| How long had you been into anime or familiar with this type of media at all before you created your MAL page? How did you find out about this site? Specifically, what was the size of your first anime and manga lists when you created the page? For example, I still remember that, with reservations, my first anime list consisted of 94-95 shows. I've been into anime since the 90s and more consciously since the late 00s, but I had to remember half of the titles, because before I found out about MAL, reading one of the wiki resources about the Internet, I only well remembered those anime that really influenced me significantly. |
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| "How long had you been into anime before you created a page on MAL?" Over two decades. |
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| About two years and nine months, because I started watching anime in any real sense (not counting seeing Pokemon dubbed on American TV out of order in reruns as an elementary school kid, or two Ghibli films years apart) in September of 2016 and created my MAL account, as the information on the side panel indicates, in June of 2019. It was the month right before the massive arson attack on KyoAni in July. But I was periodically lurking on and off over the course of those few years in-between starting watching and creating the actual account. Not so much reading the general Anime Discussion sub-forum or a lot of other sub-forums, but mainly looking up anime series I was interested in on their individual archival webpages and reading some of their reviews and thread topics on their associated sub-forums. In the same way I had looked up everything on websites like IMDB years before when I still operated an account there, they had the forum, and before the website as a whole went down the gutter. Actually, I remember still looking up a series like Inuyasha, the fourth series I watched, on a site like IMDB when debating and deciding upon what to watch early on before I fully integrated to using MAL. And when I found MAL it wasn't from any inside knowledge of being a part or member of any other anime-related website, but just general top result findings on search engines the same way I used to discover all new websites (especially back when Google and some others weren't dog shit). I also think back to that time period a lot (between starting in 2016 and joining in 2019), because wasn't it somewhere at the beginning of that window of time or just before that when the MAL website was down for the longest time since its creation - as in, like many months? And the forums took longer to restore or something and was done piecemeal? I forget the exact timeline and chronology of the process and that whole debacle, but I remember MAL being down and inaccessible sometime around then and hearing a lot of discussion about that scattered across all sub-forums visited when I was a lurker before even joining. |
WatchTillTandavaAug 11, 10:14 AM
| About 3 or 4 years into being a fan of Anime I joined MAL. I probably would have joined earlier, as one of my Playstation friends was already on MAL and was trying to get me to join, but I felt shy and too inexperienced lol. |
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| Not counting random anime I watched on TV as a kid, I had been actively into anime for around 13 years before joining MAL. I don’t remember how long my list was when I joined MAL, but a very rough guess is that it was somewhere in the 500-600 range. I had lists on other sites going back to the launch of ANN’s “My Anime” in 2002, and used a Word document before that, so it was easy to make a new list here, even if it did take a while to get everything added. I had been keeping track of things like start/end dates and my ratings almost from the beginning, so I was able to transfer a lot of details over to my MAL list, even for anime I’d watched long before I had an account here. I knew about MAL for years before I joined, and I guess I must have stumbled onto it through search results for various anime at some point, but I don’t really remember. |
palm-treeAug 11, 12:11 PM
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| I knew about MAL before I got into anime (some youtuber I watched also liked anime and had an account here) and made my account on the same day I started watching it |
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| About 1-2 years or so is what I would say. |
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RobertBobert said: 16 yearsHow long had you been into anime or familiar with this type of media at all before you created your MAL page? RobertBobert said: GoogleHow did you find out about this site? RobertBobert said: Quite smallSpecifically, what was the size of your first anime and manga lists when you created the page? |
This dance is the pinnacle of human achievement. |
