It has happened to all of us, having an anime that we really want to watch because of a recommendation given by a friend or have seen an interesting picture that caught your eye or funny meme of it on the internet but really not knowing how to find it to watch it.
Hours and hours spent looking for THAT anime and in the worst-case scenario not been able to find it after all. A lot of mental effort, as well as being frustrating, honestly. And I say this from experience.
But for all those people in this situation right now, don’t worry! We are here to help you in your search and take a weight off your shoulders. Without further ado, we present 4 alternatives to find that anime that you are looking for so much.
How to Find Anime By Name
It may sound the most obvious but in this situation, we are not talking about a situation where you perfectly remember the name. We are talking about when you remember half of its name or you only remember how the title sounds like but you have no idea how to write it.
And in this, the My Anime List platform, well known among anime fans, can be of great help. It does not matter if you do not write the name of the anime as it is really called or if you only remember a part of the title. The page will recognise the title phonetically and look for anime with similarities giving you a list of matches instantly
You may not see what you are looking for in the first places of the list but definitely, in the worst-case scenario, your search would be reduced to the anime listed by My Anime List as a result of your search
It should be noted that this page is not only limited to a search for anime but you can also use it to find manga of your interest.
How To Find Anime By Tags
Sometimes while we are being given an anime rec and told the plot to convince us our brains stay with how cool the plot sounds and that we want to watch it than the name itself. But for this, we have the following two methods from this list!
If you have a vague or detailed description of an anime, but can’t remember the name of the series, try to think about what genres this series would fall into, such as “action”, “romance”, “horror”, “mystery”, “slice-of-life ” and “science fiction “, to name a few. Each series can have multiple categories.
Insert selected genres in search filters on pages like My Anime List or Anime-Planet. Read the descriptions of the anime that the search results drop. This way you can find the anime that matches the description you had in your mind.
Mixing this method with the search method mentioned before can help narrow down the list of search results if you couldn’t find the anime you were looking for on the first result pages using this method or the previous one.
How To Find Anime by Description
Once again, determine your keywords. Write down the names of the characters, the plot, the number of episodes, or any other information you can remember. If what you remember is simply something like “a boy becomes a girl when he is touched by water”, write the keywords of the phrase as “boy becomes a girl when he gets wet.”
Conduct an internet search using your keywords. Write the names of the characters, the details of the plot, or your vague description in a search engine. You may see the name of the anime immediately.
If you still can’t find it, ask other anime fans. If your description is too vague to reveal the name by searching the internet, asking them is always an option. You can join an anime forum on sites like the My Anime List or Anime-Planet, even anime fan Facebook groups. Chances are, another fan can tell you the name of the anime, even if your description is vague. Have faith in your fellow Japanese-animation lovers.
Find Anime by Screen Caption or Meme
Thanks to WAIT or What Anime Is It for its acronym we can use a screenshot with a frame from any anime series, or even from memes, and find out which series it belongs to.
It really is something similar to what Google does with its search for similar images, in which you put a photo or URL and it allows you to see other similar ones. In the case of WAIT, it is as simple as entering their web page, making the capture by printing the screen or if we have an image saved on the pc, and even the URL of a capture that is on the internet is enough.
And we will simply click on search. We will see that the image fades for a few seconds and as soon as it is located the algorithm will return the result with the information of the series at the bottom.
Not only does it give us the information of the series, but a whole database of the staff that worked on it, the characters, trailers, and on the right side we can also see the episode in which the scene appears, as well as the exact moment, and what’s even more, if we have it in autoplay we will see a few seconds of the scene we just searched being reproduced (of course in the original language), and if you want to see it again you simply have to click on the image.
Currently, it even has a bot on Telegram!
Conclusion
In short, all these are different methods to find that anime that is difficult for you to find and we hope that they could be of help. If you know of any other method that never fails, feel free to let us know in the comments!
Thank you very much for reading and until next time anime lovers!