Favorites Boosting Accounts: Ranking Recalculations

Why does demon slayer characters (side characters who didn't do shit) still has over 10k favorites?

Plenty of the changes don't make any sense. Same shit happened last year with the antibot system for scores, when plenty of anime for which there was no reason to suspect they were being score-botted suffered considerable score drops, while for others for which there were, actually never changed much.

I have no idea what the algorithm to remove the influence of botting was but whatever the case I just can't trust it.

I remember when Ishigami's total favorite suddenly raised to 26K. I was surprised, but then i thought latest manga chapter at that time might have affected it.

Then Chika's and Kaguya's went up drastically as well, and i was like "Yeah this must've been bots. Poor Shirogane wasn't given much attention by bots"

Re:Zero one was totally not surprising, tbh.

So, they just removed it randomly?

probably will take some time, there's no way they'll let these characters get away

This Monday i finished rewatching SukaSuka. When i clicked on Chtholly data character i noticed her total favorite had a sudden raise from ~1700 to ~2100. And in three days the number went up to over 2900.

It was weird, really. Good thing the bot count was removed.

It's good to hear this. Good job!

Will you do something about "People"? I think the section of "People" is boosted as well.

There is no way Kamiya Hiroshi will pass Hayao Miyazaki.

Holy hell. I honestly didn't think that the Kimetsu no Yaiba characters tanked sooo fucking hard. Most of the characters like Mami and Shinobu were botted af let's be real.

Regardless, the OP characters, waifus (either good or bad, mostly bad though), hated characters, bad characters, side characters would've just tank down, especially KnY like wtf the rankings of the side characters are just fucking botted.

To be fair, at least everything is now in there proper ranking. At least Guts is finally higher than Kirito THANK FUCKING GOD!

Took your sweet time mal. Atleast the features are relevant again.
And whoa how botted was luffy, that's 80k+ bots.

Ishigami at least had a strong character arc in Season 2 so his rise was believable to some extent (though still unnatural to the extent it rose) but Chika is mostly just a comic relief character who while does help in spicing up the comedy of the show hardly had any meaningful characterization like most of the other characters in the series so her massive rise to 40k + favourites was superficial beyond a doubt. Kaguya's case I would find much more believable comparatively since she is main face of the show as well as being very integral to the shiw's narrative. But as it turns out, all 3 of them were massively botted by the Kaguya-Sama fandom after all.

Regarding Re:Zero, well Emilia's rise indeed quite absurd regardless of whatever focus or development she got in the later seasons, I mean how does someone go from barely being into the top 100 to straight up being amongst the Top 3-4 favourited female characters? The rest of the Re:Zero characters were fine as they were (I mean Rem has always been high up there since a few years now & she still is after thus whole "purging"

But anyways, I'm pleased either way that this thing has been taken care off, at least a lot of the unfair member favourites has been removed this way, even if I still do have some doubts regarding how much accurate or legitimate the procedure of this whole "anti-botting" operation was.

Not going to lie, I expected Todoroki's score to drop dramatically. I guess his favorites are legit.

Glad to see action being taken for characters, now we can only hope the same for obviously botted reviews in shows like Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai and Jobless Reincarnation.

Guys you're doing the lord's job, thanks for taking some of your time to fix this nonsense. Knowing that all those pathetic losers' "hard work" went in vain is actually more satisfying than knowing that the numbers of characters/anime/manga entries are fixed now Lmao

What? He did fall pretty hard, by 57%.

I think the guy is joking. Todoroki went brrrrr

Well mal's anti-botting sys actually looks somewhat legit, the dude geld got robbed of his 9000 favs lmao.

Can you please also look into the no. of members of popular animes especially Death Note. During the time Shingeki no Kyojin : The Final Season was airing, I came across many bot accounts that only had Death Note as the only anime they had watched which I believe was made to keep DeathNote as the anime with most members. It would be highly appreciated if you can please work on this too.

Regards,
~WitchDoc

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Sad that Rengoku from Demon Slayer shouldn't lose as many favs, he is one of the reasons why Demon Slayer Movie was such a success and I saw on Reddit his fans really increased after the Movie aired, 7K should be the most make sense, and it's very strange how MAL let favs of Tengen Usui, Sabito and mist guy eventhough they haven't shown anything. please fix it.

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Please fix this guy too, I don't know why you let his favs and less Yoshida favs, Higehiro's fandom don't even remember this guy name.
https://myanimelist.net/character/187116/Hashimoto

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Are you demon slayer manga reader ? , if not then I will not go any farther describing why there is no bigger charges in favorite number in case of demon slayer

https://myanimelist.net/character/194391/Minami_Suzuhara Still a Boosted Character

But why they also eliminate Rengoku favs and let the favs of Tengen Usui, Sabito even Mist guy?? it didn't make sense Rengoku is one of the reasons why Demon Slayer Movie was successful and on Reddit his fans have increased a lot after the Movie aired.

Rip emilia. I never knew Ichigo had that many favorites lol.

I’m glad they finally did something about it.

Never thought Naruto characters were being botted.
But I'm happy for Levi and Gintoki!

I'm glad MAL fixed it, it didn't make sense the first time I saw Itsuki have more favs than Miku and Nino. same goes with Mami from Rent A Girlfriend who have many favs than Chizuru.

and now it makes sense based on popularity
Miku> Nino> Itsuki> Yotsuba> Ichika.
Chizuru> Sumi> Ruka> Mami.

Popularity I suppose. Even without bots, KNY was an ultra-popular show, I mean look at the number of members it has on the MAL page. Kind of confused tho as to why Zenitsu has 10k favorites when he's one of the worst characters recent years.

A welcome change. Glad it is finally being implemented! Now the favorites ranking should be relevant again.

