Over the past few days I’ve been going through my 7+ year-old, but still active, anime fan site, Anime Yume, updating information pages and saving copies of important files. Going through sections of my old site made me reminiscent of the days before blogs, when anime fan sites flourished…
Koji Oe over on Cross Channel made a similar post about this topic a few months ago. Before blogs, Live Journal, and Twitter arrived to more or less dominate the style of Internet fan discussion, anime fan sites were abundant. Unlike today, ten years ago many web servers offered free or very cheap hosting for simple web sites. Anybody remember Freewebs, Angel Fire, Tripod, and Geocities? Fans would make their own personalized web sites about their favorite anime series or character. What made fan sites different from blogs and similar sites is that they were composed of archived information and files, i.e., series/character information, image galleries, media files, links, etc. Blogs can have these things too, but they’re organized as day-by-day reading, placing more importance on the most recent posts, rather than the equal relevance of sections on a fan site.
Remember Anime Web Turnpike, one of the most popular anime fan site directories back in the late 90s/early 2000s? The sites on Anipike were prime examples of anime fan sites from the old days; character shrines, where fans would make sites devoted to a particular character and fill it with images, information, and commentary on that character, “shipping” sites, similar to character shrines except dedicated to a particular anime pairing, and image and screencap galleries where fans would post lots of pictures from a certain series. Webrings were also popular for different fans who had sites for the same anime, character, or pairing to share their interest with each other. And of course, there were many fan sites like mine that posted information about anime in general as well as individual sections for favorite anime series.
I think there are a couple of factors that lead to the decline of anime fan sites in favor of blogs. Wikipedia and similar giants are definitely big contributors. Back in the day, the kinds of detailed, updated information about particular series and characters could only be found on web sites of dedicated fans. For example, anybody who wanted to find detailed information about the fantasy terminology, setting, and chronology of events in Slayers would probably have to search out a few different Slayers fan sites to find what they wanted. Now everybody knows that detailed, up-to-date information about almost anything can be found on Wikipedia, so there’s no need for fan sites to do it. I find Wiki very convenient but I still miss the subjective, interesting way fans would archive the same information on their web sites. Wiki is very objective and the writing style is often rigid and inconsistent; I enjoyed seeing an individual, fellow fan behind the anime information I would read on fan sites.
For images and screencaps, there’s Google’s image search or huge sites like Anime Paper. And now that fans download video files of anime more than they used to, it’s easier than ever for them to make their own screencaps and clips. Music and videos can now easily be found on various torrent sites or on streaming sites like YouTube.
The other big contributor to the decline of anime fan sites is simply the speed of information on the Internet in general, in particular the increased speed and easy access to anime. The days of anime fan sites were also the days when video streaming was nonexistent and fansubs were few and far between. Most fans were unable to watch the latest anime episodes from Japan right away, if at all, or have instant access to the latest news from Japan. Therefore, the yearning to discuss only the latest and most popular shows or news items, and the pressure to get your posts about them out before your neighbor, were invented with the anime blogging community. That’s not to say that there aren’t exceptions; there are plenty of individualized blogs who are not concerned about being number one or only discussing current trends. But in general, the defining attribute of the most popular blogs is speed – posting information and other stuff about the latest shows.
Discoalucard on Hardcore Gaming 101 said of blogs…
“[the structure of blogs] seems to say that the only relevant information is whatever is happening at that moment, and then it falls into nothing within a few days…To make a parallel, blogs are like magazines, which are relevant for a month and then discarded. Web sites are like books, better cataloged, more permanent.”
In the days of anime fan sites, fans were used to not having such instant access to the latest anime. So webrunners of anime fan sites felt free to update their sites whenever possible, not with only the latest information about the latest anime, but adding new stuff to their individualized fan site or character shrine.
With the speed and wealth of instant information that the Internet offers nowadays, patience and quality have dwindled and fans have grown accustomed to only being concerned with “the now.” These days, the two driving factors behind a web site’s popularity is offering visitors either up-to-date information on popular topics or enormous amounts of content. That’s why the only fan-centered sites that flourish today are blogs and Live Journals or gigantic, constantly updated multi-user sites like Anime Music Videos.org, YouTube, Anime News Network, Fan Fiction.net, Anime Suki, My Anime List, and Deviant Art. The days of the individual’s series or character shrine is gone. It’s not too unlike how the few large corporations take over the turf of the many, small individual businesses.
