R.I.P. OtakuNet (2014-2023)
Check out the OtakuNet relic: OtakuNet Relic
「OtakuNet Relic」| - It's A Big World -
OtakuNet was created in December 2014 with the vision to unite all other animanga communities within Enjin under a single hub. It was founded by Ben, Stein, and Reaver. This page is to document and archive highlights during the time that OtakuNet has existed. OtakuNet was home to many and was a small space on the Internet that enabled new friendships to grow, variety of fun online activities, and interesting forums. It grew quickly into one of the largest communities of its type on Enjin (~1.7k+ members).
Unfortunately, as of April 30th 2023, due to Enjin shutting down its community management service, the original OtakuNet forums and website which was hosted on Enjin will also been retired.
Let's reminisce together and take a trip down memory lane to remember some of our greatest moments. OtakuNet demonstrated what "It's a Big World" really meant and brought so many individuals together worldwide. Note that some of the screenshots might be sorted in the wrong year. I had to parse through quite a lot of screenshots and my dust ridden memory.
R.I.P. OtakuNet (2014-2023)
Thoughts from the OtakuNet Founder
Hi 👋, Ben here. I am the owner and founder of OtakuNet. In 2014, I created this community alongside Stein and Reaver. We felt that there needed to be a hub to unite all the scattered anime communities together within the Enjin ecosystem. Our goal and mission was to create an ultimate animanga hub and carve out a space for ourselves. The reason I used the now memed "It's a Big World" as the slogan for OtakuNet was to remind ourselves how many opportunities there are and that the world was our oyster. There were limitless possibilities out there and OtakuNet was born from one of them. We wanted OtakuNet to be the community for the births of new friendships and experiences of a lifetime that we can look back as fond memories. We also wanted to enable members to be able to explore out of there comfort zone through this community. I'm happy to state that we have achieved more than we could have dreamed of. We were able to grow from 0 users to over 1700+ users. We established partnerships with a variety of different communities and YouTubers (ie. NightCoreReality). I've heard many success stories of individuals who were lost and were able to call OtakuNet home.
From my time at OtakuNet, I've really grown individually. OtakuNet has been a wild ride that I started as a secondary student back in 2014. It was a journey filled with drama that would have been unexpected for a random anime community. It has snowballed my future into tech and I'm incredibly grateful of the experiences that OtakuNet has provided me. Back while I was running OtakuNet, I was offered the opportunity to work at Enjin (we were hosted by Enjin Website Builder & Community/Guild Hosting) full time. Enjin quickly moved into the blockchain space in 2017 and had pushed me into the tech space. Through OtakuNet and Enjin, I've been able to meet a variety of interesting individuals, broaden my horizons, and exponentially grow. I would like to thank all the staff and members of our community for being part of OtakuNet and building a place we once called a second home.
I've gone ahead and created this site to host the key moments we had as a community. Feel free to reach out to me via my website or LinkedIn. Always happy to connect with old OtakuNet members. Thanks OtakuNet!