mcp-animenewsnetwork is an MCP server that connects chat clients to the Anime News Network (ANN) encyclopedia and news. Anime News Network has covered anime and manga since 1998, maintaining an encyclopedia of works that includes cast and staff, episodes, releases, opening and ending themes, and reader ratings for each work, while also running a news feed with different editions for the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This server connects chat clients to both parts at the same time.
Purpose: Users can directly query encyclopedia entries, cast and staff information, and episode information for anime or manga in a conversation, browse recent additions or browse the encyclopedia alphabetically, and read anime news. No API key or account is required.
Main capabilities:
- Search anime and manga by title, returning entry rows with id and kind, name, type (TV, movie, OAV, ONA, special, manga, or novel), precision, release year or range (vintage), and source link.
- Read details for a single entry (get_title), requiring both id and kind because the encyclopedia numbers anime and manga separately. Basic information includes aliases, type, themes, episode count, runtime, objectionable content, official website, image URL, opening themes, and ending themes; ratings include reader votes, weighted score, and Bayesian score; the plot summary is returned in chunks with fields such as total word count, returned word count, offset, and whether it is truncated; cast and staff entries include roles, people, and the language performed.
- List recent additions to the encyclopedia, or browse by first letter (list_titles), returning rows with id, kind, name, type, precision, vintage, date added, and source link, with next_offset supported for continuing to browse.
- Read the news feed (get_news), returning entry titles, links, summaries, all tags, and publication time (when readable), as well as the total number of entries in that feed.
Usage: Can be installed with one click for clients using standard configuration formats such as Claude Desktop and Cursor; Node 24 or later is required, and no environment variables need to be set. You can also download the mcp-animenewsnetwork-2.0.1.mcpb file from the latest release; clients that support MCP bundles will install it automatically, with no npm or configuration file needed, as the bundle includes its dependencies. At runtime, outbound HTTPS access to cdn.animenewsnetwork.com and www.animenewsnetwork.com is required, with no volumes, ports, or credentials needed. All variables are optional and can be set in the env block of the client configuration.
Requests are sent at a controlled pace, with at least 1.1 seconds between two requests, and a minimum floor of at least 1 second is always guaranteed. The User-Agent always ends with the project identifier and a contactable address. Every result includes the address of the encyclopedia page or article, because the encyclopedia and news belong to Anime News Network and its contributors, and attribution is the return the service requires.
Use cases: Suitable for anime and manga fans, researchers, or content creators to quickly look up work information, cast and staff, episodes, ratings, and news in a chat client, or to use as a library for building other tools.
Limitations: This project is unofficial and is not affiliated with Anime News Network. At runtime it does not collect any user data or send data to the author, and it only accesses the two domains mentioned above; answers are kept in memory and are not written to disk. Tests use generated fixed data and do not make network requests; the live test suite (npm run test:live) runs nightly against the service itself. The news feed publishes multiple times per hour, while the encyclopedia changes less often, so the two use different cache times. Each failed result carries one of six error codes, a message, and a hint that may help with the next step. The project uses the MIT license.
