Anime News Network

• 1. Introduction

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  Anime News Network launched in July 1998, when Justin Sevakis built a website to track the then-niche world of anime and manga coming into North America. At the time, reliable English-language coverage of Japanese animation was almost impossible to find. What would the internet's most dedicated anime news hub look like decades later? And what happens when a site that covers fictional worlds gets hijacked by a very real hacker? Those are the questions this documentary sets out to answer.

  Sevakis created something that would eventually serve audiences across five separate regions, from the United States and Canada to Southeast Asia and India, earning recognition along the way from a Sci Fi Channel newsletter that named it Web Site of the Week on the 7th of September 2004.

• 2. Building the Encyclopedia

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  On the 30th of June 2002, Anime News Network launched what became one of its most distinctive features: a collaborative database covering anime and manga titles, the staff behind them, the voice casts, and the companies involved in production and localization. The site called this resource its encyclopedia.

  The database was built to answer the kind of questions fans were already asking. Who voiced that character? Which studio produced this series? Who wrote the theme music? The encyclopedia collected those answers in one place, alongside plot summaries and user ratings, turning a news site into a living reference tool for the fan community.

• 3. Columns and Community

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  "Hey Answerman" was one of several regular columns the site ran, offering a direct question-and-answer format that gave readers a way to get answers to pressing fan queries. Alongside it sat "Shelf Life," a review column dedicated to anime releases, and "Buried Treasure," a column on old and forgotten media written by founder Justin Sevakis himself.

  The site also hosted forums tied to individual news items, so every story came with a built-in discussion thread. For readers who wanted something more immediate, ANN maintained an IRC channel on the WorldIRC network under the address #animenewsnetwork. On the 4th of July 2008, the site added a video platform carrying anime trailers and a news show it called ANNtv, expanding the ways the community could engage with the coverage.

• 4. The 2017 Domain Hack

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  On the 7th of August 2017, a hacker seized control of Anime News Network's primary domain, animenewsnetwork.com, and broke into several of the site's Twitter accounts, including the personal accounts of CEO Christopher Macdonald and Executive Editor Zac Bertschy. For a period, ANN went live at a backup address, animenewsnetwork.cc, while the staff worked to reclaim the original domain.

  Macdonald published a full account of how the domain was stolen in an article released a few days after the attack. The incident exposed how vulnerable even a well-established media outlet can be when the underlying infrastructure sits outside its direct control.

• 5. Protoculture Addicts and Print

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  On the 18th of September 2004, ANN's editorial staff became formally involved with Protoculture Addicts, a print anime magazine. The magazine began publishing under ANN's editorial control starting in January 2005 and continued that arrangement until 2008, giving the website a foothold in print during an era when digital media and print were still finding their relationship.

  The partnership reflected a broader ambition to cover anime culture across formats, not just through the website's own reporting but through an established print publication with its own readership.

• 6. The Kadokawa Acquisition

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  On the 1st of November 2022, Kadokawa Corporation announced an agreement to acquire a majority of Anime News Network's media business through a new subsidiary named Kadokawa World Entertainment. Christopher Macdonald, who had been ANN's president, was named publisher of Kadokawa World Entertainment under the deal.

  Macdonald and Bandai Namco Filmworks both retained minority shares in the new company. The acquisition placed one of the English-speaking world's primary anime news sources inside a Japanese media corporation with deep roots in the industry ANN had spent more than two decades covering.