Here’s why I don’t use anidb (picture intensive)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Note: The bigger pics got resized. Click on them if you’re desperate to see what you’re missing.

People are always asking me “why aren’t your subs updated on anidb?” “what’s your anidb profile so we can be friends?” and other stupid shit like that.

Here’s the reason: that site is the shittiest piece of fuckmeal I’ve ever seen. Absolutely terrible. But why can’t I just update the status of my subs? I mean, how else are people going to find out that aRK’s finished HotD? Take a look at the process and see for yourself:

The first thing you’ll notice is that the site is hideous as fuck. Maybe this was acceptable back when Frames were the standard and Geocities ruled the web, but this level of user unfriendliness just screams incompetence and a lack of sanity on the part of anyone involved in the creation and display of the site.


After logging in and shit I decided to search for HotD and came up with the regular series and… 3 results for the same damn thing. Why? Because anidb’s database was designed by the dumbest motherfucker around. This guy must have thought “relations” were what he had with his computer’s USB drive.

So anyway, I click on the link and come to this beautiful page:

You’ll notice the only people who it says have completed the series are gg and some random non-English groups. Even TMD can’t be assed by this process – it seems that only the groups that actually take fansubbing super seriously (this is a rant for another time, but I assure you gg’s staff takes fansubbing the most srsly out of any group around even though they desperately try to act like they don’t) get around to updating their episode status.

“WTF is this?!” you may ask. Don’t be ashamed. I’m lost too.

See, this is just the first part in a very, very tedious process that involves getting your shit updated.

Clicking the link to avdump, which is apparently required for adding a new episode release, brings you to this wonderful, user-friendly wiki. Don’t know where to go from here? Why, simply scroll down a bit to “Download” where you get to download a .exe with no GUI. Fantastic.

Wait, don’t you access all your programs through the command prompt? Silly mortal. Then you need the gui.

The link to what you actually need is conveniently sandwiched in between MS-DOS and Processing DVDs. The most logical place they could put it.

Go ahead and download their shitty-ass GUI which you have to fuck with to even be able to install

because the people who coded it only know the very minimum level of VisualBasic it takes to get past a community college course.

Aww, shit yeah. The GUI’s up and… goddammit.

The fuck is this about a password? User options? Ugh, fine.

Guess what the password is.

It doesn’t matter because you need a new super-special password to get in. Back to anidb!

Now the program runs and…

Godammit. Okay, fine. I’ll just type it all in and…

Surprise, surprise. ed2k does not go in the ed2k field. Fucking excellent.

It is at this point that I gave up. I’m sure there’s a workaround to whatever the fuck this is but I can’t be assed to find it. Is it three hours away before one finally gets to update a group’s status? Only one hour? I’m afraid I can’t be bothered to find it just to continue with showing what a convoluted, stupid fucking process this all is. Really, you have to be fucking serious about people viewing your shit if you go through all of this just for a minor advertisement on some site that was outdated when the new millenium came around.

And if you still search for group releases through anidb instead of saving time by googling it or, heaven forbid, checking TokyoTosho, may you get AIDS and die. Worst site ever.

24 thoughts on “Here’s why I don’t use anidb (picture intensive)”

    • Or maybe they could stop being such fags worried about the “integrity” of fansub releases and just have a “new release? okay, just poke in the most basic of info and you’re good to go” function.

      And thanks for pointing that out, but I’m not going through that horrible process again.

      Reply
      • I use anidb just because of that integrity. It helped me identify quite a bunch of broken downloads. Without anidb I would have just blamed the fansubbers for releasing a shitty video.

        Reply
        • Do you know the 8 characters at the end of each file stand for? That’s your integrity.

          It’s a CRC32 that helps you determine whether or not the file you have is the right one. Install hashtab and check out the CRC32 of the file and then compare it to the one in the filename. If they match, there’s your integrity. If not, your file is fucked up.

          Reply
  1. Thing is, while the site was designed by someone who is obviously blind, it has more capability than any other website on the internet, bar none. No other site lets you find what releases there are, who released them, compare quality, and track your collection in the same way. Everyone else is basically “yeah I watched this” or “no I didn’t”…

    Reply
    • Exactly, having info on exact episodes, together with their hashes is more than awesome.

      Not to mention the ability to vote on episodes (so you can see whatever the series gets any better down the road).

      And as for the “three results of the same thing”, try searching for Evangelion, you’ll get the “Shinseiki Evangelion” (unknown title in the west), the “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and the japanese title. Quite handy if you know your localized name but not the “official” (by whatever standard).

      Reply
  2. I’m glad you don’t use anidb because it is the shittiest english speaking place where you can submit and find anime related information. Too bad it is the only popular place.

    Reply
  3. Uh… just let other people do it. You don’t have to update the files yourself, you know… Anidb has an army of people updating releases day and night. Why waste work?

    Reply
  4. i found myself dumbfounded over my inability to add. It’s not like i don’t get what it wants, but every single tool to generate the input it requires seems borked.

    I.e. the linked one above just does not accept the file after i selected it (and come on what kind of 1990 interface is that, it’s java but can’t even handle unicode filenames?), and the site’s own avdump happily crashes each time i try to hash the file even with all unicode removed from the path.

    Reply
  5. wooh 2014!

    AniDB isn’t bad but they need to update the interface. I use the Google skin/theme and it looks pretty sleek in that! I think the real problem is the developer or whoever is gone so… rip.

    Reply
  6. You know there is tons of softwares that can EXACTLY do what you’ve tried to do !, I ‘ve dumped around 500gb and registered around 1.75TB worth of files in less than 3 hours using their AoM client

    Reply

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