| Been into anime since late 00s I believe. Pretty sure I just randomly stumbled into mal while looking for anime to watch one day, thought it was cool there was a site to keep track of the stuff you've been watching strictly for anime. Numbers were I wanna say around 150 ish for anime and like 3 for manga lol. |
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| Outside childhood anime, I started watching around mid 00s so maybe 5-7 years before I created my MAL account. I first talked about anime & manga on Yahoo! Answers and most likely found out about this site from there. I used to use MAL just to track new anime I watch because I started watching seasonals almost a year before I created MAL - and then added the older anime on my list later on. |
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| I was into anime a lot in my teens though I always watched kids anime like pokemon Digimon and beyblade. Counting early teens as the start. 7 years and I started mal when I was in college. |
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| About 12 years. I saw my first anime in 2003 but i don't think i completed any cause i didn't have any dvd's and would often stop watching or miss episodes before the series ended (Most of my anime were super long) My completed list was only about 5, counting 1 movie and some H-Anime. As for how i heard of Mal, i discovered my first non-shonen anime that i loved and started googling it, i found Mal and used it as a way to keep track of everything new i saw. |
| My waifu is the most wonderful waifu. Mai Valentine. |
| Although I'd seen some anime in the 80s and 90s -- most without knowing they were "anime" until seeing Sailor Moon on TV -- and a few choice anime movies in the early 2000s, I mark the start of my being officially "into anime" at the beginning of 2003. So that's around four and a half years before joining MAL, and according to my venerable text document where I track completion dates for every anime I watch, I'd seen ~270 anime at that point. (The numbers won't line up exactly because my old listings don't split off specials and such the same way MAL does.) I think I found my way to MAL either through links in torrent descriptions, or from links on AniDB.net. Fortunately, I was able to import my AniDB list to MAL, and didn't have to create it all manually. |
| Slightly less than twenty years... |
My start of being a full-blown fan was in 2002, so just over 6 years. Believe I came across MyAnimeList through a random Google search as I was attempting to find a new anime site to be my stomping grounds after the site I used to frequent, Anime Chains Forum, was completely shut down by its administrator around the middle of 2008. At least digging through Wayback Machine to the furthest I could go, this was what I dug up for anime and manga I had populated into my lists about four days into my membership on the site... |
| Short enough that I could add everything. |
This dance is the pinnacle of human achievement. |
RobertBobert said: I've been into anime since the 90s and more consciously since the late 00s, Yes same for me.. I only checked for info on various anime sites, wiki and Wikipedia for info on anime.. Of course I forgot the titles of the anime but searching season by season on anilist and Mal and reading the synopsis helped me realize I've seen the anime.. But some Manga had synopsis missing so I had to search other places for the synopsis and then realized that a lot of them have live-action drama and movies. That's how I got into Japanese live-action. I wish to add all the anime and Manga I have seen to Mal list but I can't see any options to import my list from AniList When I forgot anime titles, Anime planet tag system helped.. For example I forgot the name of anime Isuca but I remember the bakeneko girl, so I searched bakeneko anime on animeplanet and found it easily.. There are separate tags for bakeneko and nekomata, again that helped me as well.. Mal don't have such tag options to search for anime. But here are more active people to discuss not just anime and talk about other things as well.. Every anime database sites has its pros and cons.. |
Reply to Zalis
Although I'd seen some anime in the 80s and 90s -- most without knowing they were "anime" until seeing Sailor Moon on TV -- and a few choice anime movies in the early 2000s, I mark the start of my being officially "into anime" at the beginning of 2003. So that's around four and a half years before joining MAL, and according to my venerable text document where I track completion dates for every anime I watch, I'd seen ~270 anime at that point. (The numbers won't line up exactly because my old listings don't split off specials and such the same way MAL does.)
I think I found my way to MAL either through links in torrent descriptions, or from links on AniDB.net. Fortunately, I was able to import my AniDB list to MAL, and didn't have to create it all manually.
