[5] It facilitates finding users who share similar tastes and provides a large database on anime and manga.

[5] Originally, the website was called AnimeList, but Gyssler decided to incorporate the possessive "My" at the beginning, following the fashion of the most important social network in those years: Myspace.

[7] On August 4, 2008, CraveOnline, a men's entertainment and lifestyle site owned by AtomicOnline, purchased MyAnimeList for an undisclosed sum of money.

[13] MAL became inaccessible for several days in May and June 2018 when site staff took it offline for maintenance, citing security and privacy concerns.

[5][14] MyAnimeList was acquired by Media Do in January 2019; with their purchase, they announced their intention to focus on marketing and e-book sales to strengthen the site.

[17] On May 31, 2021, it was revealed that Akatsuki, The Anime Times Company, DMM.com, and Kadokawa Corporation had invested ¥311 million during its initial third-party allotment.

[19] In October 2021, MyAnimeList collaborated with e-book publisher and parent company Media Do to release Fist of the North Star Manga Fragments: Dying Like a Man, a series of non-fungible token (NFT) products based on the Fist of the North Star manga.

[20] On May 10, 2023, MyAnimeList went under an emergency maintenance after being hacked with the titles of all anime being replaced with a reference to Serial Experiments Lain.

Personal information and data of users was not breached during the hack, however any list updates, forum posts, edits, etc.

[21][22][23] MyAnimeList only lists anime, aeni, donghua as well as manga, manhwa, manhua, doujinshi and light novels.

Users can submit reviews, write recommendations, blogs, produce interest stacks, post in the site's forum, create clubs to unite with people of similar interests, and subscribe to the RSS news feed of anime and manga related news.

The "Modern" customization, which can be found here, allows users to choose a theme which can be edited in "Style Settings".