Hello, it’s been a while! A while much longer than expected, but that’s how it goes, right? Today, yours truly has two special announcements regarding MyGrailWatch.
The Adult Content Dialog
This isn’t one of the special announcements, but a user annoyance. There was a conflict with the website’s caching and the adult content warning. If you haven’t encountered it, no matter how many times you confirm, the dialog repeatedly appears, asking if you are an adult. To get past it, you have to say that you are not over 18 to view R18 figures. The issue has been corrected and we apologize for any inconvenience caused.
MGW Ranks
There was a bug fix early this month, but for the first time since March 2023, MGW Ranks has received a proper update! It’s both a big and a small update. Small since the new features are limited and there are no new retailers added. I see this as more of a “quality of life” update, MGW Ranks should be more comfortable to use.
Here’s an overview of some of the new features and changes. First, only product images on the current tab are loaded. This means less data usage for you, which also allows you to interact with the site sooner. With an extensive list of products, some pages, like the pre-owned one can get quite long. For those who don’t have one built into their browser, a “Back to Top” button can help instead of furiously scrolling upward! The usefulness of a “Back to Top” button has been evident for a long time now. Both it and the “Cruise” button are available in The MGW Figure Search. Speaking of plugging the Figure Search, you’ll notice new banners for it around MGW Ranks as a form of cross-promotion between MGW Services. There is now also a link to the MyGrailWatch Community Chat, it is powered by Matrix.
For legibility, we’ve darkened the background image. Because of the compact nature of mobile screens, this will be more noticeable there. As a bonus with a darker background, your gaze is drawn to the products, making them “pop” so to speak. Speaking of the background image, scrolling was sluggish on certain devices because of it. Removing the image fixed it, but you want to have your cake and eat it. The background stays and the performance is buttery smooth on those devices. As always, we welcome and appreciate any feedback you have for MGW services.
All of the changes pertaining to this version of MGW Ranks are available in the changelog.
The AnimeFigure Club
May glory be to God in all things. When things weren’t looking so well last year and shit was coming from every direction, it’s only through God’s unceasing grace that we can come to you today. Even if you can’t see how at that moment, all things work together. And it is solely through Him that I have the means to make this second and final special announcement. If you read the title, it is The AnimeFigure Club. To be concise, it is a place for figure collectors and anime enthusiasts to gather and discuss the hobby we love.
From the start, MGW was meant to be a service that people could use to buy figures and not talk about them. As we develop and deploy services, buying figures remain our focus. Our Impressions and Hot Takes, also exist for that reason. Our focus was very much on our beloved subject. It was a foregone conclusion that politics and off-topic content would be excluded. The world was crazy before our founding and five years later, it’s just as crazy. I consider the decision to exclude off-topic content to be a good one. This is partially why The AnimeFigure Club exists.
For me, one or two power-tripping moderators have soured forums. In general, they are like big fish in little ponds; they can do whatever they please with impunity. I want to give a shout-out to ImageMagick forums; they’re awesome. To not go on a tagent, there’s a reason why places like Twitter, Reddit, and Facebook have supplanted them. Social media is like the ocean in comparison. But the shiny conveniences of social media are outweighed by their drawbacks. From privacy invasions to treating your devices as agents to collect data on you, manipulating you based on the data collected, profiteering off said data. We also have advertiser-focused policies such as discrimination against anime-related content whether they be suggestive, adult, or innocuous (GIRLS und PANZER). A single account sounds great on paper, but then we have automatic banning and shadow banning, along with actions tied to conjured words such as “ghosting” and “deboosting.” Those are four different actions that result in the same outcome, you are fucked. There are many more issues and one could argue that such policies are necessary once you operate “at scale.” Ultimately, you do not matter as an individual user. If you did, they wouldn’t treat you like garbage. But you do matter, granted, more to some people than others. Coming back to the start, maybe small, focused communities aren’t so bad. And if they were run by mature adults, it would be even better.
Again, MyGrailWatch was meant to be a place where people would not talk about figures but buy them. The AnimeFigure Club contrasts and thus compliments MGW, being that it is a place designed for people to talk about figures. As leader of MGW, I want everyone who uses our services to be happy. This long-winded introduction is now complete, head over to The AnimeFigure Club and let’s have fun discussing figures and related topics.
In the End
Once again, thank you for supporting MyGrailWatch for the past five years. Since this took forever to post, I wanna wish Kawakami Momoyo, Nee-san a happy birthday!
And you, have a great day as well.