Binge Senpai

Explore — a manual in three chapters

Everything you can do.

A tour of the platform, from tracking what you watch to asking Senpai for something you'll love. Read it cover to cover, or thumb the table of contents and dip in.

Edition 4.1515 entriesSpring 2026

· Addendum ·

What's new

in the manual lately.

Contents

Chapter IYour anime and manga command center.

Track & organize

On bookkeeping. The unglamorous half of taste — what you've watched, what you mean to, what's queued for tonight. Five instruments and a calendar.

5 entries

Binge Senpai · A manual § I · Track & organize · pg. 05
§ 1.1

Library

Add anime and manga with status, progress, scores, and dates. Sort and filter to find anything instantly. The library is the page everything else in Binge Senpai is built around — every score, every recommendation, every Senpai answer begins as a row in here.

View library (sign in required)
Cowboy Bebop 1998 · 26 ep Watching Plan to watch On hold Completed
4 / 26
fig. 1.1 — library.
Binge Senpai · A manual § I · Track & organize · pg. 06
§ 1.2

Collections

Create themed lists — "Sundays in spring," "If I were braver," "Watched on the train." Collections live alongside status and aren't bound by it; one title can sit in five lists. Use them for moods, for company, for ideas you don't want to lose.

View collections (sign in required)
Tonight, alone 7
Sundays in spring 4
If I were braver 11
fig. 1.2 — collections.
Binge Senpai · A manual § I · Track & organize · pg. 07
§ 1.3

Episode tracking

A visual grid of every episode in your library. Click an episode and the ones before it mark themselves watched — the natural way the eye moves through a season. Mark All, Reset, or expand the carousel for filler labels, recap badges, and air dates.

Season 1 · 7 of 26 Click any episode
fig. 1.3 — episode tracking.
Binge Senpai · A manual § I · Track & organize · pg. 08
§ 1.4

Calendar

A two-week strip of what's airing, when, in your time zone — everything on the air, or just your shows. The catch-up view collects what you've missed in the series you're currently consuming, with New badges for episodes that landed in the last two days.

View calendar (sign in required)
Mon · 4 Tue · 5 Wed · 6 Thu · 7 Fri · 8
Mon · 4 20:30
Apothecary Ep 8
Wed · 6 12:00
Dan Da Dan Ep 4
Wed · 6 21:00
Frieren Ep 26
Fri · 8 23:30
Sakamoto Ep 17
fig. 1.4 — calendar.
Binge Senpai · A manual § I · Track & organize · pg. 09
§ 1.5

Import

Bring it by username — MyAnimeList or AniList — or drop a MyAnimeList XML (.xml.gz too), a Crunchyroll JSON or an Anime-Planet export. A matching cascade reconciles titles to our catalog. Three conflict strategies — Keep existing, Overwrite, or Smart merge (which keeps the higher progress, the earliest start, the latest finish) — give you the dial.

Start an import (sign in required)
mal-export.xml 1,247 entries · 2.3 MB
reading mal-export.xml
Existing entries
fig. 1.5 — import.
Binge Senpai · A manual § I · Track & organize · pg. 10

Chapter IIFind your next favorite.

Discover

On taste. What lives at the edge of what you already love. Six instruments, one of which is willing to argue with you.

6 entries

Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 11

· Marquee · try it here ·

§ 2.1

Chat with Senpai

Senpai has read your library and your scores. Ask in plain language — "something quiet for a Tuesday," "a twelve-episode show I can finish this weekend," "more of whatever Frieren is." It can search the catalog by mood or theme, look up characters and staff, and add things directly to your library when you're sold.

Start a conversation (sign in required)
You
Something quiet for a Tuesday.
Senpai
Three picks. Mushishi — twenty-six episodes that refuse to escalate. Aria the Animation — a city as a feeling. Natsume's Book of Friends — small kindnesses, small ghosts. None of them in your library yet. Start with Mushishi.

(sign in to chat with Senpai)

Try asking

fig. 2.1 — chat with Senpai.
Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 12
§ 2.2

Personalized appeals

On detail pages, a small editorial paragraph explains why this show in particular might land for you — written from your library and your scores. A match score, and a sentence that explains it. Appeals seed in once you've added a few titles, then deepen as the library grows.

