same. I have a soft spot for MAL just because it's one of the first and they have pretty lively forum still.
And I like their rating system as well as tracking.
I can even, and did, myspace the heck out of my lists page. A quirky and welcome holdout from the semi old internet
Oh my, anybody have an alternative? Currently using MAL with MALSync but if its going to a web3 company I want out asap (without losing my data, so I want to put the data elsewhere first before deleting my account)
You can export your list from MAL and import it there.
I personally literally just now did that - so I can't actually give a review yet of how decent anilist is or isn't, but I have friends who use it.
I won't stop using MAL right away but I wanted to get my bases covered.
MAL sync does other trackers like Anilist (and will go through and sync it for you)
Thanks for the info! I've had it passively on for a while without really interacting with MAL anymore outside of looking for my plan to watch list tbh
Kinda offtopic, but what's the point in having a list of all the anime you've watched?
Recommendations and a community are obvious answers. Very useful if your place doesn't have enough people to form an anime club.
Oh, interesting I didn't think about that. Thank you!