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The average fan is a lot more casual than I thought? According to Kitsu.

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May 11, 9:53 PM
#1
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Sep 2022
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When I first started using this site years and years ago. I was insecure. I had only finished about 40 days of anime and 120 overall.

Everyone on the message board I frequented had 100 - 200 days or more and 400+ titles. This was like 2012.

But Kitsu says I'm 98 percentile in anime and 99 percentile in manga.

I just assumed every MAL profile was 100 days average with like 400 + titles. Assuming Kitsu and MAL user base watch about the same.

So...considering I read more manga than most. I've actually watched way more than the standard anime fan.

And let's be real. Anyone with a list is more hardcore than average.
May 11, 10:09 PM
#2

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Oct 2024
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Well yeah that makes sense, I imagine there's a difference between a casual who just uses tracking websites to... track anime, and the people who actually use MAL to talk about anime. Using a website like MAL at all implies a certain level of interest in anime already, but I imagine a lot of people who use the website have way less anime than some of the people who post on the forums.
May 11, 10:17 PM
#3
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Sep 2022
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Reply to erotardation
Well yeah that makes sense, I imagine there's a difference between a casual who just uses tracking websites to... track anime, and the people who actually use MAL to talk about anime. Using a website like MAL at all implies a certain level of interest in anime already, but I imagine a lot of people who use the website have way less anime than some of the people who post on the forums.
@erotardation but wouldn't someone who uses a site to track anime be more hardcore than average? My point being fans that don't even use mal/anilist/kitsu have watched even less than that on average
May 11, 10:29 PM
#4

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Aug 2018
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to be truly hardcore you need to own some anime stuff. especially nowadays when its so easy to just click and watch anime. Not like back in the day when you had to go out of your way. I've got a couple wall scrolls that I bought a couple of decades ago still hanging on my wall. and a copy of NGE on DVD but I don't care about that.
May 11, 10:39 PM
#5
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Feb 2023
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What would be considered a fan or casual? Most of my friends have probably watched like under 20 anime in their lifetime. They don't have a Mal account. If I asked them if they liked anime they would say yea.

I know a lot of people who might have just watched like maybe 5 as well.

I have no statistics to back this but there are a lot of people that don't watch anime. Then a blockbuster anime makes it to global theatres with critical acclaim. Out of the people who have never seen anime some of them watch it and get into it but the majority don't because they already watch regular shows, movies and other things on streaming sites like Netflix.

They may check out an anime once in a while but they grew up with regular shows and movies. They like the occasional anime does this make them a fan?

I think this would be the norm. However I could be completely wrong.

This would probably also be dependant on age, I'm a bit older so when I grew up the only anime on tv was sailor moon and Dragonball lol and I had friends who watched dragon ball but outside of that they would never watch an anime again. I would have to sign up to MAl just to find others who were like me.
May 11, 10:39 PM
#6

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Oct 2024
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Reply to derangedx29
@erotardation but wouldn't someone who uses a site to track anime be more hardcore than average? My point being fans that don't even use mal/anilist/kitsu have watched even less than that on average
@derangedx29 Well yeah, what I'm saying is that your experience with everyone having a 100 day average was probably skewed by you interacting with the kind of person who'd be active on a website like MAL: someone who watches a fuck ton of anime. The kind of person who uses an anime tracker like MAL or Kitsu probably watches more anime than your average person, but someone who actually uses a website like this to talk to people probably watches even more anime than the average user of a given website. They're more dedicated to the hobby.
May 12, 12:07 AM
#7
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Mar 2025
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derangedx29 said:
When I first started using this site years and years ago. I was insecure


Why? anime is entertainment and there are other forms of it to spend your time .

MAL is great to keep it organized and discover something new to watch, i am sure most people have not added series that were too shit to mention in their lists.

derangedx29 said:
And let's be real. Anyone with a list is more hardcore than average.


I think you are wrong in that.
May 12, 12:09 AM
#8
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Sep 2022
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Reply to Asangbanne
derangedx29 said:
When I first started using this site years and years ago. I was insecure


Why? anime is entertainment and there are other forms of it to spend your time .

MAL is great to keep it organized and discover something new to watch, i am sure most people have not added series that were too shit to mention in their lists.

derangedx29 said:
And let's be real. Anyone with a list is more hardcore than average.


I think you are wrong in that.
@Asangbanne anyone coming to a site specifically to track how much anime they watch will be more hardcore on average than people who don't think about anime after they turn off Netflix.
May 12, 12:18 AM
#9

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Mar 2021
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Most of the people you see on the forums are outliers and not representative of the general population. A real grab bag of freaks if you will.
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May 12, 12:42 AM

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Feb 2014
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As other people have pointed out, there's a bit of a survivorship bias right here: Most of the people who won't even last two years in the hobby don't bother making a MAL account, and even less bother using the forums.
derangedx29 said:
When I first started using this site years and years ago. I was insecure. I had only finished about 40 days of anime and 120 overall.

I always tell the story that around 2016 I had only 80 completed anime in my list and felt the need to improve those numbers "to reflect my true knowledge and love for the medium".
I felt it was shameful that I had less anime than people who only watched Battle Shounen, so I can understand that feeling.

Well, even nowadays with 461 complete anime and 92.6 days, it's not rare that a lot of people in this forum watched more anime than me.
derangedx29 said:
But Kitsu says I'm 98 percentile in anime and 99 percentile in manga.

