2023 Yearly Wrap-Up...
...in Code
MAL's development team were hard at work over the last year, improving our backend systems and releasing a few key features that members have been requesting for a long time.
- Dark theme on Desktop! 🎉—Someone turned the lights off! But apparently that's not a problem for many of you. If you prefer to browse MAL in Dark Mode, you can now switch to it in your User Preferences or simply let your automatic system settings handle it.
- Review System Updates: Part 2—We deployed the next set of updates for our review system. A stats summary was added and adjustments to the display logic were made. More updates that will take user feedback in account are on the way.
- Forum Conversation View—In order to modernize the forums and allow for multiple conversations to happen within the same forum topic, we've introduced Conversation View. More updates will come to allow users to use this mode to also find their friends' posts more quickly. Give it a try if you haven't checked it out yet.
- Anime/Manga List Statistics 🎉—We've expanded our user profile pages to also feature an overview of your scores and genres. Have you checked your own stats yet to see if there's a particular anime or manga that you loved even though many others didn't, or the other way around? More graphs/features are planned for the future so keep an eye on this page for more updates.
- Small QoL Changes, Bug Fixes, & Security Upgrades—Unreported updates to improve member experience include things like adding a "Preview Date" field to make it easier for members to log convention pre-screenings without affecting the Seasonal Anime page. Similarly, our development team has focused on upgrading MAL's backend code over the last year, to keep the site both secure and functioning optimally. As MAL's community continues to grow, these upgrades become more and more important, even though they're development efforts we can't really "see" (unless something goes wrong...)
...in Collaborations
MAL has been strengthening its ties with the anime/manga industry in Japan and there were a few interesting tie-ups that happened over 2023 with various prizes for participants! For more industry-related promotions and events, check out MALxJapan.
- Your Should Read This Manga 2023—At the start of the year, we started a new project which aims to create an annual manga discovery list for the international fan. Passionate manga readers—MAL members, bookstore employees, and more—nominated titles recently licensed and released outside Japan. Creators sent us lovely comments for the winning titles and publishers sent us lists with their own picks. Nominations for You Should Read This Manga 2024 are already live, so send us your hidden gems :pray:
- 【OSHI NO KO】 Official Club & Profile Badge Event—Blasting its way into MAL's Top Anime and the hearts of many fans, we collaborated with creators to run an "Oshi no Ko" event on MAL. Users paired themes with screenshots from the anime to complete unique bingo cards and claim a profile badge. We hope you're ready for season two later this year! Join the club for more updates~
- Web Novel Writing Contest 2023—For the third year, we partnered up with Honeyfeed to bring you our 2023 web novel writing contest. Your chance to realize that dream of having your stories be adapted into manga and published by Kodansha in Japan. The contest typically runs over the summer months, so if it returns for 2024, announcements should be made between May-June~
- MyAnimeList at Anime Expo 2023—For the second year, MAL showed up at one of the biggest anime conventions in the world and hosted a panel where we gave out various prizes to attendees. Hope to see some of you again next year :)
- Paradox Live Official Club & Profile Badge Event—MAL's collaboration event with Paradox Live the Animation is still ongoing. Join the club for special events, rewards, and more info about this hip-hop mixed media project.
- Many more Modern About Me Themes—Our feature for helping users create fancy About Me profile designs has seen many new anime tie-up and holiday seasonal designs throughout the year. More are to come in 2024, so keep an eye out if you're looking for a fresh coat of paint for your MAL profile!
...in Community
Get involved with our community (and maybe even get a time-limited profile badge) with one of our annual events! They're a great way to meet new people on MAL and expand your anime/manga knowledge.
- MAL Yearbook 2022—We continued our tradition of creating digital yearbooks, celebrating 2022's greatest anime, characters, and OPs/EDs. Brainstorming for our 2023 edition is currently underway!
