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"anime house is dead."

in the past two days, this news was spread on weibo and various anime fan communities.

anime house was founded in 2005. its predecessor was an anime fans forum. later, it gradually developed into a comprehensive platform covering various resources such as comics, animation, and light novels. it has been nearly 20 years since then, making it a much larger "predecessor" than station a and station b.

although the operation of anime house has been deteriorating in recent years, many users still sighed when the news that "the website that has been used for more than ten years is dead" came.

however, it is not accurate to describe anime house as "dead".its domain name is still alive and has not disappeared or been banned. you can still read a few pages of comics by clicking on it.

even anime house’s weibo account is still being updated normally, just like usual.

however, the difference is that the comics on the site have stopped updating.careful readers may have noticed that the “editor’s recommendation” column has changed from weekly updates to monthly updates, and then to quarterly updates, but has now completely stagnated half a year ago.

mobile apps have become ruthless ad players. if you want to open a comic, you must be prepared to jump back and forth between more than a dozen ads. some ads don't even have a close button, so you can only "click to download."

on september 11, the official fan group suddenly started to ban all members. at the same time, a message appeared in the group, informing everyone that "anime house has stopped updating" and encouraging users to export their subscription information and go to new user groups - this was the direct reason why the rumor "anime house is dead" began to spread online.

then on september 12, kaytjy, a former editor of anime house, revealed some inside information on the s1 forum. in summary, under pressure from investors, the editorial team has left voluntarily or involuntarily. in other words, nominally speaking,anime house is still there, but the editorial department is no longer there.

in philosophy, there is a problem known as the "ship of theseus": if the planks of a ship are replaced one by one until all the wood on the ship is new, is the ship still the same ship?

similarly, what about anime house?

1

before answering this question, let us go back to 2005 and see what anime house looked like when it was first born.

at that time, the awareness of copyright protection on the domestic internet was still very weak. foreign films and tv series could be watched for free on video websites, and baidu tieba was still an important distribution center for pirated resources...

"dare to be the first to try new things in the animation industry." although this slogan was not proposed until later, animation house, which was established in 2005, has already followed this principle to enter the then-unremarkable animation field.

in the pastoral era of the internet, it was a common scene for a group of fans to gather together to share pirated animation and comics. thanks to the dividends of the times and its own forum attributes, anime house came to the public as a resource sharing distribution center, and during this period, a lot of "niche content" was accumulated. as long as you are patient enough, you can always dig out some unpopular works.

this has created a cycle for the development of anime house: the more "niche content" that is accumulated, the more it will attract deep fans, and deep fans often have more resources and are willing to participate in content re-creation. therefore, many individual readers or chinese translation groups translate and upload their comic resources, further expanding the content library of anime house.

from the reader's perspective, even though it has various shortcomings, we have to admit that it has many resources.

on the other hand, this cycle has brought a group of very professional managers to anime house. although the website has accumulated a huge amount of content, thanks to the editors' recommendations, users can always get in touch with some niche masterpieces that they would not actively watch. that is why, when the website is facing closure, you can see that what everyone misses most is the "editor's recommendation" column, and what they are most reluctant to part with is the editorial team.

the departure of the editorial team naturally became the most difficult thing for everyone

the continuous flow of content has created a huge content library, and the huge content library has brought more readers. the professional editing team has built a bridge between readers and content.thanks to this triangular structure, a large number of new users flocked to the early anime every year, and the website did quite well by relying on advertising revenue.

2

however, the triangular structure that was stable in the pastoral era of the internet collapsed instantly in the era of mobile internet.

in 2012, letv introduced "sword art online", and in 2013, iqiyi began to broadcast "attack on titan season 1". the influence of these two works needs no elaboration. audiences who have experienced that era should remember the countless asuna and freedom squadron at comic exhibitions. in short, after the advent of the internet copyright era, the concepts of "secondary" and "animation" have completely entered the mainstream mass entertainment category, opening a new prelude.

with the arrival of the big copyright era, companies such as tencent and bilibili have launched their own comic platforms, and the entire industry has begun to transform towards legitimate products.

