Criticism of Anime News Network

From Wikinfo

Anime News Network has been perceived to have inaccurately reported 4Kids Entertainment's rights to dub Tokyo Mew Mew in English for the American audience and favor the company in its reporting when in fact it is widely criticized among anime fans.^[1]

From February 2007, a group of forumers on 2channel, Japanese largest web forum, started to criticize ANN database for having errors and missing information.^[2] Dedicated staff members edited these data at ANN, but there were only two interpreters and one native speaker of Japanese among the staff^[3], so they rely on the information submitted by visitors. Moreover, some visitors used the data based on fansubs, translated by amateurs with sometimes disputable Japanese fluency. Consequently, the accuracy of data varied with each title. The critics claimed entries of some anime titles were incorrect and/or imperfect. Although ANN staff members accepted error correction requests submitted by its users, they could not keep up with all the requests, because of the vast number of submissions. The criticism calmed after the ANN staff promised to upgrade the database system within summer 2007.

Problems claimed by the critics

Some entries only listed foreign animators, but not Japanese. ^[4]^[5]
Many entries only listed minor staff members, but not important members.^[6]
Some entries did not distinguish animation production companies and their subcontractors. ^[7]^[8]
Some entries did not distinguish key animators and inbetweeners, listing both under "Animation". ^[9]
In 2006, the web site Yu-Gi-Oh! Uncensored criticized Anime News Network for perceived systemic bias for not reporting accurately on the English-language dub of the anime Tokyo Mew Mew.^[10]
While unquestionably one of the most comprehensive anime site on the internet, it seems to take a dim view of any anime that is not at least partly shojo oriented. It give low marks to exclusively shonen oriented action popular anime such as Dragonball and Gun X Sword while raving about shojo series' with barely contained enthusiasm.

Fakes titles from the Great ANN Attack

On August 14, 2006, ANN was attacked by a huge group of people who posted false episoide titles for the anime series Naruto. The attack occurred as a result of a single user on a popular Naruto forum who added a fake entry to prove a point that unconfirmed episode titles on the site should not be trusted because all registered users on ANN are given the privilege to add their own "unofficial" entries.^[11]