Don’t get me wrong, I love working on my blog and being a part of the anime blogging community. I enjoy keeping up with the latest anime shows and trends, and discussing them with fellow fans. There are many fantastic blogs out there and I’m a frequent visitor on many of the aforementioned big, multi-user sites. But I do grow lonesome for the days of anime fan sites, where you could freely make a web site dedicated to whatever anime series or character you wanted, with whatever content you wanted, and not have to worry about being totally ignored because everybody’s only reading Wikipedia or the latest info on anime blogs. The reason I still keep Anime Yume up and running is because I want my individualized anime synopses and other pages available for anyone who can still appreciate them, even if my site is technically behind the times. And perhaps if there ever comes a time when people get burned out following only the latest, instant information, there will be a revival of anime fan sites.
Heheh, I remember the days of the old sites; used to visit stuff like Middletails and Cool Nut Archives all the time, though those were more of gaming sites.
But yeah, good to know your site is still updated. It’s kinda sad when you surf around and see all these sites rotting away, with nary an update over the years =(
I certainly remember Geocities – there were also a lot of fansites on Geocities for fans of genre (science fiction and fantasy) movies and TV series. And still to this day, I’ll be trolling for fan fiction and come across someone’s fan fiction archives and it’ll have a Geocities URL. They’re like archives frozen in time. ;)
yes. i remember those days well. i would spend hours almost every day clicking through site after site. anime sites back then were at the peak of creativity and diversity. i miss those. like Jan mentioned, geocites were real popular. lol, although im a guy, i liked sailor moon back then. i was in love with amy. then came that violet sailor with long elegant hair and a spear. anyways, i really appreciate you keeping this site up. i actually stumbled upon it while visiting animeyume.org sad to see it gone. i think some of those fan sites still exist…just lost in obscurity. *sigh* the Sasami shrine…
I had several sites at Geocities…Shrines dedicated to anime series such as Nuku Nuku, Devil Hunter Yohko and Slayers….Ah, the good old days.
Bad thing that Geocities will dissapear…Just like Haruhi…
Exciting news about the Haruhi movie huh??…Just love the picture you use for this post.
@Toonleap
Perfect timing; within the minute you commented I posted my thoughts about the Haruhi movie announcement XD
Loved reading this blog post..I used to own Gokusfirepalace and hinata forums and we were just having nostalgic memories about the anime community at http://sessionone.net/showthread.php?t=968 ^_^
i remember everything except the name of one cartoon that i only saw like 2 times it was about this boy who wear a glove with a kind of jewel in it and it was supposed to have like some sort of magical power please if someone remembers the name or knows about the cartoon can i have a answer please
Yeah, I totally miss those large fan sites they had bad in the days, I was never around for the webrings but I remember a lot of geocities sites that had really unique contents and thoughts on it. It’s sad that shut down!
then why do you put a Haruhi image on your article? She’s the paradigm of new otaku age, who had lost all that we had.
sorry, i just saw they actually ARE Haruhi fansites. I was generalizing. Sorry for that.
Great article and still relevant here in 2014. I used to run and visit anime fan sites for over ten years, in fact I still have a fan site, but it’s dedicated to an American comic book. I still seek out anime fan sites on the regular as working on them was one of the most fun times of my life, but I’ve found there’s an incredibly short supply of them now a days. I hope you keep carrying the torch. If you feel how I feel about the decline of the anime fan site community, then do all you can to nurture it and take care of it.
Hiya! This is a fun, nostalgic post. Anime fansites are still alive and well. Maybe come check us out at http://amassment.org
It’s nothing like the old AniPike days but the practice is alive and well. :)
Oh, yes, the golden days of anime fansites when blogs and wikis weren’t abound. Totally irreplaceable. Closing Anime Yume just because it’s already outdated should never be a thing; you should keep it as long as you can. After all, it has lived long enough to tell the tale.
And Freewebs and Geocities? Oh, yes. :D
P.S. Sent you an e-mail. Hope you get to read it.