Forum - View topicThe Mike Toole Show - Binge Benefits
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Color2413
Posts: 49 |
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Years ago, I sorta-binged "Legend of the Galactic Heroes," 4 or 5 episodes in a row daily until I'd seen all 100 of the main-line show. From Hong Kong DVDs, no less, because there weren't even LOGH fansubs available back then (or if there were, I didn't know where to find them). The H-K DVD subs were, for the most part, in surprisingly coherent English, given the usual standards of such things.
I found the series completely addicting. A masterpiece. |
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v1cious
 Posts: 6202 Location: Houston, TX |
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I feel like the binge model doesn't work well for anime. Not shows anyway. The problem is most series gain momentum while they are on the air. Little Witch Academia might be the best show of the current season, but you barely see any fanfare about it. Why? Because Netflix doesn't simulcast, and no one has any way to watch it outside fansubs. Same thing happened to Ajin.
Otaku tend to only care about what's new and popular. Most won't go back to something old, because they're already busy with the current season. The only time you will see anyone binge anime these days is if it's something highly recommended. It just requires too much time to watch something you may be disappointed with. |
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Venus_Angel9
 Posts: 55 |
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I don't usually binge watch but I do prefer to watch several episodes at a time, so I can finish a 12 episode series in a week or less. (I usually watch 2 or 3 at a time, alternating).
I don't really like waiting an entire week for an episode. if it's a comedy, sure, but for most plot oriented stories, it throws the pacing out of balance for me. For example, I recently finished the first season of Rakugo, next day I launched into the second season, now it's just torture for me. There are also series that don't really work in this format, it feels like it's not getting anywhere, but if you watch it in a shorter period of time it's easier to see the big picture because you have every detail fresh in your memory. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6867 Location: Kazune City |
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Like others, I think I've done the most binge-watching during the early phase of anime fandom, like picking up 3 discs of dubbed Sailor Moon at Best Buy, marathoning those episodes, then going back to pick up the next 3 discs. Good thing they had them on clearance for $9.99 apiece at the time. I did once marathon the last 12 episodes of Abenobashi, but for the most part, 6-8 eps of one show at a time is my current ceiling. There's just too much choice out there these days, between newly-airing shows, slightly older "meaning to get to" titles, and rewatches of longtime favorites or "saw it pirated, bought the discs, gotta justify the purchase" selections.
So yeah, I'd share that disappointment. I haven't and wouldn't schedule a full-series marathon for anything longer than the 6-episode/FLCL range (or marathons of short-episode series like Tonari no Seki-kun), though I have thrown on 7-9-episode discs of longer series during latenight hours to minimize disc changes. I definitely find that the "sampling" approach works better -- it doesn't satisfy the very few extremely-dedicated fans who want to spend 5-10 hours marathoning one show, but it does create potential for more consistent crowds as people either use downtime or make time to check things out. But hey, if that con has success filling seats with lengthy marathons, more power to them, I guess. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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For me it comes down to availability. If all of a show is available, I watch it in large chunks. I watch the simulcasts weekly. The longest I've binged watched something is either when I finished the first 53 episodes of One Piece in 3 days or when I finished all of the Thiller Bark arc in 2 days. One sitting would probably be when I finished Knights of Sidonia 2 in one night.
Catching up with long shows like that is definitely suited to binging as one can get though the arcs quickly, which can take some getting used to after you're caught up as the pace slows significantly. When I was catching up on Conan and One Piece simultaneously, I would block out 3 hours each of my two days off a week (worked nights and weekends then so it wasn't necessarily weekends) to just watch one of the shows. Took a bit less than a year of doing (between the two about 1500 episodes at the time) and actually after I finished them, I trained that pace on my backlog, and I was finishing a 12 episode series every day (I was briefly in between jobs after moving so I had some time). Needless to say I burned though my backlog quickly and decided to slow down and not schedule any binging. I do try to fit in some where I can for older shows though (Amagami SS right now). But overall my approach to older shows is the same as when I started becoming a serious fan of the medium, which is to watch as much as I can when I can. And LOGH was one of my all time favorite anime. I don't remember how long it took but I definitely watched it in large chunks. I actually don't mind Netflix's model too much. Gives me something to do for a day or two in between seasons, which is naturally lighter. Though when they did that with Kuromukuro, streaming the first and second halves at the end of their seasons, the first half ended on a cliffhanger which became killer with the three month waiting period. That plot point was clearly not intended to be a good stopping point so their release model made that a bit awkward. But otherwise, I'm satisfied as the shows they've gotten were worth the wait for me and they only ever get one show a season anyhow. @thekingsdinner Netflix actually has 748-753 of Conan but I don't know if that is available to you. But yeah it's too bad the bulk of Conan is not legally available. I'll probably add Voltron to my list after this column. I also told one of my coworkers I would a few days ago so I should probably keep my word anyways. |
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4469 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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If I'm watching a show for the first time, I almost never watch more than 2, or very occasionally 3, episodes at once. I find after two episodes, things start blurring together in my mind and I'm someone who prefers ruminating on each individual episode. Plus, I'm someone who reads spoilers anyway, and, as a result, there's little pressure on me to watch episodes at a pace beyond what I'm comfortable watching as I'm not worried about being spoiled unintentionally by Internet discussions.