There still bots for these ones

https://myanimelist.net/character/106217/Bercouli_Synthesis_One
https://myanimelist.net/character/103297/Tiese_Shtolienen
https://myanimelist.net/character/145239/Eiji_Nochizawa

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As a massive One Piece fan, I'm actually really happy about this. It gives me a much greater perspective on just how close these characters (the Straw Hats) are in popularity. Luffy and Zoro are basically neck and neck in 4th and 5th places (even if they are separated by 10k+ votes, Robin had a massive drop, but it shows her actual popularity (on this website0 is similar to that of Nami, Usopp, and Chopper which I find interesting. My boy Brook still manages to stay 10k+ which I'm happy about. Law also stays in the Top 100 at 16k. Glad to see, even if their total votes dropped substantially, that they all still remained popular for the legitimate rankings/votes.

Also kind of happy to see the random side characters from Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer drop like crazy. I don't mean the likes of Eren, Mikasa, Levi, Tanjiro and Nezuko; but more like characters like Gabi (who went from 13k votes to 1200 votes) and most of the Pillars from Demon Slayer (who were all either 10k+ or close to it), because I could tell those characters were especially botted like crazy.

The only real standouts I noticed that caught my eye was the My Hero trio of Todoroki, Deku and Bakugo all still being 18k+ and some of the Demon Slayer side characters (Tamayo and Yushirou specifically) still being in that 10k+ range.

Also shout out to some of my favorite characters who more or less retained potency. Joseph Joestar who only had 10% bot votes, Killua who only had 17% bot votes (both of which are comparatively low to most of these character drops) and Izaya who got liberated back into the Top 50.

Finally something is done, I got tired of that shit
makes me smile seeing that 99% of 15 fanbase are bots, ha ha. 02 best girl

I'm not sure this is also Bots, I mean the number of favs is still makes sense. especially Bercoulie he is quite popular among the SAO fandom.

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All favs characters of this bastard get booted, he is the culprit how all weird characters can have lots of favs, please fix it.
https://myanimelist.net/profile/fanldcarklda

Demon slayer movie cover the most minor arc , when I was reading the manga I have never thought that this will get adapted into movie , majority of the pillars which haven't been introduced properly have more character depth and emotional backstory than rengoku ,

That mist guy is my favourite demon slayer character next to Akaza aka. upper moon 3

The thing about demon slayer is every character gets there time to shine , the story might be weak but the character development is superb!!! Most of the favourites are by manga reader in case of Demon slayer

Tbh I can't trust this. I just can't comprehend how some very minor characters that lack hardcore fans managed to lose so many favourites. There's too many characters that are seeming to have been changed way too much over others that seem way more suspicious. But nvm cuz I never cared much about the lists anyway.


Eiji makes sense but Bercoulli and Tiese are really popular in the SAO fandom. So over 1k should be legit.

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Given how fast the favorites were growing, I knew that bots were somehow connected, though I definitely wasn't expecting that big of change for a lot of the characters lol.

It's also funny that the two Monogatari girls in the top 50 were the least affected given that the people making the bot accounts probably haven't seen the series.

I knew it was bad but damn I didn't expect it to be THIS bad.
At least I can trust the numbers a bit more now.

He's terrible and annoying, but more so I'm even more confused of how the side characters had like 25k favorites (Shinobu) or 10k (Sabito) when they barely did anything. (Before the bot purge)

That's part of what making me question this. Even though I am a monogatari fan, I can understand that some monogatari fans are really hardcore much more than other anime fandoms. I will not believe that Eugeo out of all characters had 8k bot accounts out of his 10k favourites while senjougahara had like 6k bot account favourites.

This made goku all the way from 27 to 48😭

https://myanimelist.net/character/194391/Minami_Suzuhara how is this girl from Wonder egg priority have so much favourite , she was present in only one episode and hardly does anything worth mentioning , fix this

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Finally, man this gave me a good laugh atleast.

I imagine it must've taken a lot of effort to determine which accounts are/were bots. Good work MAL team!

It's pretty sad that my favorite characters are dropping out of their spot...

3 side characters in demon slayer still have way more favourites than before. Hope they fix that too

If that’s the case then Klein, Liz, and Silica would be higher. Eugeo and Alice would be much higher also.

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Shocked by some, surprised by others. My boy Okabe doing good! RIP Ichigo though

I'm unsure what exactly classifies as a bot account but it surprises me there were this many and had this much of an influence on the rankings (not that I look at rankings much...)

Thanks for the solution and the breakdown. Having the numbers in front of you, it's insane how much these botters actually affected the top list, but nice to see that you don't let them have their way. Keep up the good work 👌🏻

That's a great way to deal with inconsistencies regarding favorites in MAL, thank you Kineta!

The staff delivers! It feels good knowing that people with questionable taste were the most affected in this purge. Buh-bye, Chika!

If the MAL team is taking suggestions, there should be a set period where new accounts have zero weighting on the score or favorite counts. After a month or two, normal weighting would be applied back to active users, while sus accounts created solely for brigading would be flagged and deleted, or at the very least, keep its zero weighting on the scores. A music database I formerly used had a system like that in place. Its userbase is much smaller than MAL, so even though I'm not a web developer, I believe it shouldn't be exceedingly hard to implement an effective anti-abuse system such as this.

Are you kidding, bro? I know, you know, we know Monogatari is a big brain show. The kind of people who like Chika or Ichigo or whatever flavor of the month waifubait currently buzzing out there never tried watching it or dropped it after the first episode of Bake because it was too complex for them.
How about you voice that complaint to Lebbit instead of bugging the MAL admins?

Yeah you can say this is my complaint, if they really want to removed all of the bots then they should do it evenly, because there are some characters whose bots are left alone.