About World of Anime

What is World of Anime?

World of Anime is a niche community personal hobby site created by meeko where fans of Japanese animation can hang out together to talk about anime and their love of the genre.

World of Anime is not a social networking site. While you have profiles and you can post comments and add friends, there are significant fundamental differences. In my opinion, social networks are the equivalent of high school popularity contests. Some of the things I would note that make World of Anime different are:

• There are no algorithms designed to push content to you.
• There are no "likes" or other reactions so there is no incentive to try to make the most popular comment.
• Posts are displayed in their order of posting, and everyone sees the same posts.
• You aren't being "tricked" into staying on the site with mindless endless scrolling and content pushing. The site is designed for you to get on, check out what is new since the last time you were on, and then get off.
• Your list of friends is private to you and not publicly shown, so again there is no incentive to try to become popular and have the most friends.

This site has one purpose. To hang out with other anime fans and talk about anime.

A Brief History of World of Anime

The history of World of Anime goes back to the late 1990s. I saw Anipike, and I said to myself, "Wow, this site is pretty cool. I should make an anime site." I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to be on it, but I knew I wanted to make a site dedicated to anime, being a fan myself. I came up with the name World of Anime, and registered the domain name worldofanime.com, and then promptly didn't do anything with it for nearly 10 years.

Then in early 2009 I figured I would finally do something with it. Social networking sites were becoming all the rage, and I figured I would try my hand at building one. I'm not really sure why because I'm not a fan of social networking sites, I mostly just did it because I wanted to see what I could build and see if anyone would find it and use it. I launched the first version on December 5th, 2009

To my surprise, people did start finding it and using it. Slowly at first, but it did start picking up. Seeing people find my site and use it encouraged me to keep adding new features to the site. I kept adding features pretty regularly for a few years and the site kept growing pretty regularly at the same time. Unfortunately, the lack of initial planning on the site and the haphazard way of tacking on new features led to many issues with poor performance and bugs. The site because nearly impossible to maintain, and I ultimately had to abandon the custom built site in 2015.

At that time, I bought an off the shelf social networking software and the site had a re-boot, esentially completely starting over. I almost instantly regretted the decision.

It was at this point, in my opinion, that World of Anime started to lose its character. It became just another "social networking" site that behaved like all the others. I couldn't add features to the site, I couldn't change how it behaved, I just had to accept the off the shelf package. To make it worse, the site started to attract more and more people who seemed to just love causing trouble.

The tone of the site changed, and a few negative people turned the whole experience of the site bad. I am largely to blame, as I sat by and let it happen without removing the bad elements. I took too much of an open freedom mindset and told people to just ignore the negative people. In retrospect, I should not have done that. I should have enforced a more positive experience and removed users who did nothing but cause trouble. This overall takeover in negativity, combined with no longer having an emotional attachment to the actual code of the site that I built myself led me to ultimately take the site down in 2020. It was needed for my overall mental health.

Almost immediately I started working on a new version of the site, going back to being custom created by me. I got maybe 70% of the way completed, and then had to stop for some time. I never really continued with that version, and abandoned it.

Then again in early 2026 I decided it was time to give it another try. I took everything I had learned from the earlier versions of the site, and set out to create the most friendly anime community site as a way for anime fans to connect with each other and share their love of the genre. I wanted to capture the essence of the original site, so the look is very similar. Most importantly, I want the site to remain friendly and positive. I will not allow the site to be taken over again by negative and abusive behavior. People who engage in this activity will be warned, banned, and/or removed from the site. I'm no longer chasing numbers or popularity for the site. I am perfectly fine with a small, friendly group of people who just like to hang out and talk about anime.

If you are a friendly anime fan, and just want to hang out with a group of other friendly anime fans, this is your place. I hope you enjoy World of Anime!