unlike the internet pastoral era, which advocated "sharing", the best footnote in the copyright era is "exclusive". while other platforms launched exclusive content, a large number of works on anime house were removed from the shelves.

but this is not the most fatal thing.

with the advent of the mobile internet era, comic platforms need to adapt to a business model that is mainly based on mobile devices.

in the early days of the internet, if readers wanted to read a comic, they might have to dig deep to find resources. but now, apps recommend countless comics to you every day. even if you are not that interested, the news of "gojo satoru being beheaded" will still be pushed to you continuously.

however, a large number of japanese comics are not suitable for public promotion or complete reading due to their own content. some comic platforms, such as tencent comics and kuaikan comics, have begun to actively support chinese comics and have even developed a mature online article adaptation pipeline.

as its territory shrank, anime house was caught in a dilemma: if it wanted to capture the traffic in the mobile internet era, it needed to transform its business model and content values ​​to those of mainstream comic platforms;however, transformation means cutting off, saying goodbye to the "niche content" of the past, and betraying the core fans and their hard work.

in 2018, the solution that anime house came up with was to launch another app called "manban manga" and support a number of original chinese comics.but unfortunately, its core fans are unwilling to support these new works.in the end, manban comics didn't make much of a splash and closed down after only two years of operation.

but at the same time, the core user group of anime house unanimously praised

continuing the transformation means "changing blood" and betting on a new content system that is not sure whether it can be built. in the process, it is also unknown whether the original position can be maintained; not transforming means giving up completely and waiting to be eliminated by the times.

the era of "stealing fire" has passed, and anime house is in its sunset.

3

ever since bilibili’s famous saying “we may go bankrupt, but we will never deteriorate”, “deterioration” has become the most commonly used word by 2d users to mock a company’s commercial transformation.

but ironically, due to the limitations of its own conditions, anime house, which wanted to transform but failed, became the last one to "deteriorate".

looking back at the two-dimensional communities during the pastoral era of the internet, they have either gone bankrupt or have already completed their commercial transformation.

but when our attention turns to anime house, it is still the same as it was 20 years ago: it relies on the chinese translation team to deliver content and the editorial team to recommend high-quality works. the content still wanders in the gray area. the website has 2 million daily active users, but the mobile traffic is pitifully small, which is incompatible with other mainstream comics platforms.

even after 2017, anime house could no longer compete with mainstream comic platforms.

however, with the improvement of legislation, the living space of pirated content has shrunk rapidly. in addition, due to the characteristics of anime house itself, the proportion of content that is not in line with mainstream values ​​is much higher than that of other platforms. these "niche content" that brought it traffic in the past have now become mines that may explode at any time.

since 2021, anime house has been named by official media many times, forcing it to move a large amount of content underground.

after that, users' subscriptions began to expire, and some comics could only be opened after two or three o'clock in the morning. reading comics at anime house became a matter of luck.

more comics can only be accessed through historical comments, forcing readers to "insert eyes" and "leave doors" in the comment section of each comic, but such behavior soon aroused disgust from other users - in the end, anime house's greatest advantage in content and friendly community atmosphere became a thing of the past.

on the one hand, the content has gone underground, preventing the influx of fresh blood, and on the other hand, old users are constantly leaving. this seems to be another cycle: the less traffic there is, the less advertising revenue there is, so the only way is to arrange more advertising.

by 2023, because there were too many ads, anime house even considered asking readers to pay to block ads. but in the eyes of users, a pirated website daring to set up a membership system was really "rebellious", and when people mentioned this, basically all they had left was "shut it down quickly".

the anime house that has reappeared in front of everyone today is indeed "dead", but it has not closed down because it is still operating normally;however, as it has never been able to complete its commercial transformation, it does not seem to have deteriorated. it can only rely on the most primitive click-through advertising to maintain its operations, and it does not even qualify as deteriorating.

we don’t know how anime house will be treated after this, or whether it will be reborn in another form. but for readers, no matter what the ending is, this website that has been operating for 20 years has become a theseus ship that can never go back to the past.