Jikan MyAnimeList Scraper

Scrape MyAnimeList via the Jikan API — the largest anime and manga database on the web. Search either catalog by keyword, pull the ranked top-anime and top-manga lists, or fetch specific titles by MAL ID, and get English / Japanese / synonym titles, synopsis, episode or chapter counts, airing status, MAL score and rank, popularity and member counts, genres, themes, demographics, studios, authors, cover art, and trailer links. HTTP-only via the public api.jikan.moe v4 API. No auth, no proxy.

What this actor does

• Six modes: searchAnime, searchManga, topAnime, topManga, byAnimeId, byMangaId
• Rich filtering: type (TV / movie / OVA / ONA / manga / light novel / manhwa …), airing or publishing status, MAL age rating, genre ID, and score range
• Full sort control: order by score, rank, popularity, members, favourites, episodes, or start date, ascending or descending
• Rate-limit aware: requests are paced and retried with backoff so long runs complete rather than getting cut off
• Empty fields are omitted

Output: per anime (mode = searchAnime / topAnime / byAnimeId)

• malId — MyAnimeList ID
• title, titleEnglish, titleJapanese, titleSynonyms
• type — TV, Movie, OVA, ONA, Special, Music
• source — original material, e.g. Manga, Light novel, Original
• episodes, duration — episode count and per-episode runtime
• status — e.g. Finished Airing, Currently Airing
• airing — true while still broadcasting
• airedString — human-readable broadcast range
• season, year — e.g. fall, 2013
• rating — MAL age rating
• score, scoredBy — community score and number of raters
• rank, popularity, members, favorites
• synopsis
• genres, themes, demographics
• studios, producers
• imageUrl — cover art
• trailerUrl — trailer, when one exists
• sourceUrl — MyAnimeList page
• recordType: "anime", scrapedAt

Output: per manga (mode = searchManga / topManga / byMangaId)

• malId — MyAnimeList ID
• title, titleEnglish, titleJapanese
• type — Manga, Light Novel, Manhwa, Manhua, One-shot, Doujinshi
• status — e.g. Finished, Publishing
• chapters, volumes
• publishedString — human-readable publication range
• score, scoredBy
• rank, popularity, members, favorites
• synopsis
• genres, themes
• authors — writers and artists
• serializations — magazines it ran in
• imageUrl — cover art
• sourceUrl — MyAnimeList page
• recordType: "manga", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	topAnime	searchAnime / searchManga / topAnime / topManga / byAnimeId / byMangaId
searchQuery	string	naruto	Keyword to search for (search modes)
animeType	string	–	tv / movie / ova / special / ona / music
mangaType	string	–	manga / novel / lightnovel / oneshot / doujin / manhwa / manhua
status	string	–	airing / complete / upcoming
rating	string	–	g / pg / pg13 / r17 / r / rx (anime only)
orderBy	string	–	score / rank / popularity / members / favorites / episodes / start_date / title / mal_id
sort	string	desc	desc / asc
genreId	int	–	MAL genre ID — 1 Action, 2 Adventure, 4 Comedy, 8 Drama, 22 Romance, 24 Sci-Fi
scoreMin	number	–	Minimum MAL score (0–10)
scoreMax	number	–	Maximum MAL score (0–10)
animeId	int	–	Single anime MAL ID (mode=byAnimeId)
animeIds	array	–	Multiple anime MAL IDs (mode=byAnimeId)
mangaId	int	–	Single manga MAL ID (mode=byMangaId)
mangaIds	array	–	Multiple manga MAL IDs (mode=byMangaId)
maxItems	int	25	Hard cap (1–500)

Example: the top-ranked TV anime

{
  "mode": "topAnime",
  "animeType": "tv",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: highly rated completed action anime

{
  "mode": "searchAnime",
  "genreId": 1,
  "status": "complete",
  "scoreMin": 8,
  "orderBy": "score",
  "sort": "desc",
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: currently publishing manhwa

{
  "mode": "searchManga",
  "mangaType": "manhwa",
  "status": "airing",
  "orderBy": "popularity",
  "sort": "asc",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: specific titles by MAL ID

{
  "mode": "byAnimeId",
  "animeIds": [5114, 1535, 9253]
}

Use cases

• Anime & manga databases — build or refresh a catalog with scores, synopses, and cover art
• Recommendation engines — train on genre, theme, demographic, and score signals
• Seasonal tracking — monitor what is currently airing and how community scores move
• Publisher & studio analysis — measure output and reception by studio, author, or magazine
• Content curation — generate "top rated by genre" lists for editorial or app use
• Chatbots & assistants — ground anime and manga answers in canonical MAL data

FAQ

What is Jikan? An open, unofficial REST API that mirrors MyAnimeList's public data. See jikan.moe.

Is this affiliated with Jikan or MyAnimeList? No. This is a third-party actor using Jikan's public API.

Do I need an API key? No. Jikan is free and unauthenticated, but it enforces roughly three requests per second. The actor paces itself accordingly, so large runs take proportionally longer.

How do I find a genre ID? MAL genre IDs are small integers — 1 Action, 2 Adventure, 4 Comedy, 8 Drama, 10 Fantasy, 22 Romance, 24 Sci-Fi, 30 Sports. Jikan publishes the full list on its genre endpoints.

What's the difference between rank and popularity? rank orders titles by score, so rank 1 is the highest-rated. popularity orders by how many members have the title on a list, so popularity 1 is the most widely watched or read — not necessarily the best-reviewed.

What is scoredBy? The number of MAL users who rated the title. A 9.0 from 500 raters is a much weaker signal than a 9.0 from 500,000, so use it to filter out thinly-rated entries.

Why do some titles have no score or rank? Upcoming and very obscure entries haven't accumulated enough ratings for MAL to publish a score, so those fields are dropped rather than reported as zero.

Does the status filter mean the same thing for manga? Roughly — airing maps to currently publishing and complete to finished. Manga-specific states like hiatus and discontinued are reported in the output status field.

Are trailers always available? No. trailerUrl appears only where MAL has a YouTube trailer on file, which is common for recent TV and film releases and rare for older titles.

How fresh is the data? Jikan caches MyAnimeList responses briefly, so scores and airing status are current to within minutes to hours.