FAQ:Recommendations

What anime should I watch next?

AniDB provides three easy facilities for recommending anime to users:

Anime Hint

• You need to have a MyList, and have voted for 30 or more anime before the last routine maintenance.
• Suggestions are automated, based on a range of tweakable parameters.

The Anime Recommendations Database

• These are hand-created links between similar anime, with short explanations, on the Anime Planet website.
• Not all AniDB entries have a corresponding AniRec entry.
• To make recs yourself or add a new entry, see the Anime Planet forum.

MyRecommendations

• You can add anime you've recently watched to your recommendations list with a short comment.
• Recommendations are then shared among your buddies.
• This system is meant to support you in finding new, popular shows. For all time favourites votes should be used.

Other possibilities

There are are also other ways you might find something interesting:

Types of anime

If you want anime with a certain style or theme, browse AniDB by category.

General recommendations

Japanese animation awards:

• Mainichi Awards - animation awards since 1962
• Japan Media Arts awards and Jury Recommended Works, homepage in Japanese, English, and Korean.

Opinion:

• TSURIBE Manabu (釣部 學) in Japanese or English.
• DOI Hitoshi (土井 仁志) rankings for TV series and OVAs and movies
• Yearly 'Anime Best Ranking' by Navi 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
• Ben Ettinger has some lists of anime he doesn't quite call "best".
• Gilles Poitras, R1 DVD rent/buy oriented Recommended Anime.
• Also for R1 releases, AnimeOnDVD Recommends.
• The votes pages of AniDB denizens

Fan averages:

• All of AniDB ranked by sheep vote!
• AnimeReactor Community picks for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and retrospectively for 2000, 2001, 2002
• Various bits of statistical nonsense on Anime News Network top-lists - people, filtering doesn't matter if the sample sucks.
• The 2002-05-26 edition of a top-100s TV program on TV Asahi, list on the web archive (set encoding to Shift_JIS, stupid site), translation posted on 2002-05-28 Anime News Service.
• Animage listing of important anime from 2001, misreported by Anime News Network, then somewhat corrected.

Reading reviews

All anime in AniDB can have user-submitted reviews - after reading them feel free to use the review comments system to give feedback. For other websites with reviews, see the links under Recommended Links#Anime Reviews.

Asking people

If you must ask people on a forum or IRC for recommendations, it's impossible to give useful answers without knowing what kind of thing you like. First check your profile to make sure your MyList and votes are publicly visible. Then on the forum give a link to your MyList like this: [mylist:YOUR_UID_HERE:my MyList] - or for IRC use this: http://anidb.net/uYOUR_UID_HERE - replacing "YOUR_UID_HERE" with your user ID (UID). You can find your UID number in parentheses after your nick in your MyPlace. This should give people a rough idea of the kind of anime you like.