Sturgeon's law: "90% of everything is crap"
Pareto principle: "20% of something is what makes 80% of the results"

You know like every OnlyFans girl will have "Top 5%", "Top 3%", "Top 1%", "Top 0.7%", "Top 0.03%" in their bio? It's like that.
It's multimillionaires fighting billionaires, the bottom 80% doesn't have a horse in this race.

Which is why — and some people don't seem to be big fans of my methods — I'm a lot more strict on what I define as "fan" in the first place.
May 12, 12:47 AM
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Nov 2018
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I think if you're on this website, you're already a hardcore anime fan compared to the average anime fan
May 12, 1:19 AM
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Most forum posts are made by the most obsessive "fans" who tend to rack up the most viewing hours, so you get a false impression if you're scanning the posts here (or anywhere, really).

Many anime fans have limits on their time and access and have to use some level of discernment rather than just torrenting everything and then spending their lives complaining about watching a lot of stuff they didn't like and how the industry is in terminal decline.

Some anime fans - whisper it quietly - actually WANT to pay the creators of the things they like and try to avoid piracy when there's an alternative! These poor innocents are not only limiting their viewing to things that they actually want to see, and trying to find time in their real lives, but they're even limited by budgets! It's a wonder they manage to watch anything, really.

Strangely, these people who put some effort and thought into their anime viewing are regarded as "tourists" or "casuals" while the hogs in the trough that regard viewing hours as more important than the quality of the material watched and who pride themselves on not paying a penny for the work of other people think of themselves as real fans and not, for example, a bunch of self-important parasitical little-Hitlers who give the whole field a bad name.
May 12, 1:44 AM

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Dec 2015
9224
Well yeah, the standard usually is a median/dominant [I often confuse these math terms] which usually refers to most mutual points here it would be the same show watched/read, the extraordinary will be always people on both sides, those whom never watched any anime and those whom watched a lot of anime, that's how it work for most of the stuff which includes entries/skill/scale of measurmenets of someone's stuff.

derangedx29 said:
@erotardation but wouldn't someone who uses a site to track anime be more hardcore than average?

Several years ago yes it would be, right now it is normal, most of the sites including illegal ones [especially the Polish one have it, I don't know about other countries] have listing options, I am not sure but wouldn't be surprised if streaming services also would have this option.
May 12, 1:50 AM
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Mar 2025
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Reply to derangedx29
@Asangbanne anyone coming to a site specifically to track how much anime they watch will be more hardcore on average than people who don't think about anime after they turn off Netflix.


What exactly means hardcore? i am playing video games for over 40 years now, i am playing at least 2 hours per day and over 8 hours at weekends yet i am a casual since i always play in the easiest difficulty. I bet there are people who have ever watched like 10 series yet they know everything about them, what happens in episode 27 of season 3, lore, characters etc. They are the hardcore ones.
May 12, 1:59 AM

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Days watched is a rather simplistic metric to evaluate anime fans.
May 12, 2:08 AM

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Yeah the average fan is more casual than you thought.
May 12, 5:20 AM
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There are probably tens of thousands of abandoned profiles with like 2 anime tracked which would likely weight anyone who tracks even a couple dozen shows into like the top 10% of users. I imagine anyone who sticks with tracking their progress for more than a week lands in the top 25% at least.

Speaking for myself, this is probably the fifth account I've created over the years and I don't even think I've logged any tracking on this profile - I just use it for forums.
May 12, 5:48 AM
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Apr 2014
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The word fan doesn't mean anything except potential customer these days, so yes you have watched more anime than the average potential customer for sure, since that is how the word is currently used, rather than as fanatic, which would mean you need to be obsessed about anime to begin with and would rule out probably most of the people here.
May 12, 5:57 AM

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Aug 2020
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Depends on what is average and what is hardcore. These definitions have lots of nuances from what I noticed.

May 12, 6:13 AM

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I have like 3 friends that have only watched 1 anime in their lives. Also, I have several friends who have only watched like 5 or 6 things and they are Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen and this type of mega mainstream things that everyones has watched.
I would say I'm a hardcore fan even though I know that my days watched aren't really that impressive (I like to watch things pretty slowly). Not only I keep a rating list but I'm pretty active on anime forums and discussion on the internet and my whole YouTube, TikTok and Instagram feeds are basically only anime and sports. Like I feel that I'm a lot more active in the community than most and anime is the hobby that takes the majority of my freetime. So I guess that I would tend to think people that don't partake in anime discussions, that aren't really in the community and that truly only watch the mega mainstream shows are the biggest bulk of "anime fans". The thing is that when you really use frequently a site like this you get biased towards thinking that having 50+ or 100+ days of anime watched and frequently discussing things on forums is more normal than it actually is.
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May 13, 1:47 PM

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I don't think anyone should look to MAL for what's normal lol
May 13, 2:46 PM

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Jul 2014
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With how mainstream anime's gotten, that's pretty much a given.
Take care of yourself

May 13, 2:47 PM

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Sep 2023
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isn't this kind of just the definition of what "casual" is

also i barely catalog anything i watch because i'm lazy
May 15, 9:57 AM

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Jul 2013
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What exactly is wrong with being a causal anime fan? Do I seem like a causal or hardcore anime fan? BTW I don't even bother listing most of the anime shows I watch.

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It’s time to ditch the text file.
Keep track of your anime easily by creating your own list.
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