Anison

What is Anison?

Anison is a japanese Anime SongDB AniDB wants you to use when adding Songs or Collections.

Where do I find Anison?

The Original Page is a bit messy and makes people who aren't familiar with Japanese click around quite a lot before finding this page, which is the one we "offer" on the add templates.

I have no idea what the page tells me...

That's no problem because that's what this pretty wiki page is here for. To explain to you - the willing user - how to use Anison with its features you may not know of.

The Legend

Before explaining the four different ways of searching it's better to go through the legend Anison provides on its front page.

Anison Original Shorty	Anison Original Explanation	Romaji	English Translation	Extra Explanation
OP	オープニング	Oopeningu / Opening	Opening	marked song's been an opening song
ED	エンディング	Endingu / Ending	Ending	marked song's been an ending song
IN	挿入歌	Sounyuu Uta	Insert Song	marked song's been played in an Anime at some point as an insert song
IM	イメージソング	Imeeji Songu / Image Song	Image Song	marked song's been written for the Anime / with the Anime in mind and didn't actually show up in the Anime (!!rare cases say different!!)
TM	テーマソング(OP,ED分類が不明の時等に使用)	Teema Songu / Theme Song (OP, ED Bunrui ga Fumei no Tokira ni Shiyou)	Theme Song (OP, ED Category gets used sometimes)	A theme song is either a repeated theme for a character or for the Anime itself but can also be the opening or ending song of a movie (and gets just called Theme Song).
UK	不明	Fumei	unidentified / unknown	marked song's unknown which "role" it played
AR	アレンジ曲・カバー曲など	Arenji / Arranged Kiyoku - Kabaa / Cover Kiyoku Nado	Arranged Piece of Music / Cover Piece of Music and similiar	marked song's instrumental or a cover of another song
CF	番組関連のCMで使用された曲	Bangumi Kanren no CM de Shiyousareta Kiyoku	Piece of Music that's used in TV related Commercials	-
GE	一般曲(アニメ系タイアップのない曲)	Ippan Kiyoku (Anime Kei Taiappu / Type no nai Kiyoku)	normal/ordinary piece of music (they type that's not been used with an Anime relation)	marked song hasn't been used for an Anime (but is still listed in Anison)
KK	番組摘要の企画ものと同一の意味同名の番組が存在し、企画物の曲がある場合、OP/ED分類でKKとし、番組を増やさずに対応している事もあります	Bangumi Tekiyou no Kikakumono to Douitsu no Imi - Doumyou no Bangumi ga Sonzaishi, Kikakumono no Kiyoku ga Aru Baai, OP/ED Bunrui de KK Toshi, Bangumi o Zouya Sazuni Taioushiteiru Koto mo Arimasu

How do I find stuff?!

As it's a Japanese Website you need to use Japanese as input (or the pseudo-japanese English - case dependable)

The search Engine

Under the search field are 4 different markable choices. Those are:

作品
曲
人物
音源

Those specify the meaning of what you put in the search field.

Hint 1

Anison doesn't like spaces at the beginning of a search string

作品 (Sakuhin)...

... means nothing else than Production or Work. In other words: use this to search for the Anime's name.

Hint 2

Easily take the Anime's name from its AniDB page but don't forget that you can also search with only half the name and still get results shown. As soon as there's numbers or for example a ~ in the Anime's name, better leave that whole part out as Anison may not have information about the Anime with that exact name

Hint 3

When the original title is in English try the name with spaces in between or without. You may get a result then.

曲 (Kiyoku)...

...means Piece of Music. This field is helpful when you know the name of the song already in its Kanji/Kana form.

人物 (Jinbutsu)...

...is a field where you can insert a person's name that worked on the song of your choice. It can be a lyricist, an arranger, the performing band, the singer/songstress aso. Use this field when you don't know the song's name nor the Anime it belongs to, but the Performer.

音源 (Ongen)...

