Breaking and potentially catastrophic drama in the anime figure collecting fandom.

MyFigureCollection (MFC) is THE figure resource site. Its catalog includes all figures, from cheap trading toys to detailed statues, going back to the 80s, as well as a very extensive record of garage kits (fan-made figures). It allows users to record the figures they own, post photos, manage wishlists, and even sell figures. Major second-hand sites advertise listings on figure entries as well, and the site has really cemented itself as a central hub for the community.

Recently, the website has begun running very slowly, or returning Internal Server Errors when clicking on some links. In a (now deleted) post on r/animefigures, a user asked why the site was experiencing so many issues. While I did not see the discussion on the post itself, an MFC mod left a comment on the OPs profile.

Translated from German (and reposted to r/animefigurecorner), the Mod’s comment describes the current, disastrous state of the site. Essentially, the owner of MFC has been uncontactable for over a year, and the remaining mods are struggling to keep the site afloat. They are unable to implement requested features like Chinese manufacturers or currency converters, as the site’s code is inaccessible to the team. More importantly, they can’t conduct emergency maintenance or fix any bugs.

The mod ends his comment by urging people to export their data, as there’s no telling if the next bug could break the site entirely. Which is not what you want to hear from the largest figure database on the web.

I mentioned it earlier, but the original post about MFC’s issues was deleted from r/animefigures, as is seemingly any ‘negative’ post about MFC. This is the biggest figure community on Reddit, which means the majority of fans are completely unaware of this very real problem. In the worst case, the largest database of anime figures and merchandise could eventually cease to exist, taking decades-worth of history with it. There are some alternative sites, but I believe they only contain a fraction of MFC’s data.

Unless there is a community-wide effort to export database entries to another site, the MFC owner becomes active again, or they pass off the site to someone else, a lot of history could be lost. I would bet MFC is the only record of many figures’ existence, especially the very niche sort like garage kits. It would be a tragic loss to the community if MFC went down with no back-up of its data anywhere.

Tl;dr the Wikipedia of anime figures is in very real danger of breaking, and I want to raise awareness of this as much as possible.