As you heard, MEDIA DO HOLDINGS Co., Ltd has bought MyAnimeList
I’m super excited to announce – MyAnimeList has been acquired by MEDIA DO HOLDINGS Co., Ltd.（Media Do)! As an established eBook and Manga datastore and distributor, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, I believe Media Do is uniquely positioned to slingshot MAL into being the number one ‘all-things’ anime and manga platform.
What does this mean? In the short term, not a lot will change. A bunch of logistics and legal hurdles are still being worked out, so DeNA will continue the day-to-day maintenance for at least the next few weeks to come. In the less-short term, it means a new dedicated team, a new schedule of priorities, and a new vision for MAL’s future! Having chatted with the Media Do group a number of times now, I’ve been delighted to share in their excitement and enthusiasm for improving and growing MAL.
It’s been roughly four years since DeNA took the helm with MAL’s development, and they successfully guided us through a very difficult growth state. I will forever be grateful to DeNA’s team, and their tireless translators. We’ve come a very long way, and we wouldn’t be here without their care and support.
I have no doubt good things are in store for us this year! Thank you everyone for your support and continued involvement in our amazing community.
Given the bad experiences with DeNA with their lack of API development and broken promises, hopefully this change will be for the better. While we still don’t know when the API will be back. We hope the new owners will hopefully fix the lack of development of the API as we know, a lot of anime and manga fans still use MAL despite many switching to other services like Kitsu or AniList. However, once the MyAnimeList API return, we will work on adding MyAnimeList back to Shukofukurou and add support for it to Hachidori.
What will happen to MAL Updater OS X?
Depending on the changes to the final API, we will make the final version of MAL Updater OS X available once the API opens up again and implement some of the backend changes from Hachidori. As stated earlier, MAL Updater OS X won’t be developed any further afterwards and MyAnimeList support will be added to Hachidori. That way, it will be easier to maintain one code source. However, users who already have a MAL Updater OS X donation license will not have to buy a Hachidori donation license since it will accept it.
