In 2017 I watched or am watching no less than 138 series, with a dozen or so more on the to be watched list — this isn’t so much a brag as a cry for help.
I started watching seasonal anime with the fall season of 2015, making 2017 the second full year of doing so. Of the 136 series I’ve watched that came out this year:
- 100 were 1 or 2 cour series, of which some 2 dozen are sequels
- 13 were shorts
- 4 were OVA series like the two Yuuka Yuuna series this season
- 21 were 1 or 2 episode specials, usually spinoffs from an earlier series
That’s an unhealthy amount of anime by anyone’s measure, but it helps if you’re a bit antisocial. It’s not that I watched everything with the greatest amount of attention either. The more run of the mill series were usually consumed while doing other things, like farting about on Twitter. Nor did it stop me from watching older anime either; the great thing about watching seasonal anime is that each series only takes a twenty minutes or so out of your week. Yes, you still spent the same amount of total time watching a weekly series than if you binge watched it, but the motivation for finding 20 minutes to watch one episode of some middling series is much easier to find.
Nevertheless the one great criticism everybody lobs at seasonal watching is still true: you’re on a treadmill and have no option but to continue to consume mass quantities if you want to keep up. Especially if you’re plugged into anitwitter. Which means it’s harder to find the space to truly digest a series, even an excellent series like Little Witch Academia or Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, because everybody will have stopped talking about it in three months. For me personally, what I’ve also found, much more so than last year, is that the various series start to blend together. Anything that doesn’t have its own strong identity just becomes a mush of generic slice of moe, or sports, or shounen action anime. It becomes impossible to tell the difference between e.g. Schoolgirl Strikers and Battle Girl High School (There isn’t. Ed.)
And yet I am still addicted to that dopamine thrill of discovering what’s new, exciting or downright shitty each season, if only because there’s still so much good anime coming down the pipes every three months. It’s not healthy, no, but as long as I’m obsessed I’ll keep watching. I just hope I’ll get slightly more discerning in my tastes; I’ve wasted enough time on series that could only hope to strive for mediocrity.
This is the first post in this year’s twelve days of anime challenge. Tomorrow I hope to talk to you about 2017’s most important series, Little Witch Academia.)
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