I think I found my way to MAL either through links in torrent descriptions, or from links on AniDB.net. Fortunately, I was able to import my AniDB list to MAL, and didn't have to create it all manually.
| @Zalis I call this the "Japanese cartoon" phase because many of us at the time just saw it as Japanese animation. Often without even knowing that it was made in Japan at all. |
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| I first got into anime in the late 90's when I was 12 with Toonami...DBZ, Gundam Wing, Sailor Moon etc. before that I was not aware of it or knew what it was as there wasn't anything available where I lived before that...or maybe I just didn't know where to look... I don't remember where I found MAL probably just looking through things on google and I didn't keep track of what I watched before I joined MAL so I remember taking so much time going through every anime entry on here...it took so long!! I joined the site in 2008 but the furthest away I could find on the way back machine is 2009 but I am sure my list looked something close to this. I had a crap ton of stuff on my PTW list that I narrowed down quite a bit throughout the years😭.  |
SevenAug 11, 3:56 PM
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| "How long had you been into anime before you created a page on MAL?" 27-28 years. Here's my first account which go locked because of some technical issues confirming the e-mail around 2018 - https://myanimelist.net/profile/megaload?q=megaload&cat=user so I created my current account from a backup export. Till 2011 I was tracking my anime/manga in a text file and used MAL only as a database. Imputing by hand something like 500 titles in a short period of time was a bit of a nuisance. |
alshuAug 11, 4:22 PM
| I had seen anime on & off for quite some time, but I was only really really into anime for about a year and a half ish before I started my MAL profile. |
| Less than a year. Probably around 8 to 10 months. I don't know exactly how much anime I watched before I made my MAL account, but I think it was just Urusei Yatsura, Yawara, and Angel Heart. Probably also some amount of City Hunter, too. |
Daviljoe193Aug 11, 5:00 PM
Opinions are opinions, and differing opinions can co-exist. 🙂 But I don't do debate, life's too short to spend time debating people.    |
| 7 years before I knew this site existed. If I was aware of its existence before, I'd have created an account back then. |
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RobertBobert said: How long had you been into anime before you created a page on MAL? Before actually registering as a member on MAL, I have been into this medium for well over three decades. |
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| it was like 6 years haha, at first i would track my anime in my notes app on my phone until I discovered MAL. |
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| I'm just created Mal One Month ago and I have been watching anime since five years old. I'm discovered Mal five years ago looking for recommendnation until I decide well why not I will create Mal to see what anime community look like. |
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| I started slowly watching near the end of primary school and when I entered high school. But I wasn't a big fan back then, only watched the basic stuff. Then, when high school was almost over, I picked up the pace and watched a lot of anime. I used to use AniList and sometimes just wrote it down or typed it somewhere on my phone to keep track. Just recently, I tried MyAnimeList, and it's so much better to use, should've used it years earlier. But it's never too late to join the website, I guess. |
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| I had just recently gotten into anime when I found MAL |
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| I've always been into animes I was watching Dragon ball as a 3yo but I would say probably around 2012 is when I started watching more stuff outside of Battle Shonen/TV animes I found out about MAL by watching Anitubers like Nux, Theanimeman, Gigguk ect.. talking about it but only decided to create an account in 2019 when I though I watched "enough" anime where listing them and giving them a score would actually be meaningful because before that I could just remember the few anime I watched in my head It was probably half of the size it is today |
| Been in anime since January 2021, didn't discovered MAL until June 2022 and then had the balls to create an account until a month later |
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| I started properly watching anime in 2014. I spent about 3-4 months just lurking on the site without making an acount. I came across MAL when I was looking for new anime to watch. I made an account in December 2014 when my paper PTW list got to much and I had watched over 50 anime. |
| 20 years more or less im watching anime on tv and early internet before i created a mal profile |
| I was watching a little bit of anime for 9 years before I created my MAL account, but started watching a lot of anime 2 years before I created my account. I had a little over 40 days worth of anime watched when I created my page. |
| Since I was a kid, but let's take 2008 as the year for measure, as it was the year when I began watching Dragon Ball Z and then InuYasha, so 8 years. |
