Graph.Anime.plus: An Anime Website Overview

Graph.Anime.plus is in essence a more mathematical and statistical version of my anime list. The website automatically assumes that you already have a “my anime list” account and uses it as your own profile.

In this way, anyone can find your statistics, profile and recommendations from just entering you MAL username into the website. If you’ve got to the extent of reading anime blogs then I’m guessing you already know about MAL and already have an opinion of it. If you care enough about anime to read anime blogs then I definitely recommend getting an account on MAL. It will store all of your watched shows and will allow you to keep track of what you want to watch, forums, recommendations, all anime ever (pretty much) and reviews.

I already use this site greatly to write my other anime posts as it’s got lots of information about each show and the staff that make it and I couldn’t recommend it enough. This cannot be said for graph.anime.plus.

Not to say that graph+ (what I will be abbreviating graph.anime.plus too) is bad it just doesn’t have nearly as much functionality. It feels more of an attachment than a real individual website. Despite this, the features that the website has may interest you so I will explain everything that the website can do too my knowledge.

The appeal is that you can see your statistics for anime and manga. It will tell you how much of each genre you like, how much time you’ve spent watching/reading and it will also tell you average ratings for each studio and genre. It’s very interesting too spend 15 minutes going through it and seeing what you like. Apparently my favourite studio is Diomedea however I’ll disagree with that. It will tell you depressing things as well, such as that I’ve seen 814 hours of comedy anime or 583 of action show (even though action is apparently my least favourite genre) so be warned to see some pretty sad and depressing statistics about your viewing habits.

It can also tell you how many episodes you’ve seen this week (which is something MAL can do) however it displays it in a cool bar chart that is appealing to the eyes. It will also tell you the different titles that you’ve viewed too, if you even care that much.

It can also tell you your rating distribution, rating vs time spent and ratings vs episode count. Unfortunately it tells you how many minutes you watch anime a day so that can be interpreted as a good or bad thing.

One thing that’s cool is that it will show you how much you conform to the rest of society by comparing your rating with the average mean and telling you how much above or below you are. I’ve learned that on average I rate 1.3 below the global mean for anime.

It will also give you ridiculously hard achievements too fulfil which are sometimes completely stupid. The website thinks that you need to have watched over 100 of a certain type of anime to earn an achievement. Due to this you can have completed 199 anime but not got past the “first step” achievement.

I’ve saved the best or worst for last in this case. The website will look at your statistics, what kind of shows you like and e.c.t to try and recommend you things that you make like with the intent on being specific for the user. The only thing is that the recommendations don’t change, you cannot delete recommendations and they recommend way too many films.

The problem is that I really don’t think that this system works, when comparing my recommendations with other people they’ve got most of the same shows as me. It’s annoying that you need to watch a show and update it to MAL to get it off your recommendations list even if you know you won’t like it.

So overall I think it’s a fun website which is interesting for 5 minutes. If the recommendation system was improved to do what intended but with the ability to remove things then I would see myself using this a lot more. The problem is that you might watch a film that you hate just to get it off the list, but because you just watched a film it will replace it with another one. So it could definitely be better.