I can watch hours and hours of something like South Park in one sitting as background noise, but they're episodes I've seen many times before so there's nothing much left to ruminate about and I don't need to pay too much attention. I don't generally do the same thing for anime episodes I've seen many times before, though, because I'm not a dub fan and my Japanese comprehension level is low, so I can't use it as background noise if I have to pay attention to the subtitles. |
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Animegomaniac
Posts: 4082 |
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When it was jus DVDs, I would just watch an entire disk which 1) I either rented so I only had one anyways or 2) bought and just didn't feel like putting in the next disk just to watch one more episode.
I didn't binge an entire series until Air on Netflix and Moonphase on Hulu. Come to think on it, that was back when Air was still owned.... wait, it's OOP now... well, owned by ADV so it was the whole series plus the clip show which Funimation didn't bother with and Moonphase was back when Hulu just started and Funimation... the literal sum of their anime section... had about five titles. Come to think on it, I really did stream both of them for free legally. Wow, how far we've fallen, I mean come. These days you have to pay for a service just to pay for a service. By the way, I do buy a box of doughnuts to eat in one sitting; It's why they give me the option of how many they put in the box. Sure, I could eat them one at a time but then I'd have to buy them one at a time and I don't always have the patience, time or state of mind for that. There's some kind of metaphor or simile here but I can't quite... cast it... in my mind simultaneously with what's at the tip of my tongue. Also, even if they're good today doesn't mean they'll be good in, say, three months. Have you seen the shelf life of these things? Best to be done with it in one sitting, clean your plate for tomorrow or next week which will always offer more doughnuts. That metaphor is still holding up? What do I have to do to break it.... Or next season. Nope, still valid as I tend to get different kinds during different seasons. Of doughnuts, not... that other thing. |
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MrBonk
Posts: 192 |
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I don't know how anyone can watch only one episode at a time per week. Shit just takes too long.
I dont' mind for episodic serials/dramas on TV, or episodic anime/slice of life stuff. But if there's too much time in between, I find it hard to become completely emotionally engaged. Things become too detached for me. I mean, I don't watch for the entire day (Though there are some shows that I have binged in long sessions that were so emotionally rewarding), but when I do watch something. I try to watch at least an hour to two or more per session. To me, that can qualify for binging. I even watch Episodic stuff like this. I just spent a few months watching a few episodes a day or so of Parks and Recreation. (At least 2-3 episodes a night before bed). This is a show I really wish was on Blu ray. I don't normally stream, so I relented and paid for Seso. Inconsistent streaming, but better than DVD at it's best. I think the writer analogy is stupid, unless it's a non connected episodic show then it's just an excuse for lazy writing and formulaic non continuous structuring. I feel the same with books, I am fine with reading chapters at a time, bits and pieces. But I prefer to focus on nothing but reading the book if I can. Again, feels more emotionally engaging and in the moment with the pacing playing a big part. You can still sit and think afterwards and digest what happened, let the entire thing sink in. |
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TheAncientOne
 Posts: 1871 Location: USA (mid-south) |
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Personally, I would be classified as a "binge watcher", although for me, it is more about viewing at my own pace. That means I can view an entire single cour series on a day off, view 1-2 episodes each day after work, or I can view a longer series over the course of 2 years or more. (As an example, I'll be hitting 3 years soon for completing Nadia: Secret of Blue Water (Fushigi no Umi no Nadia)).
The one downside I see to this is that it you can't really discuss the series with anyone. The only time one can be assured of a group of people all viewing the same episode at the same time is when they are restricted from viewing it any earlier.
Kuromukuro was a 26 episode series on Netflix. They released it in two batches of 13 episodes (one at the end of each cour). |
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thenix
 Posts: 265 |
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Bingeing and focusing on one show at a time are different things. I normally only watch one show at a time but I'll usually take in 2-4 episodes a day. This is normally how I do anything but how I watch anime for sure.