For you · Mushishi Why you, specifically.

You scored Frieren a 9 and your library leans toward stories that breathe — the same hush, episode after episode. Mushishi is that hush, twenty-six times. Drifting. Kind. The episodes don't connect, which sounds like a flaw and works like a feature.

fig. 2.2 — personalized appeals.
Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 13
§ 2.3

Recommendations

Algorithmic similarity by synopsis embedding, with a match percentage, sits next to community recommendations from real fans — "if you liked X, watch Y," sorted by votes. Both appear on every anime detail page so you can see what the math thinks and what the room thinks.

By match

  • Mushishi 96%
  • Natsume's Book of Friends 91%
  • Aria the Animation 87%

By the room

  • Spice & Wolf +412
  • Haibane Renmei +287
  • Girls' Last Tour +156
fig. 2.3 — recommendations.
Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 14
§ 2.4

Universe graph

A pannable, zoomable graph of related works — sequels, prequels, side stories, alternative adaptations. Useful when a franchise has eight entries and you can't remember which one's the prequel. Click any node to navigate; tap to unlock on touch devices.

Vinland Saga S2 Manga OVA Spin-off
fig. 2.4 — universe graph.
Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 15
§ 2.5

Browse & search

By genre, season and year — or only the hidden gems. Sort by trending, top rated, most tracked or newest. Twelve mood presets — Cozy, Dark, Tense, Mind-bending, Romantic and the rest — live on your Library home, where they turn into matching genre clouds behind the scenes.

2010-2025 ≤ 13 ep Not seen

1,847 titles match.

fig. 2.5 — browse & search.
Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 16
§ 2.6

Review summaries

Popular series carry hundreds of community reviews, synced from MyAnimeList. Senpai reads them all and writes you two paragraphs: what people loved, what people argued about. Click through to the originals when one of those paragraphs piques you.

4,287 reviews · in two paragraphs

Loved: the patience of it. The way episodes refuse to escalate. The composer. The lead's small, specific kindnesses.

Argued about: the pacing of the middle stretch — beautiful or boring depending on the night.

fig. 2.6 — review summaries.
Binge Senpai · A manual § II · Discover · pg. 17

Chapter IIIExplore the anime world.

Dive deeper

On adjacency. Past the shows themselves: the people who make them, the studios behind them, the characters who outlive them.

4 entries

Binge Senpai · A manual § III · Dive deeper · pg. 18
§ 3.1

Characters

Every named character cross-referenced to their voice actor (per locale, with the original Japanese cast star-flagged), the series they appear in, and related characters. Favorite the ones you care about; they form a small private gallery on your favorites page.

Spike
Faye
Jet
Ed
Ein
fig. 3.1 — characters.
Binge Senpai · A manual § III · Dive deeper · pg. 19
§ 3.2

People

Filmographies for everyone who has touched a show in the database. Useful for the night you realize the same composer scored your last three favorites and want to know what else they've done.

Hiroshi Nagahama Director · 12 works
  • Mushishi 2005
  • House of Five Leaves 2010
  • The Reflection 2017
fig. 3.2 — people.
Binge Senpai · A manual § III · Dive deeper · pg. 20
§ 3.3

Studios

Studio pages with the complete catalog, currently-airing shows under a live indicator, signature works, top-rated picks (filterable by genre and year), and notable staff. The same structure exists for producer credits and licensed catalogs.

Studio Ghibli 1985 — 2024
fig. 3.3 — studios.
Binge Senpai · A manual § III · Dive deeper · pg. 21
§ 3.4

Favorites

Every series, character, person, and studio you've ever favorited, on one page. No status, no progress, no scoring — just things you want to keep close. Filter by type when the mosaic gets dense.

View favorites (sign in required)

47 series · 23 characters · 6 studios

fig. 3.4 — favorites.
Binge Senpai · A manual § III · Dive deeper · pg. 22

That's the manual.

Now go and make a mess of your library.

Roadmap: social recommendation sharing, a quieter mode for nights.

Up next, an addendum on social.

Back to cover

reading as a guestprinted in spring 2026