Plan on watching anime this year, or reading manga? Ever wanted a way to easily show what you plan to watch next season? Do you love participating in yearly challenges on sites like Goodreads?
Today, we're announcing Anime-Planet's community challenges, a fun way for you to track what you're watching and to compete with your friends.
Choose from these challenges
You can join challenges from the new challenges landing page. There are three to choose from at launch:
For tracking what you're watching this Winter 2018 anime season. Anything listed on the season chart part counts for this challenge.
This is the equivalent of the Goodreads reading challenge, but for anime. For tracking any anime you watch in this calendar year.
For tracking any manga you read in this calendar year. Anything in the manga database counts - light novels, web novels, manhua, manhwa, etc.
We plan to launch monthly challenges for both anime and manga within a few months, which will replace the Monthly Marathon effort that's been going on in the forum for years. We also hope to roll out user-created challenges sometime in the future.
Watch anime, get dango!
There are different "levels" for each challenge. Level 1 is meant to be accessible and attainable for anyone, including casual fans. Levels 2 and 3 are meant to be more of a challenge, but are still attainable if you try your best.
At each level, you get another dango, leading to a full dango at level 3!
When looking at your own challenge page, you can see how many anime or manga you have left to hit the next level.
Compete with your friends
On anyone's challenge page, you'll see faceoff information comparing your scores, and you can follow someone from their challenge page.
Leaderboards and recent update sections on challenge pages show both a "People you follow" and "Community" tab, defaulting to people you follow, to easily compare.
Once you hit level 3, your total anime or manga will still increase, and people with the highest total will be at the top. If you don't follow anyone, the "People you follow" tab won't appear.
Show off your progress
We've set up auto-generated banners for challenge pages:
These banners will appear automatically as a preview on sites like Twitter or Facebook.
So the next time someone asks you 'what do you plan to watch in [x season]?', feel free to link them to your shiny new challenge landing page. Note that these images are cached after they're first accessed, so if you plan to share your challenge, make sure to mark things as want to watch *before* you share it for the first time.
Note that these banners are also set up for custom lists right now, and we plan to roll them out for other pages on the site as well (like your personal/primary anime and manga lists, tag pages, etc).
Challenge FAQ
The challenge levels are too (easy/hard)! Can you change them?
Levels vary per challenge. We came up with the current values based on long conversations with the beta testers, with the goal of making these accessible to everyone but still challenging.
We don't have current plans to roll out "special hard" challenges or customizable levels, but we'll be evaluating user progress/feedback to see if the yearly numbers need to be adjusted in the next month. For seasonal challenges, we'll iterate. For example, if everyone unanimously clears level 3 we'll look at increasing it in the Spring challenge.
Do multi-cour series count towards seasonal challenges?
Yes and no. Each challenge page will show a list of which titles are applicable. For seasons, this means anything marked on the season chart (which, by design, is 'it starts that season').
We're still figuring out how to deal with series that end up being longer than 1 season - we might snapshot 'total episodes available' on the end date and compare with what you've watched. We'll announce when we have a solution for this.
Do imports count towards the challenge?
No. This is a hard problem to solve, as import data isn't consistent between sites, and because of the way we store import data. Currently, anything you import as status 'watched' or 'read' will never count towards a challenge, so if you plan to migrate to A-P, import your list before Jan 1 when the challenges start.
We're looking into if we can make this work with a manual step, such as removing/re-adding something after you import it.
Do rewatches count towards the challenges?
Not currently. We're looking into if this is possible in the future.
I found a bug, where do I report it?
Please report any bugs in the bug forum, NOT in this thread, so that developers can get the information asap.
What's next?
We'll be monitoring performance closely, as well as fixing any bugs that get reported. We're also working on launch features that couldn't quite make it in on time, like forum discussion posts (similar to on anime/manga entries) on the challenge pages, challenges in the feed, and other things.
We'll also start working on getting monthly challenges up and running.
Keep Anime-Planet running
Anime-Planet is a big site developed by a handful of unpaid volunteers, because we love anime and the community. We rely on the minimal ads we have on the site, and donations, to cover the hefty monthly cost of the servers and other things needed to keep the site running.
If you love the challenges feature, or the site in general, consider supporting Anime-Planet by making a donation to help cover server costs, as well as adding an exception for anime-planet.com to your adblock programs.