Lately me and my wife have decided to pick out a new series each and we watch the episodes as they come out. If you want to watch the new season as it airs though you have to watch one episode at a time. Personally for about a year I tried only watching new season shows as they aired, about 7 shows at a time, but I was having the problem of not remembering the characters or getting shows mixed up. Eventually I started waiting 3 weeks for shows to have 3 episodes for me to watch at a time, this helped out. I think as I'm getting older, or maybe just because after you've seen what 300+ different anime shows (and 500+ different manga series) that you start having a hard time remembering everything. tl:dr I watch one show at a time usually and a few episodes a day, but that isn't bingeing. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1422 |
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I've found that 14 is the maximum amount of standard-length anime episodes I can watch in a single day, and that only works for me when it's a highly serialized show. Even an episodic comedy I love like Galaxy Angel is something I'm just not able to binge-watch.
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AholePony
 Posts: 330 Location: Arizona |
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I hope you are enjoying your Galaxy Angel rewatch, I love that show. I just binged all of Monogatari because I wanted to see Owarimonogatari again and I can't watch it without watching everything before it..... for some reason lol. It got tough near the end, that's a lot of cuts and dialogue to take in.
Reading thrugh this thread you can see it's all about preference. I know I can't binge shows that have rapid-fire comedy. Shows like, Pani poni, sayonara zetsubou sensei, excel saga, the aforementioned Galaxy Angel, etc. are all quite hard for me to binge. Give me an adventure epic like Moribito though, and I'll down that in a day or two. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I don't binge--I'd even blogged on philosophically taking the whole "Binge-culture" psychologically apart piece by piece, and analyzing what it's done to our national perception of TV watching and what stories even get told nowadays--but anime's different:
Back when we used to get the four-episode Urusei Yatsura VHS of the Month from AnimEigo back in the day, I used to tell myself I'd watch one episode a night, and stretch out the long month. DIDN'T. HAPPEN. Anime of the 80's was potato chips, and UY, Ranma and Dirty Pair were impossible to watch one of. 
My main complaint is, why does our 10's TV-watching culture, anime or network/streaming, believe all TV has to be binged? Not "should", "HAS" to be? Why do we talk about "Your next new binge" when a series comes out, and not "The next show you should watch"? We literally don't talk about TV watching in any other form. When a new show appears on Netflix, you will see reviews three days later saying "I just binged this entire series, and it was great!...C'mon, where's that second season, will we have to wait six months for it?" Yes, greedy pig, you will. If you'd indulged yourself a little less, and didn't physically knock yourself out trying to waste something in showoff record time, like a hot-dog eating contest at Coney Island, you'd still have it around later. Did you feel you had to watch it all before you could even talk about it with your friends? We literally don't talk about classic "episodes" anymore either, like Lucy on the candy line, or Chuckles the Clown...We talk about watching "seasons", because we watch them all at once. As a result, TV doesn't make episodes anymore--They make "Chapters". Every season is designed in bulk package, to string you out like the old 80's Dynasty soap operas, to the "Shocking season climax!"...Which, of course, will be no climax, when the "shock" will be some character's death, betrayal, turn to the dark-side, or catastrophic 9/11 disaster that will leave you beating down the network's door demanding another season to satisfy your frustration! In other words, you've gotten an addiction, and the networks know how to be drug pushers and string out their customers. And why do we do it in the first place? Either because the episodes were already there, on a DVD series boxset, or because Netflix had the automatic "Watch Next" countdown, and we were too lazy to click out of it. What a cultural innovation. 
Anime is different, since it's usually based on manga, which, like comic books, are supposed to get you to read the next chapter, and you can't fault them for being what they are, if every episode is based on a chapter. Like a little kid who's gotten the cookie jar all to himself with no grownups watching, we're enjoying the new digital freedom of not having to watch one show at a certain time every week--oh, are we ever--but consider that in Japan, they have to watch one episode of their hit anime once a week, just like your (ick!) parents did. Those following a new weekly updated simulcast on Crunchyroll are forced into this same moderation of looking forward to a regular episode, and don't feel they have to "prove" anything to the world by watching six or seven. Unless, of course, they're watching an already-finished series' stream and can dig into the cookie jar. (And I said I don't binge Netflix series, but that's not 100% true: Oh, is "Beat Bugs" crack-addictive, and I'll be in on the third two-story episode at a sitting before I even know what I'm doing...  )
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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Then how about one per DAY? (As we used to get DBZ during the days of afternoon syndication and Cartoon Network.) Has the "loosed chains" of no-schedule binge-culture made us actually unable to distinguish any middle ground between enjoying one of something and enjoying all of it? 
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chaccide
Posts: 295 |
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I don't even binge watch shows that are meant to be binge watched, like the Netflix series Daredevil or The Crown or Kuromukuro. At the most I'll watch one episode per day. I find I enjoy the show more if I stretch it out and savor it.
I'll admit though that if there's a very good cliffhanger I'll start that next episode up just to see what happened. |
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