AnimeChrono
Anime watch orders, in chronological order. Three of us have been building it since 2020.
A list and a legend.
The first version was as basic as it gets. One numbered list per series, a legend so you knew which rows were OVAs and movies, and banner ads to cover hosting. It launched with six series. It was light and fast and, looking at it now, pretty rough. But the whole idea was already in there.
Got right
Treating the order as the actual product. One URL per series. Nothing to sign up for.
Got wrong
Ads inside the list. No way to mark what you’d watched. And you had to learn the legend instead of just pressing a toggle.
2020 → 2022
- Light page, ads in the listDark page, ads out of the list
- A legend you had to learnA toggle: Chronological or Release
- One list per seriesA proper series page, with hero art and where-to-start marks
- Desktop firstSeven phone screens before I drew a desktop one
Mobile first.
I drew the second version as seven phone screens before any of us touched a desktop layout. Each series got its own page: hero art, a Chronological / Release toggle, and 1 · 2 · 3 marks so you knew where to start. The list went dark and the ads came out of it.
Got right
The toggle. The phone layouts, which still hold up. Making the series the unit instead of the list.
Got wrong
Still no accounts, so nothing saved. Every piece of artwork placed by hand. And a gradient doing the job a brand should have.
2022 → 2026
- Blue and purple gradientWarm dark, orange, Syne
- A static listWatched checks, aura per episode, predictions
- Artwork placed by handArtwork synced from AniList
- A websiteA platform: accounts, Chronicles, quests, a feed
From a list to a platform.
The relaunch. Accounts, finally, so your progress sticks. Chronicles, which are community watch orders routed through the master list. Six kinds of Aura, daily quests, Oracle predictions that lock at episode six, and a feed. Artwork comes from AniList now instead of one of us placing it by hand. The list is still what everything hangs off.
We stopped typing in data.
For six years every cover, every title and every episode count was entered by hand, and it showed. The relaunch pulls all of that from AniList’s GraphQL API instead: a franchise gets set up once, and the artwork, titles, episode counts, airing dates and seasons come in on their own and stay current. What AniList can’t give you is the order. That part is still us, and it’s the reason the site exists.
From AniList
- Cover and banner art
- Titles and romaji
- Episode counts
- Airing dates and seasons
- Studios and genres
Ours
- The chronological order
- The 1 · 2 · 3 marks
- Chronicles
- Aura and quests
- Oracle predictions
Other concepts.
A few directions we tried on the way to the relaunch: torn paper edges, magazine energy, black and red. They made good posters. The list was easier to read on the quiet palette, so that’s the one that shipped.
- Top pages
- / · /search · /franchise/pokemon · /franchise/my-teen-romantic-comedy-snafu · /franchise/dragon-ball-daima
- Where from
- google 14K · brave 858 · reddit 239 · US 59% · India 7% · Philippines 5% · UK 4%
- Devices
- desktop 70% · mobile 28% · tablet 1%
Where it is now.
Six years and three versions later it’s a platform, and the list is still the first thing you see. See it live →