One day a group of friends by the names of y2klizard, aZn_nUt, Platinum|Star, and ^_^Teddie thought it would be a great idea if anime fansubs were more easily found in one location. There were already other websites that did this, however the others decided they would only report unlicensed shows. These guys quickly went to work and on July 20th, 2002 Baka-Updates was officially released to the public.

The goal of Baka-Updates was always to inform the users of the latest anime releases. Throughout the years, we have noticed the anime culture grow at a steady pace. It grew so much that companies eventually gave notice that viewers outside of Japan wanted to get the content fast and thus new streaming services such as Crunchyroll were born. Shows would be simucasted as soon as one hour after it was broadcasted in Japan. This led to the amount of fansubs decreasing since it was so convenient to view the new releases compared to the traditional methods.

As well, the Baka-Updates team continued to grow older. An increase in responsibilities with work and new families meant that we could not commit as much time into maintaining the website. Therefore we have decided it is the right time to shut down.

The team at Baka-Updates would like to thank all of our visitors for supporting the site over all these years. Without you, we would never have had the motivation to keep going for this long. We never expected the anime scene to grow up to what it is today and we will continue being a part of it, only in the background this time.

The closing of Baka-Updates does not affect our sister site MangaUpdates. It will continue to operate as normal.