Anime News NetworkReviews of animenewsnetwork.com

The site is fine if you only use it for anime news. In that regards it's impartial and factual. There's no politics or preferences for anime genres in their articles. The problem with the site is the reviews and the forums. The reviews are completely worthless. There's is a genuine possibility that their writers don't actually like anime. They don't look to understand that there are different anime genres to meet a wide rang of anime preferences. So someone who hates ecchi anime, romance anime or shonen anime (just to name a few) will often ends up reviewing these genres on this site. How can someone who doesn't even like that genre know what makes a good anime of that type? The forums are incredibly toxic. It's full of toxic positivity and hard rejection of anyone who doesn't feel exactly the same way as them. It's a lot like reddit or bluesky. Have a differing opinion and you'll be dogpiled on. Don't you dare think that Solo Levelling is overrated. Don't you dare try and explain to these people that echii anime is trashy but harmless and is no refection of people in real life. I genuinely think this sits forums are full of tourists. A reason why is the conversations around AI translations in manga space, the reason I support this is because a lot of localisers modify the script to the point that it's barely the same script as is used in the original Japanese material (look at how bad the severn seas transitions are for examples of this). Put that in a comments on animenewsnetwork.com and the amount of abuse you'll get is ridiculous. You don't even get intelligent comments back that address your points and I can't see this niche site having a bot problem either. These are real tourists who don't care about the anime/manga/video game industry. So yeah, my advice is to just use this site for news and nothing else.

These boys oughta change the title to CNN, because it's nothing but garbage that comes out of the site.

The woke staff and users at Anime News Network are gatekeepers that basically make it impossible for any Ecchi or any anime for straight males in general to be considered good. Since ANN are not just the main news/review site anyone uses, but also pretty much the only one, their reviews and opinions set the standard for the western anime community. They immediately give every Ecchi a bad review from episode 1, forming the opinion that it's a bad show and first impressions are nearly impossible to overcome. So every Ecchi starts out with a bad rating and can never overcome it. This leads to less Ecchi getting dubbed (even though Ecchi is one of the most popular genres) since all Ecchi are considered bad. Meanwhile Shoujo trash, which no one but a very small amount of anime fans actually likes, always get a good review since their for women and gay people and therefor automatically good in the eyes of ANN. This has lead to a ton of Shoujo and BL nobody likes such as Twilight out of Focus, Cherry Magic, The Gorilla God's Go-to Girl, and Anyways I'm Falling in Love With You getting dubbed directly instead of some of the most popular Shonen anime of the year such as Days with My Stepsister, Love is Indivisible by Twins, I'm Getting Married to a Girl I Hate in My Class, and Please Put Them On Takamine-San, all of which are ridiculously sub-only since the liberals at ANN and Crunchyroll hate Ecchi, High School anime, and anything for a straight male audience. ANN is also a so called anime news website that can't even define anime. They constantly call Chinese, South Korean, and even Western cartoons such as To Be Hero X and Anne Shirley "Anime" even though they are not. Anime are Japanese. A series that wasn't created by Japanese people cannot be anime by definition. This blatant misinformation peddled by Anime News Network has lead to shows that aren't anime (such as Link Click and Tower of God) getting dubbed by Crunchyroll, another so called anime company, instead of actual anime. They have normalized the blatantly false idea that anything can be made into an anime, as long as the production is done by Japanese people. That begs the question then, what is the point of anime if it isn't distinct from cartoons? The thing that makes anime different in the first place is Japanese culture. A show like Anne Shirley doesn't have a single ounce of Asian culture at all, let alone Japanese culture. The fact it's animated by Japanese people instead of westerners is something you won't even notice while watching it, unlike cultural differences which are blatant. Thus Anime News Network's definition of anime is no different from cartoons from any country. I would think a liberal website like ANN would tell you that trying to change something from another culture is the very definition of cultural appropriation. That's exactly what ANN are doing when they call some western cartoon an anime. They intentionally exclude English dub fans, which make up at least half of the anime fanbase, from their "Your Weekly Anime Ratings" section. It would actually be impossible to include dub fans in this since more than half of anime aren't dubbed, and the ones that are dubbed mostly don't come out at the same time as the subtitled episodes. However, for such a liberal website to exclude an entire group of people seems entirely hypocritical. Aren't they supposed to be inclusive? Why do dub fans get no say or voice in the anime ranking system? An alternative to this system that actually includes ALL anime fans would be to move to a "Your Monthly Anime Ratings" system instead of doing it every week. I don't see ANN ever doing that though since they (and sub fans in general) clearly enjoy the power they get from being gatekeepers - being the only ones who get to have their opinions read while dub fans aren't included. ANN are also run by people who can't even tell you how many genders there are (for anyone at ANN reading this, there are only two - Male and Female). They insert politics into things constantly, they pretend anime aren't significantly more censored than they used to be (because they are pro censorship but they know censorship is unpopular, so they claim the fact anime is censored garbage now is a lie or exaggeration). I'm not sure if it's even possible for anyone who works for ANN to see anime from an apolitical viewpoint. A news website is supposed to be unbiased. I don't know if I've ever come across a more blatantly biased website than ANN. If you value truth, sanity, and most of all normalcy, I'd suggest avoiding Anime News Network.

Anime News Network has never really been a great site in general. Since it's inception it's had it's fair share of biases and controversies. However in recent years the already mediocre quality of the site has somehow gotten worse. Fake news stories, clickbait headlines, "discussion" moderation so aggressive they censor anything they find remotely "offensive" to them personally (seriously, half my comments/posts don't even make it through...) and God forbid you question a moderator they will ban you in a heartbeat, and an already toxic community that somehow makes Reddit look tame. To me ANN (much like it's gaming equivalent IGN) is really just a phase you go through and eventually outgrow. There are much better sites out there with more factual information than what you find on ANN. Save yourself time and toxicity.

Confused, it is full of quite strange grades on anime and manga. Often their ratings do not match reality, there are bad anime and manga with high ratings and good anime and manga with low ratings. The news they give then are often uninteresting.

I was trying to engage in a conversation on the site Animenewsnetwork.com ; after quoting another user. They removed my comment. As I'm concerned for my fellow anime fans, and anime conversation attendees. My comment was, and I quote "He didn't have to directly say it, he/she did imply it with their statement." (User was stating only unvaccinated people spread covid.) As the CDC has already stated, most of the people spreading the virus since early August has been vaccinated people. As there is too many links to cite for this, I'll just give one of the many you can find on the CDC website. Cited: cdc dot gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm (Official USA site) Back on the topic. Everything should be shutdown again until everyone has all three booster shots. Tired of everyone acting like the unvaccinated people are spreading this. Less than 31% now are unvaccinated. Everything should be shutdown until everyone has all the boosters documented. " This is the only safe way to make sure everyone will not get covid-19. I put this up to help protect everyone, but they did not care about the safety of everyone. Instead they are moderating everything, to fit their conversative agendy of misinformation. Please be warned if you're viewing AnimeNewsNetwork, most of their forums are spreading misinformation about Covid-19 and other health concerns. Thank you, John Stevens.