Data for the top 50 series

Mar 11, 2021 2:13 PM

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Nov 2015

772

I started this project around the beginning of last year to track the most popular series on MAL. I wanted to see what milestones they would reach, what was gaining traction or falling out, and just the general trends of the top anime. I've been meaning to post the results for a while, but I think they look really cool. Here's the spreadsheet with all the data if anyone wants to use it

Here's a summary of the most notable occurrences:

Death Note became the first series to reach 2M members and by the end of the year, the rest of the top 4 did as well. OPM barely came close but was about 5,000 members short
After sitting for so long at #4, FMA passed SAO in mid December and joined Death Note and Attack on Titan in the top 3
Attack on Titan had the highest daily average growth, followed by Death Note and My Hero Academia. MHA was actually the most popular for the majority of the year, with Attack on Titan only starting to grow more when the final season was announced.
My Hero Academia, which was ranked #12 at the beginning of the year, gained in popularity and managed to get into the top 10 - it finished at #7
On the last chart, you can clearly see the spike in membership for FMA that happened in early February as a result of the mess with Interspecies Reviewers. The second large spike in early April was around the time the site underwent large changes to how rankings and scores are calculated. (I'm not really sure what the other spikes are later in the year - they might just be problems I had with collecting the data - but if you have any ideas please share it with me!)
A total of 6 shows fell out of the top 50 by the end of the year: Durarara!!, Highschool of the Dead, Clannad, Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae wo Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai., Fate/Zero, and Neon Genesis Evangelion

I hope you guys enjoy!

ISOQuorraMar 30, 2021 4:23 PM

Minimalist Anime Quiz

Mar 11, 2021 2:21 PM

Benti_

Offline

Oct 2019

573

Great work! I find the slowdown in the increase in the second chart particularly interesting. Could it be related to the pandemic? Do you have any theory about it?

Happy birthday btw! Have a nice day!

Mar 11, 2021 2:29 PM

ISOQuorra

Offline

Nov 2015

772

Benti_ said:
Great work! I find the slowdown in the increase in the second chart particularly interesting. Could it be related to the pandemic? Do you have any theory about it?

That's certainly possible. You can see it start to pick up in mid-March, and that's right around the same time quarantine started, so it makes sense if more people started watching more anime then. But more than likely it might just be an issue with the way I calculated the data. I averaged the daily change over time, so the data was much more sensitive to changes early on in the year.

Happy birthday btw! Have a nice day!

Thank you! <3

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Data for the top 50 series

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