| I'd say I've been into anime for roughly 5 years before creating a page on MAL. My list of anime was already almost as big as it is now: I've just been adding the last seasonals to it, for the most part. |
| I started getting "seriously/actively" into anime with Naruto in 2006, so around 3 years before I created my profile here. Youtube was the place to go for the episodes.. split in 3 videos (Part A, B and C lol) because of the 10 min max rule, such a pain when "Part B" was taken down and you had to find another channel with it.. I found out about MAL because I had recently finished K-ON!, and wanted to create a GIF signature, I was looking online and found an user's blog post here explaining how to do it with Photoshop, I created an account just to ask this person something, and here I stayed. |
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| How long had you been into anime before you created a page on MAL? - 5 years |
| I would say I was watching anime regularly for about a year before I made a MAL list. I think I made it to keep a track record of what I'd seen, what I wanted to watch, to make my life a little easier. It might have been around the time I started watching Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood as that was the first 'big' anime I watched, being 60+ episodes and I felt if I had a list I would be able to keep count of which episode I was on. |
Sometimes it takes a real man to be best girl. Gilgamesh is also chad.   |
Well I got into anime around 2016, when I watched the remake of the OG Space Battleship Yamato, creatively titled; Space Battleship Yamato 2199, from here I watched quiet a few anime between that and making my MAL list which I believe was during 2021, so overall I guess 5 years roughly between watching anime and making my MAL List.  (Also if you haven't seen Space Battleship Yamato 2199 its amazing totally worth watching) I didn't include any shows I watched before Yamato as A. I either didn't know it was anime or B. I did know but didn't complete the show. So Halo Legends, Ulysses 31, Mass Effect Paragon Lost and High School of the Dead, and an assortment of other one of episodes of shows like DB and Pokémon are all anime I watched when I was younger but wasn't actively watching them or dropped them or didn't even know what anime was.  Also as a side note anyone even knew about this show? I honestly had no idea it was anime at the time and was surprised to find it on MAL |
 This is for you Lady Haman! |
RobertBobert said: First anime watched 1974, page created 2019 -> 45 years.How long had you been into anime or familiar with this type of media at all before you created your MAL page? RobertBobert said: Internet search, they were the largest and oldest at that time.How did you find out about this site? RobertBobert said: About a dozen from the 1970s, another dozen movies by Kon and Ghibli I've watched in my movie buff phase, pluse another dozen watched during my decision to pick up anime as a hooby again or not.Specifically, what was the size of your first anime and manga lists when you created the page? |
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| 2 years. Started watching 2019, joined 2021. I've first heard about the MAL through random online posts mentioning MAL's top anime list, and MAL pages were always high up in the results whenever I googled an anime. MAL was a large database and had user ratings and reviews, which was all I really needed, so I didn't bother checking out other websites. After around 2 years I became interested in rating shows myself and following seasonals, so I made an account. Only had to add around 20-30 entries, I think. |
| I've been into anime since the late 90's. I got into Pokemon, DBZ, Sailor Moon, and such and just never stopped. I went out of my way to watch anything that was in the anime art style back then, so after the late 90s in the US, that would have included things like "Cardcaptors", Inuyasha, Gundam Wing, .hack sign, and so on. And then my local library happened to have a manga (and anime) section, so I was reading manga as well. I would also just buy manga at the bookstore, of course. I can't remember when I learned that everything I was watching was "anime" specifically, but I was able to distinguish, and the DBZ magazines/catalogues (?) and such we would get as kids did still use "anime". I just don't remember if we understood or not. As for this site, I found out about it quite a while before I actually made an account. I kept looking for anime information and would end up here. Well specifically, I was on 4chan and they would always post an image of the seasonals, but since it's an image, it wouldn't automatically get updated with any anime that would be added later right away or anything of course. I eventually found a site that kept that list up to date and would let me see the seasonals list without having to sign up or anything, MAL. I was keeping a notepad file with my anime watching, so I didn't really think to make an account right away. Eventually, I threw in the towel and just went ahead and made an account. I don't remember what the size of my list was when I first started. I can only go as far back as 2014 where my anime list was as follows: Watching- 8 Completed- 141 On Hold- 12 Dropped- 88 Plan to Watch- 106 |
| Between starting and making my account, around two years. Between starting and actually starting to use the site, around 4 years. |
| I started watching anime about 4 years before I discovered mal |
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