So for the hell of it, we started accounts at Anime-Planet. It was about one half wanting to see what it was like, along with one half being kind of wary about MyAnimeList’s reliability because of its constant query errors and server unresponsiveness. My main use of the site would pretty much be archiving what I’ve watched. Related to that, it’s fun using the love/hate toggles to also keep track of non-anime and non-manga things, like characters, voice actors, or staff members. Like giving Shinbo a hate, lol.
The other big strength that it has over MAL is that its search capabilities are much more robust than MAL’s are. MAL’s search is really restricted to just searching for things that have whatever title you entered into the search bar. Anime-Planet allows you to both search using much more detailed criteria (rating, genre, tags, length, etc.), as well as browse various categories in ways that MAL doesn’t offer. I’d always been curious as to which voice actors and characters are the most popular on MAL. That’s not easily available, but it’s right there on Anime-Planet.
The massive, massive downside to Anime-Planet however is that its database simply is not as expansive as MAL’s database is yet. When I tried to import my anime list, I had 38 titles that weren’t in the system. After removing things like Legend of the Overfiend, that dropped down to 22 (out of nearly 1,000 total anime in the import), which isn’t too bad. By comparison however, 22 out of my 120 manga didn’t import, and these were things like Sakura Taisen manga. And it became even more apparent when I was going through my imported anime trying to love and hate people and characters. There were a LOT of anime that had no characters and/or no staff or cast members listed. There realllllllllllly needs to be a big info dump to bump the usefulness of the database up. Fortunately, sothis has been pretty responsive on Twitter to suggestions and missing titles
Finally, the last thing to mention is that the site awards users with Foursquare-esque badges. Some of these are pretty standard: watch X anime, write Y reviews, and so on. The much more fun part are the wacky badges. Like how I got one because I have watched the Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gootaman OVAs.
Edit By Hinano: I just wanted to comment that while Anime Planet has it’s cool features and less buggyness MAL’s been having lately – when I want to just mark down that I just watched Starry Sky 11 – MAL does it best I’m afraid! I logged into anime planet this morning and for some reason it wouldn’t let me adjust how many episodes of starry sky I watched. Really? I mean socializing is good but for me the core of these sites is just keeping track of what I’m watching. Additionally the AP founder told me that for now they are not adding any manga that has not been released in English and/or scanlated. Really? Y u do dis? So basically me, a person who typically reads manga in Japanese, will now have a chunk of missing manga from my list because some random scanlation group didn’t pick it up. I am disappoint to be honest. I guess I’ll leave my AP account for now until they get a little more up to date (and add the manga I’ve actually read) – but for now I’ll prolly just stick to updating MAL.
Badges? Dayum.
MAL’s not giving me problems though, so I’ll stick to that until A-P’s database shapes up, I guess.
badges are the most annoying thing.
i signed up for an anime planet account, just to try it out thanks to this post. but what interested me for MAL is the community and not the cataloging feature. too lazy for that, and nobody can’t beat ANN’s database at this point for mining raw info. so maybe i’ll look around there.
maybe AP can do more interesting metrics down the road.
I never paid attention to MAL’s community to be honest. I only used it to literally just update my anime list lol. And it’s quite annoying when I hit to update my latest episode, hit save, it doesn’t actually update until at least 30 minutes later. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me. It’s been like that for at least the last 6 months.
If they actually capped the likes and dislikes, I think I’d stop doing them for totally silly things.
Anime-planet, haven’t been there for a while. Maybe because I don’t really properly watch anime any more, more like skip through most of episodes. now, I need to collect this Butt attack badge for myself XD.
I was always wondering whether I should sign up for Anime-Planet.
But I think I will now. MAL’s lag is getting the better of me. The review voting is another annoyance.
Oh well, thanks for putting this up. If this were MAL, I would vote ‘Helpful’ for this.
http://myanimelist.net/anime.php – click advanced search at the top for more detailed search on MAL.
http://myanimelist.net/favorites.php?type=characters – most favorite characters.
http://myanimelist.net/favorites.php?type=people – most favorite people.
Cheers
What I like the most about MAL (in addition to the relatively exhaustive database for anime; manga not so much) is the convenient, no-frills interface for your lists. In comparison, the visual space on Anime-Planet is unbearably cluttered up with useless pictures and whatnot, and the relevant parts are not emphasized, so everything ends up being much more difficult to read.
MAL has its issues (and as far as I understand, a lot of the recent ones are mostly due to its size now pushing what its servers can handle) but I’m still a long way from being convinced to make the change. MAL Updater makes keeping lists up to date a cinch, and I have no idea what A-P’s support for clubs is like (one of the aspects of MAL’s community which I think works rather well). I also really like MAL’s compatibility ratings. It’s recommendation system is a bit average, though.
Whatever the case it, I’ll pretty much only make a new list if MAL screams at me in the face to leave. I utterly do not see the point in maintaining multiple lists. One list is sufficient for doing that particular job.
Yeah, I have no intention on maintaining two lists either. Right now, I’m sticking with MAL until Anime-Planet’s database improves a lot and the interface quirks (it’s actually really awkward to update what you’ve read/watched unless the episode count was incremented in the database) get ironed out. Or until MAL finally asplodes.
Both really suck…
best solution: ms-excel document and using that.
Hmmm.. well I tried Anime Planet back when I was in college.. and yes their database compared to MAL is pretty small, but it stands to the fact that this needs lots of volunteer contributions to make it work.
Interesting. I think I recall pointing out many series that were missing to the Anime Planet guy on twitter, and his response was that while they do their best, keeping up with new media being released is an impossible problem (let alone, I assume, going back and adding things they missed.) The sheer volume feels overwhelming from the administrative side of things. I guess they need more people.
As for me, I’ve given up on MAL and AP both. There’s just not enough time to catalog what I’ve done in addition to doing it – and I figure if I don’t remember it, maybe I shouldn’t claim credit for it anyway.
It wasn’t too hard for me to catalog everything I’d watched, but this required me to set aside a whole Saturday to go through the list of anime in alphabetical order to make sure I got everything.
…and that was 3 years ago, so there was a lot less for me to need to enter in.
I’ve been with A-P for quite some time and I have no intention of using MAL. A-P has been quickly improving and I believe it will soon overtake MAL in terms of popularity. If A-P doesn’t have what you want, ask for it and it will be added. My vote is placed.