- 2023 Anime Watching & Manga Reading Challenges—Want to increase your anime/manga power levels and diversify your list(s)? The yearly challenges are a great way to do this. Watch for the 2024 challenges opening soon~
- Ode to MALentine 💌 2nd Edition—We brought back another Valentine's event where participants created original or existing Valentine's Day poetry, matching it to anime & manga images and gifs. Our MALentine's event changes each year, so look forward to our 2024 plans!
- Fantasy Anime League: All seasons!—Thanks to FAL's continued popularity, our Fantasy Anime League now runs every season! Previously, FAL took a break during Summer and Winter. Now, you can try and predict every season's most popular anime!
- MAL Challenge Stacks—Badges were given to all members who completed our winter and summer challenge stacks. We were hoping to have another challenge before the end of 2023, but like last year, we became too swamped with other events orz. Keep an eye out for our next challenges, and maybe a re-run...
- Site Rebranding: MyKittyList—Anime/manga and cats go together like omurice and ketchup. It was time to give the cats free rein and let them take over more than 190 anime and manga entries on MyKittyList! Our early April Fool's prank had us flex our creativity a bit, so check out the full list of edited cover images if you haven't seen the full list yet!
- Easter Bunny no Tabi: The Beautiful World—Tragedy struck MAL's beloved Easter Bunny! Lost chicks and misplaced eggs had our entire community hunt for clues in order to ensure their safe return. We have a feeling not everything's going to go smoothly in 2024 either, so stay tuned and maybe earn yourself a profile badge or two if you're eagle-eyed enough.
- MAL Bunkasai 2023—MAL's online festival returned for the second year. Our community hosted various events, such as Anime Music Quiz sessions, VTuber livestreams, karaoke and more. Visitors were able to go on a stamp rally, attending the events and collecting profile badges in the process.
- Fall Anime 🍂 About Me Contest—After a successful trial in Summer, we started a new seasonal anime profile design contest where members picked one currently airing anime and made a profile design with that theme. Winners received 1- or 3-months of MAL Supporter and all participants got a badge. We may be re-running it for Winter, so keep an eye out~
- MALoween✟Mansion: Zom 10² [Watashi no Shiawase na Death]—10 years of MALoween! Can you believe it?! Each year more popular than the last! Challenges, quests, and puzzles had our users once again compete for profile badges. Were you able to escape or will we see you still haunting our spooky mansion in October?
- Secret Santa—Due to the massive growth of Secret Santa over the years, we implemented some new measures to help streamline the process and it seems to have been a success, since we were actually early this year! If you missed it, be sure to sign up in the last week of November 2024.
...in Contributions & Crew
A very big thank you to all our active users who participate in our community, are committed to improving our databases, write reviews and recommendations to help fellow users, and who make up MAL. We are now 15.5 million registered users!
Last but never least, a very big thank you to the ever-growing and dedicated staff. I am constantly grateful for the time and energy they give to our site and community to continue to grow it further. Innumerable database additions, edits, requests, reports, sns posts, and problems are processed each and every day of the year (even on Christmas!). MAL wouldn't be MAL without this amazing group of people.
If you would like to join this team and give back to MAL, are well-versed in the guidelines and requirements of your position of interest, and have the motivation to work independently, please consider checking out our Open Applications thread.
Current Statistics—taken on Jan 4th
- Anime: 25,960 (↑2,186)
- Manga: 67,040 (↑4,984)
- Characters: 170,657 (↑15,499)
- People: 57,520 (↑7,295)
- Company: 2,324 (↑180)
- News: 13,217 (↑888)
- Forum: 1,177,741 (↑61,954)
- Reviews: 245,269 222,445 (↑22,824)
- Recommendations: 297,014 (↑10,548)
- Stacks: 12,564 (↑6,394)
- Facebook followers: 752,296 (↑12,412)
- Twitter followers: 684,109 (↑81,321)
- Instagram followers: 73,838 (↑29,536)
- Discord verified members: 26,878 (↑4,823)
- MAL Rewrite Synopses: 6,111 (↑440)
Happy New Year! |