...translates to "Sound Source" and can be the name of the Collection (Single, Album) your song is on or its Catalog Number. Use this field when you try to find a Soundtrack entry for example, which you couldn't find yet with other methods.

Hint 4

When the Collection you're looking for is a Soundtrack just put the Anime's Name in the search field. Anison will list you every Single/Album in its DB that has your search string as a part in its name.

Results or "It seems Anison found something but I have no idea what the fields mean!?"

If your search was successful Anison will you show you a little table with more than just one clickable field. Let's take Asterisk, one of Bleach's Opening Songs as a reference for explaining the different search results of each search method.

Hint 5

Nearly all columns are sortable, just click on them to find out

Results for 作品

As explained before, this field is used to search for the Anime. As a search string let's insert "Bleach". This will give us 18 results - one of them is our desired destination.
There are three columns: ジャンル (Genre), 作品名 (Sakuhin'na - Production Name) and 放映年 (Houei Nen - Broadcasting Year).
The Genre column gives you for example:

テレビアニメーション (Television Animation)
劇場用アニメーション (Theater Animation)
ゲーム (Game)
ラジオ (Radio)

The 'Production Name' column lists the original names of the medium it derives.

The Broadcasting or Televising column shows the date the medium has been shown first.

-- Now just click on the correct link and you will be sent to Anison's Anime Page --

Results for 曲

This time we insert the song's name "*~アスタリスク~" in the search field and get a table with this time five columns:

曲名 (Kiyokuna - Name of the Piece of Music)
歌手名 (Kashuna - Name of the Singer/Performer)
ジャンル (Genre (for example TV or GM (Game Music))
使用作品 (could be seen as "used in:")
種別 (Classification)

For "*~アスタリスク~" we got three results: two with the exact same string and a third one with an additional bracket (this time it's "Asterisk (Album Version)") in the first column. So this one lists the song's names.

The second one lists the performer. In this case all three are the same (just try to look for a song with such a generic name as "Yakusoku" (約束) and you will have more "choice").

The Genre column shows that two of the songs derive from an Anime (TV) and one from a game (GM).

As said before, the fourth column could be read as "used in:". Our "Asterisk" has been used in BLEACH and Bleach: Hit the Soul.

The last column specifies the usage. We got OP 1, OP (for the game) and AR (a kind of remix or other version of the original Asterisk).

-- Now just click on the correct song name and you will be taken to the Song's page --

Results for 人物

As we know the performers of our song are Orange Range, this is also what we enter as a search string.
The result differs from the other pages as there are no columns present. All you will find are names of people that have a connection to your search. This time it's the band's name and the names of all band members (present and previous).

-- Now just click on the band's name and you will be taken to their Anison page --

Results for 音源

Using the Anime's name is always a good choice to find what you want in this field. In our case we insert "BLEACH" once more and chose the fourth search option.
This time the results are overwhelming 176 different mediums. The five columns are

ジャンル (Genre)
使用作品 ("used in:")
メディア (Media)
型番 (Catalog Number)
タイトル (Title).

The Genre column is the same as before, just like the next column.

The third colum, Media, is new. Results are for example:

マキシシングル (Maxi Single)
アルバム (Album)
DVD (DVD)

If you couldn't guess already, this column tells you what medium the "thing" is on that the fifth column indexes.

The fourth column, Catalog Number, is self-explanatory as well.

The last column tells you the name of the medium, be it album, single, DVD or game.

-- Now just click on the medium in the fifth column you were looking for and you will be taken to its Anison page --

How do I interpret the specific results?

Whenever you clicked before on your desired link, you landed on another different page, which was more specific for your needs. But the language still didn't change...

Anime Page

The first two tables are uninteresting. The first tells you the series name, the second one informs about airing. For OVAs it would inform you about the release date of the DVDs.

What's important is the third table, but not all of it for now.

OP/ED
曲名
歌手
作詞
作曲
編曲

The first column OP/ED specifies the usage of the song, the legend explanation from above shall be helpful here.
The second column is again the name of the piece of music.
The other 4 columns tell you about the staff, Singer, lyricist, composer and arranger. These you will find in a better (copyable) manner on the song's page.

