Well, I've been more interested in apps that actually perform as much of their work as possible locally; I don't really see a lot of value in an app that just acts as a front-end to a website. (This was the original drive for me to create Pierogi; I couldn't see any reason why you wouldn't want to just include all the keyset data with the app itself.}

I'm thinking that, in terms of raw data, the full catalog of Anime titles is fairly static. I've certainly gone over the list at ANN often enough to know it almost forwards and backwards now. I could see maybe constructing an XML file (or, if necessary, an SQLite db) with some basic info on the existing list of Anime titles, and maybe updating it quarterly to include new releases each season. Perhaps downloading a thumbnail picture on demand from one of the websites, when the user wants one; I'm not sure how much space would be required to host a full set of thumbnails locally...

Anyway, it wouldn't be hard to maintain local metadata, such as lists, rankings, and reviews for each anime. Also, I've gotten some experence pulling down RSS data lately, so it'd be easy enough to collect Anime news from all the major websites. I'm not entirely sure how much effort it would take to incorporate some of the more social aspects of websites like MAL; however, I really like the concept of an app being website-agnostic, and even more, being at least somewhat usable whether or not you have internet access. At the very least, I think a basic database of anime titles should be small enough to integrate directly into an app.

I really haven't thought this through all that much yet. I'll try to play around with this concept over the next couple of days....