My anime and manga stacks - a deep dive into my setup

Why selfhost this? #

Yes. There are several sites that allow you to stream anime for free, and there are several sites to read manga for free. But i love selfhosting and all things homelab. Another great reason is guarantee, i know that when i wake up tomorrow my anime, watch progress, etc will still be there, while a random site could have been taken down, or my data could have been lost etc (like crunchyroll recently taking down a lot of sites).

The Anime Stack #

My anime stack consists of 4 services: Seanime, qBittorent, Shokoanime/Shokofin and Jellyfin. These together cover all my anime needs: searching, downloading and streaming.

Seanime #

Seanime is technically a full stack by itself; it connects to a downloader and can then download and stream anime all in one app. Sadly some features are missing, for example multiple users, which is a must for me as i let one of my friends use the library as well. Therefore i only use Seanime for searching and downloading.

qBittorent #

qBit is a torrent which does exactly what you think it does, it downloads torrents and seeds them. Seanime sends jobs to qBit automatically when i download from Seanime searches. This also allows me to seed the torrents, which allows me to contribute back to everyone else.

Shokoanime #

Shokoanime is a service with several plugins for different media library managers, that makes anime metadata a lot more accurate by hashing the files and matching them against aniDB hashes. This works a lot better than jellyfins name-based metadata downloading as different packers will distribute episodes and seasons with vastly different naming schemes. Shoko bypasses this completely using the file hashes mentioned before.

Then i have Shokofin installed on Jellyfin, which makes jellyfin use Shokoanime as its metadata source and also its library folder. Shoko uses the parsed hashes for animes to construct a virtual filesystem which is a lot more Jellyfin friendly than Seanime manages to create when downloading, and Shokoanime’s virtual filesystem solves exactly that by providing a clean nested folder structure for Jellyfin to parse.

Jellyfin #

This is the final piece, Jellyfin is a media library streaming and management service. It lets me view and browse my media / anime library and makes it stupidly easy to stream it on any device using its ecosystem of apps.

On my phone i also use findroid, an alternate client for Jellyfin for android which adds a cleaner UI and better player support.

I also have Ani-Sync installed on Jellyfin, a Jellyfin plugin that automatically syncs your watch status in real time to several platforms like mal, anilist etc. Personally i use it to sync to my anilist profile.

The Manga stack #

I have tried a lot of things to make the perfect Manga stack which downloads and reads, while still supporting multiple users. My first attempt used Komga as the reader and Suwayomi as the downloader. It kept having issues though, and in the end i ended up settling for an app called Uchiyomi.

Uchiyomi #

Uchiyomi is my entire manga stack, it does downloading, user management, reading stats, metadata, anilist sync and reading incredibly well and was the only one that actually checked all my boxes in practice.

Yes, it IS a mostly vibecoded app, and while i hate that it is vibecoded, the final product is the ONLY stack that has worked for me and if ANY alternative that isnt vibecoded comes up, i will most definently switch, but for now it is my only options and does what i need it to do. I do NOT support vibecoding in any way, and i am embarrassed to use a vibecoded app in my daily life, i quite literally could not find any other option as of now.

Final thoughts #

My stacks check all my boxes, and they work great for me. If you have the same requirements as me, including users, anilist sync, downloading, streaming/reading, good metadata etc, then maybe have a look at these stacks. I am going to assume your needs are not identical to mine though, so i really encourage you to get out there and try to find your optimal stack on your own.

In the end, these stacks does everything i want, and they have both worked incredibly well for me, and therefore i cant complain. If you have any further questions regarding my stack, or want to know more, feel free to reach out on bluesky (@ch0.dev)!