The internet is getting worse, with search engines forcing AI down everyone’s throats and giving worse search results, thus making it harder to find other Japanese media blog posts, podcasts, videos, and news. Enshittification is worsening the internet, making finding content created by other bloggers, podcasters, and more harder.
Some sites include Anime Nano, AnimeBlogger Antenna, and, most recently, AniBlogTracker. The first two are pretty much gone, which leaves AniBlogTracker. The site aggregates all the anime and Japanese media blogs, channels, podcasts, and more with one website and allows you to follow other sites. Unfortunately, the owner has shut down the website, leaving no alternative until now.
What are these blog aggregators?
AnimeNano and AnimeBlog Antenna are sites where you can discover new blog posts in the Anime Blogosphere. During the 2000s, blogging took off, and many people created blogs ranging from anime reviews to editorials, Japanese culture, and more. They are also curated, so blogs only focus on Japanese media or culture.
While you can use a search to find reviews on anime or manga, it’s a lot easier to see them on these sites. These sites also allow you to follow blogs in one place. They rely on RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which generates a feed of your recent content and enables users to subscribe to sites and view the latest content through an application.
However, with the rise of social media, RSS functionality in web browsers eventually got removed, but it hasn’t gone away completely.
Why bring back AniBlogTracker?
AniBlogTracker shut down on May 7th of this year without warning. Given that it’s getting challenging to discover new content with search getting worse and blogs getting to obscurity, thus killing independent sites, it’s important to have a website to make it easy for Japanese media and culture fans to find content on these sites. Therefore, I stepped in to create a replacement.
While the old site died, one of my goals was to grow Sakurajima. Besides hosting a Mastodon and Misskey server and blog hosting, it is to make a better version of AnimeNano, AnimeBlog Antenna, and Anime Blog Tracker.
After a week of developing the back and front end, I created a working site version. It still has bugs and missing features such as tagging posts to Anime titles, browsing posts by current seasons, and the ability to follow blogs, but it has 70% of what the original site has. It only took 1 week of development, which is quite a feat. This time, I made it open-sourced with an open API (application programming interface). This way, people can help contribute to the project and even use some of the functionality in their applications.
The new AniBlogTracker does what the original does. It lets you see the latest blog posts in the anime/manga/Japanese media/culture blogosphere. It allows you to discover posts from other blogs you might not have known existed. Also, there is a section to follow the latest news.
While users cannot follow sites on the new AniBlogTracker yet, this feature is coming this summer. Coming this summer, there is also a feature that allows a user to claim a site they own, allowing the owner to change the description and/or add their Mastodon or Bluesky profile.
You can begin using it by visiting aniblogtracker.app. If you encounter bugs or want to see a feature added, you can share them on the Sakurajima Forums.
How can I add my blog?
Most currently active blogs should be on the site, as I used an extensive list of sites that The Crow maintainsto help build the initial list, with some additions. If you don’t see your site on this list, you can use this form to add it (Only Japanese media/culture-related sites that are a month old will be added).
As always, if you find this new AniBlogTracker revival useful, I suggest helping to support AniBlogTracker (and other services on Sakurajima) through the following:
With that, I hope to maintain and run it for years to come.
If you have any suggestions or thoughts about the new site, feel free to share them in the comments.
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