Thanks, as always, for your continued support of Anime-Planet
Today, we're announcing Anime-Planet's community challenges, a fun way for you to track what you're watching and to compete with your friends.
Choose from these challenges
You can join challenges from the new challenges landing page. There are three to choose from at launch:
For tracking what you're watching this Winter 2018 anime season. Anything listed on the season chart part counts for this challenge.
This is the equivalent of the Goodreads reading challenge, but for anime. For tracking any anime you watch in this calendar year.
For tracking any manga you read in this calendar year. Anything in the manga database counts - light novels, web novels, manhua, manhwa, etc.
We plan to launch monthly challenges for both anime and manga within a few months, which will replace the Monthly Marathon effort that's been going on in the forum for years. We also hope to roll out user-created challenges sometime in the future.
Watch anime, get dango!
There are different "levels" for each challenge. Level 1 is meant to be accessible and attainable for anyone, including casual fans. Levels 2 and 3 are meant to be more of a challenge, but are still attainable if you try your best.
At each level, you get another dango, leading to a full dango at level 3!
When looking at your own challenge page, you can see how many anime or manga you have left to hit the next level.
Compete with your friends
On anyone's challenge page, you'll see faceoff information comparing your scores, and you can follow someone from their challenge page.
Leaderboards and recent update sections on challenge pages show both a "People you follow" and "Community" tab, defaulting to people you follow, to easily compare.
Once you hit level 3, your total anime or manga will still increase, and people with the highest total will be at the top. If you don't follow anyone, the "People you follow" tab won't appear.
Show off your progress
We've set up auto-generated banners for challenge pages:
These banners will appear automatically as a preview on sites like Twitter or Facebook.
So the next time someone asks you 'what do you plan to watch in [x season]?', feel free to link them to your shiny new challenge landing page. Note that these images are cached after they're first accessed, so if you plan to share your challenge, make sure to mark things as want to watch *before* you share it for the first time.
Note that these banners are also set up for custom lists right now, and we plan to roll them out for other pages on the site as well (like your personal/primary anime and manga lists, tag pages, etc).
Challenge FAQ
The challenge levels are too (easy/hard)! Can you change them?
Levels vary per challenge. We came up with the current values based on long conversations with the beta testers, with the goal of making these accessible to everyone but still challenging.
We don't have current plans to roll out "special hard" challenges or customizable levels, but we'll be evaluating user progress/feedback to see if the yearly numbers need to be adjusted in the next month. For seasonal challenges, we'll iterate. For example, if everyone unanimously clears level 3 we'll look at increasing it in the Spring challenge.
Do multi-cour series count towards seasonal challenges?
Yes and no. Each challenge page will show a list of which titles are applicable. For seasons, this means anything marked on the season chart (which, by design, is 'it starts that season').
We're still figuring out how to deal with series that end up being longer than 1 season - we might snapshot 'total episodes available' on the end date and compare with what you've watched. We'll announce when we have a solution for this.
Do imports count towards the challenge?
No. This is a hard problem to solve, as import data isn't consistent between sites, and because of the way we store import data. Currently, anything you import as status 'watched' or 'read' will never count towards a challenge, so if you plan to migrate to A-P, import your list before Jan 1 when the challenges start.
We're looking into if we can make this work with a manual step, such as removing/re-adding something after you import it.
Do rewatches count towards the challenges?
Not currently. We're looking into if this is possible in the future.
I found a bug, where do I report it?
Please report any bugs in the bug forum, NOT in this thread, so that developers can get the information asap.
What's next?
We'll be monitoring performance closely, as well as fixing any bugs that get reported. We're also working on launch features that couldn't quite make it in on time, like forum discussion posts (similar to on anime/manga entries) on the challenge pages, challenges in the feed, and other things.
We'll also start working on getting monthly challenges up and running.
Keep Anime-Planet running
Anime-Planet is a big site developed by a handful of unpaid volunteers, because we love anime and the community. We rely on the minimal ads we have on the site, and donations, to cover the hefty monthly cost of the servers and other things needed to keep the site running.
If you love the challenges feature, or the site in general, consider supporting Anime-Planet by making a donation to help cover server costs, as well as adding an exception for anime-planet.com to your adblock programs.
Thanks, as always, for your continued support of Anime-Planet
