For DSAU12, our first dashboard week challenge was to use JikanAPI to get data from MAL. JikanAPI is an unoffical API set up to scrape data from MyAnimeList. We were tasked with first using the API to get any data we would want to use and then creating something out of it in Tableau.
Data Preparation
Our first challenge to overcome was using the API in order to get the data we wanted. I chose to get data from the Top Anime list from MyAnimeList. This ranked anime by score and then listed them. I used an iterative macro to repeatedly request the data from Jikan. Jikan only sent 24 records at a time so I would have to continuously run this in order to get enough data to work with. I decided to cap this out at 300 requests as I felt for this task, it would be enough data. The data was then cleaned out as it was in JSON format in order to end up with a nice table for use in tableau.
Dashboard Development
My idea for creating a dashboard was to ask any user of it a question. What anime should you watch? If your looking to find a new anime to watch then why not already filter out anything with low ratings and start from the highest rated anime. I used GIMP in order to create custom graphics to make the Viz look better. I mimicked the MAL website for this design. Since my data came back with 8000 records, I was working with the top 8000 anime. I allow the user to filter by three metrics, demographic, genre, and themes. This will filter the Viz and return the anime that a user might want to see. Clicking on these charts then sends you to a second page which shows the anime in detail.
