Preface

Last January, I published a post titled "Jikan API - Vision 2018" which included a list of new features that would be implemented in 2018. By mid-2018, we had completed 75% of the goals set. By September Jikan REST API v3.0 was released and we had completed all of our year's goals and even introduced new features in October with the release v3.1.

This year we focused entirely on getting the Jikan API better performance wise and as a open-source tool. This was a challenge on its own. And there's still a bit left to go.

Goals

My focus for Jikan has been to fill in the gap where MyAnimeList hasn't been able to. Jikan caters to a plethora number of requests daily and is used across many apps, platforms and projects. We have had some amazing contributors, wrapper developers and supporters - we've come a long way.

As many of you already know, MyAnimeList was acquired by Media Do. earlier this year. Their team  has been working on introducing a new API that would cater to GET requests like the one Jikan provides. They're currently running a closed beta of the API and would be pushing for open beta soon. So the question that's been lingering - where does this put Jikan?

Thanks to all our patrons and donors, we reached our first goal to sustain our services. Furthermore, we even migrated our servers to a less expensive alternative without causing any compromise to the service. 

Our second goal was an even beefier setup and had a "Provide data from other services, not just MyAnimeList!" statement. The beefier setup part already got covered thanks to our first goal so we decided to go even further and look into other services that we build. 

Vision 2020 

While I was focused the unofficial MAL API in 2018 and 2019; it's no longer just an "I". We're working on introducing new services that would be amazing to use not only as the end-user but to integrate as a developer too.

We're excited to introduce 3 new platforms + services that we're planning to push out in 2020. This is our current projected timeline:

01. Jikan API 4.0 (2020 Q1-Q2)

02. Project R (+API) (2020 Q1-Q2) 

03. Hiyori API (2020 Q1-Q3) 

04. Project S (+API) (2020 Q3-Q4)

I'm happy to announce that Matsujo Hibiki (@Assintates) will be developing Project R & Project S. A successful prototype has already been developed for Project R and we're currently in the Alpha stage.

I will be creating a new post for each of these explaining what they are. So more details (including the service’s complete name) in upcoming posts!

P.S What will happen to Jikan?

It's still alive and kicking, there are currently no plans to take it down. An official API has not been released yet, there are currently no plans to take it down either when it does. We don't really know how their corporate decisions are going to be - whether the official API is going to be delayed, would it be difficult to use, how much coverage they're going to provide, etc.

In fact, we have a planned API v4.0 release. You can view the roadmap here for v4.0.

More to come soon!