Anime Websites - What they offer and where to find them

Rebuilding my website, decorating it with the images, has let me notice something. Something many people will likely not think about but nonetheless surprising. The lack of documentation regarding official anime websites.

Why bother?

An obvious question one may pose is why one should bother, most interaction is made on social media anyway so you could just go there, but I think the overly minimal backdrops these services offer just are so bland that they fail to provide any character or personality, together with a bias toward the recent. AN anime's official website has been a staple since the web existed really and they continue to stay strong, anything from Lucky Star to Jujutsu Kaisen has its own space. These however are more popular examples and I'm pretty sure someone stumbled upon them by now.

What I'm trying to accomplish here is to teach a way you can find these websites on your own, appreciate their layout and even the extras they provide (yes, you can indeed get digital goodies off them, it's pretty cool ^^) to not feel the frustration I felt when looking at AniList entries without an official website provided. Who knows? Maybe you'll even use some the artwork on one for personal use :)

How to find them?

I have to give these anime databases or scoring platforms some credit at least. The information they do provide will be our starting point, after all it's the Studio which will most likely have a website and keep up a portfolio. The experience of looking through these can vary in pleasure depending on the studio however, while I love their output the Studio Shaft website has a portfolio where every damn entry takes up the whole screen and it scrolls with delay. It takes half an enternity just to find Hidamari Sketch.

So let's say you've now found your entry of choice and you're pretty much at the finish line. Just go on it's page and with almost 100% ceirtainty you'd find the official site listed there alongside it (unless you're looking for Seitoukai no Ichizon, appearantly it's site is lost to time or just didn't exist)

And that's it really, pick out a studio you like, go on its official website and browse through their portfolio until you find what you desire.

What they offer?

Now that you now how to find you're favourite anime's website you can roam free in its slice of cyberspace. Some of these may be charming windows into a bygone era, which applies to most 2000s anime pages, and with some luck you can find wallpapers and icons that were put there for a single purpose: putting them on your blog, website or profile (yeah, there was a time profiles were customizable enough for that) to let other people know. I myself used them extensively on my website, just take a look at my homepage or the collection page, and I think they provide a sliver of personality still with which you can express what you enjoy far better than in any other way now prevalant. Oh, and by the way, everything I told you about here also applies to VNs and maybe video games as well, I haven't looked at them much myself (besides the one for Sakura no Uta) but if decide to look for them: Have fun, I hope you'll find them! :D