Anime

When MAL started to enshittify years ago, I moved over to Kitsu. It was easy because of the import option. I use Kitsune from F-Droid with it and it's been a delight.

let you know when new episodes are out

displaying English titles

ability to rank series (did you mean rate series?)

anilist.co has you covered, the mobile site is decent unless you really really need an app. If by ranking you mean like a 1st, 2nd, 3rd system that's independent of score, then I guess you could use the custom notes fields or custom lists?

I use MAL-Sync to help extend the function of MAL, but for episode release tracking nothing beats RSS feeds.

Crunchyroll still provides an episode release feed. I selfhost RSSHub to pull data from other websites.

I'm using AL-chan, which is a frontend for anilist.co. Of course, there are various other frontends available, including just using anilist itself directly.

My biggest gripe is it doesn’t let you know when new episodes are out for anime you’re watching

AL-chan does this

I also don’t like the numbering system for watched episodes - it starts at zero instead of one so it shows the last episode you watched vs the next episode you should be watching.( It’s relatively minor I know but that’s how I prefer my show tracking)

I'm guessing you'll have a hard time finding an app that displays the number of episodes you've seen +1 instead of just showing the number of episodes you've seen. As far as I know, AL-chan can't be configured to do this.

Features it does have that I need are displaying English titles

This is configurable

the ability to rank series (even if it’s just locally).

No problems there either

Anihyou - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.axiel7.anihyou

https://github.com/axiel7/AniHyou-android

Probably not what you're after OP, but here's what I do to remember where I left off watching things.

I use a plain text file called watch.txt that I stuck in my home directory. I jot down the name of whatever I was watching, the date, context about the disc/season/episode number, plus the timestamp I stopped at or "done" if I stopped at the end of an episode/disc.

e.g. here's a snippet from it:

  Evangelion  2026-07-20  Disc 4  29:25
  To Love Ru  2026-06-16  Disc 2  E14 done
  Konosuba    2026-06-27  S2      E01 done

Nothing fancy, but it works for me.

I used to use My anime list until some moderator removed a review of mine. Thats when I removed my entire account there and created my own MAL just for me on my own website. Its very handy to keep track of what I watched plus I think people enjoy reading my reviews. (not sure, I don't interact much)

Physical notes?📑

I use the streaming services' built in tracking to keep track of what episode I'm on. I use animeschedule.net for following weekly releases of airing shows. I use MAL to record when I start watching, stopped watching, rating, and tracking "plan to watch".

Watching Crunchyroll's releases through Grayjay, if I follow a series as I would subscribe to an Youtube channel (they're treated as the same by Grayjay), they appear in the subscriptions and can be hidden by toggling off the default filter "watched". Also, you can generate a playlist of a series' episodes, and remove each episode as you watch them.

Grayjay's Crunchyroll integration only works if you log in to Crunchyroll and have access to the episodes, though.

I‘m using trakt.tv

For anime, regular shows and movies.

Gives notifications when a new episode airs.