Song Page

This must be the most imortant page for those who only want to add songs. All three tables are useful.

The first Table

This one simply shows you the staff.

担当 (Tantou) - "in charge of:"
名前 (Namae) - Name

Hint 6

Instead of leaving it out, Anison sometimes has "(インスト)" put next to the singer. That translates to "instrumental" and means that the song has no singer. Of course that's a staff "member" you can easily forget about.

The second Table

Consists of:

メディア (Media)
型番 (Catalog Number)
タイトル (Title)
収録トラック (Recording Track)
発売日 (First Selling Date)
価格(税抜) (Price (tax excluded))

This table shows you on which collections this one song can be found. When you're looking for the collection, the third column is your friend. From here you will reach the Collection page.

The third Table

使用作品 can be translated as "used in:" once again.

ジャンル (Genre)
タイトル (Title)
OP/ED (OP/ED)

This one is similar to the search results from 曲 (Kiyoku). The only change is that it doesn't show information on other songs that have the same string as a part of the name, but only for this one song. This specific page here tells you that the song Asterisk has been used for the TV Bleach as an Opening (Opening 1 to be specific) and for the Game Bleach: Hit the Soul as an Opening. This table will also inform you, if a song wasn't in an Anime at all. This would look like:

Collection Page

This page is the most important page for people that want to add whole collections.
The page lists at first the collection's name, though it's not always being used as a whole!

Hint 7

Anison likes to list "Collection Name/Interpret" - like in this case "Asterisk / Orange Range", of course only the first part is needed when adding collections to AniDB.

What follows is a one-line-table. The reddish fields are the contents, the yellow ones the information. In our example it's like this:

メディア --> マキシシングル (Medium: Maxi Single)
型番 --> SRCL-5885 (Catalog Number: SRCL-5885)
発売日 --> 2005年02月23日 (Release Date: 23.02.2005 (dd.mm.yyyy!))
価格(税抜) --> 1165 (Price (without tax): 1165 (yen))

Two of these are only important for AniDB adding.

The last table shows you the content of the collection, 'that Anison is listing'.

Hint 8

This doesn't automatically mean that the Disc only has 3 Tracks, as it's in our case.

The other table's contents are:

収録トラック (Track number)
曲名 (Name)
歌手, 作詞, 作曲, 編曲 (Staff information)
演奏時間 (Length)

As an extra Anison links to the Amazon.jp website's specific collection entry. Here you can find for example a better picture for the upload and the complete tracklist (in 99% of the cases).
For our case it shows you that there's indeed a 4th track, that's not listed on Anison:
4. *~アスタリスク~(ロマンティックVer.) --> Asterisk (Romantic Version). So never trust Anison that it lists all songs and better check other (valid!!) sources.

People/Band/Performer Pages

This page is important for "virtual Bands" such as Momotsuki Gakuen 1 Nen C Gumi or Zetsubou Shoujo-tachi that consists of characters. It will show you who's part of the group and who's behind it.<be> For normal bands it shows you at first the members in the 固有情報 (Specific Information) Box with their function in the band.

The contents of the table are:

担当 ("in charge of: / responsible for:")
曲名 (name of the piece of music)
ジャンル (Genre)
作品名 (name of the work it appears in)
OP/ED

That means - for the first row: Orange Range were the Performers (担当) of Asterisk (曲名) for the TV (ジャンル) (Anime) Bleach (作品名), which has been used as Opening 1 (OP/ED).

So this page can take you either to the song's or the Anime's page.

Help! The link in the Linkbar always stays the same?!

Yes it does, but to get the specific link there are three "tricks":

You right-click on the link you need and choose "Copy Link Location"
You click on the link, hold it and put it into the destination field vie drag and drop
You simply open the link in a new tab via 'middle click' or 'Open Link in New Tab" at the earliest possible time (for example after the search results). From here on the linkbar will always change according to the page you are on.