Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Do You Keep Up With So Much Anime?
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16939 |
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The only way you can keep up with all the anime coming out is to basically have no life outside of anime. I mean with the sheer volume of shows you'd have to not watch anything else or go out or do anything else. Slight exaggeration, but only slight. I don't even waste my time trying to watch everything or even try everything. I'll watch the first 1 or 2 episodes of new shows that interest me and then widdle that down more to just a small handful I think I'd actually stick with. Instead of trying to force myself to keep up with more than I can and not enjoying myself as much. If you have that much time on your hands to watch every show each season you might have too much free time lol.
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Ashtur
Posts: 15 |
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I've kind of fallen into an odd pattern.
I keep an eye on the new shows, and throw stuff that grabs my interest onto a queue at CR or Funi (as the case may be.) However, I don't really watch current shows too much. I find I prefer to wait until the season ends, and then go back and watch in more of a marathon setting. So in the end, I'm generally 3-18 months behind (and on occasion reaching back to older stuff still.) I may watch 1-2 series as they develop, but even with series I love (like Your Lie) I find myself falling behind and watching 3-4 episodes in a burst. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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As someone who watches most (but not all) anime that comes out each season, yeah probably. I don't really watch much of any other TV or movies. I have other hobbies and go out occasionally but mostly I watch anime. There are reasons for that I won't get into here (unless someone insists). The fact of the matter is I've got a fair amount of free time and I'll use it as I see fit, which is mostly anime. Realizing that you have too much doesn't change that fact. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I'm still working out a perfect system, but I think I'm getting pretty close. I use Anichart, and ANN to keep up with what is upcoming, and base my decisions largely on the staff and studio behind a project, followed by the visuals, and then the premise. Staff is always most important to me, and following the right people hasn't really let me down yet. Just make sure you pay attention to their actual involvement(Just because Gen Urobuchi's name is attached to something doesn't mean it'll be great).
On anichart I highlight everything that is immediately interesting for the upcoming season, and as it gets closer, the number of shows will typically balloon to somewhere close to 25. Then I wait. I read the Preview guide on ANN and I listen to specific critics and internet opinions that I trust for that first quarter-to-half season. After opinions have really started to form and the cream starts to rise to the top, I will start to pick up the things that I was most interested in. And eventually, usually by the end of the season, I will have watched somewhere between 10 and 15 shows, and, at least this past season, I enjoyed every single one of them. I tend to prefer binge watching in general, so having several episodes of the best shows to watch immediately is always nice. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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I think it's possible without having "too much free time" because I used to do that by marathoning everything. I never watch weekly simulcasts. Currently I'm on an hiatus, but I plan on resuming soon. The problem is, most people try to watch anime in addition to other media/regular TV/movies. You can't. So if you're like me who got bored with TV anyways, and have no idea who are all the celebreties and get your news by reading it rather than watching 1 hour of news on TV, then there's plenty of time for most anime. Think about it, 1 hour of TV = 3 episodes of anime (20 mins per ep if you skip the OP/ED). People spend an average of 4 hours of TV a day, from casual watching to focused series following. 4 hours = 12 episodes. That's an entire season in one day that fits into your off-work, off-hobby rest period! |
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lostbirdinatree
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1. Check seasonal charts (normally Crunchyroll/some other anime news site will supply one of their own or use Neregate's) and pick out anything that looks like it'll look good (which tends to be about 10 - 15 shows for me).
2. If you're not familiar with the source material then you take in the synopsis, title and key visual. I have a fairly good instinct of what I like and what I don't so at this point I type the names of the anime I like somewhere I'll check later (as I'm a streamer at heart, having only started seasonals in fall 2014). Order the names based on personal hype and/or possibility of being dropped. 3. Watch the first episode of everything on the list (as soon as you can get your hands on them and/or as soon as there's enough time to watch), prioritising shows higher on the list than ones lower on the list. Decide whether to follow, put on hold or drop each. 4. Once streaming days are finalised for the season, check what you can fit into your schedule, and keep watching subsequent episodes of the remaining shows. Use your judgement to evaluate dropping/putting on hold any show you're still watching, regardless of what others say/think - don't be afraid to be brutal about it, especially if you have no time that season. (This normally ropes me up to 5 shows I'm serious about.) 5. If you regularly seek out anime reviews/discussion etc., stick with shows you've already seen/are watching seriously. Don't discuss the show if you've put it on hold and you believe you don't have a good enough grasp on the overall plot. |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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My hobbies are anime, video games, and tokusatsu. I can understand a casual fan finding it intimidating, but 4 or 5 episodes a day are enough to watch every show in a season if you really want to. That's less time than a movie will take up, not even including the drive to the theater and back home. In my case I can write a few shows off if they're not to my interests, like BL/yaoi/otome stuff obviously, but I try to see at least 1 episode of everything and go from there, dropping things if they fail to keep my interest. I end up finishing around 10-20 new stuff every season, not counting returning shows like Conan, Pocket Monsters, and One Piece. I don't really find it difficult myself, but for people who go out to dinner/movies/bars every night, or for those people who make like 100 Tweets/Vines a day and are addicted to social media and stuff, I suppose I could see the issue. -Stuart Smith |
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AnimeLordLuis
 Posts: 1626 Location: The Borderlands of Pandora |
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I only keep up with about ten Anime series a season mostly ones that Funimation decides to simudub and after the season is over I ask around to see if there are any good shows that I may have overlooked and sometimes there are.
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1775 Location: South America |
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You don't. I watch only the stuff that I find interesting based on a combination of reviews and opinions from friends, stuff like Hunter Hunter (2012) and Osomatsu (2015), the good stuff you know. 90% of the stuff airing is really mediocre/bad and not worth the time (like 90% of American TV shows but you can find the real stuff like Breaking Bad and the Mr. Robot among the piles of mediocre garbage).
It's a complete waste of time to watch new stuff because it's new, I rarely watch new stuff and when I do I wait until many episodes were released. Same with novels: hundreds of thousands of novels are released every year but only a few are actually worth reading. |
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Desa
 Posts: 285 |
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Not gonna lie, XDCC bots are how I get almost all recent anime. Having offline files is how I keep up with a lot of shows with minimal time. What I've noticed over the years is that the more anime you watch the more you are able to "intuit" various aspects of a show, like character nuances and dialogue patterns, behavioral tropes, plot direction etc. After watching so much anime you basically become able to "see where things are going" without even needing to watch it. This is where offline files can save you quite a bit of time. I've heard that some people watch shows at 2x speed without missing a beat but as far as time saving is concerned this is also not ideal. The better method is interval skipping.
It basically boils down to the concept that you are more or less able to understand the "overall picture" of an episode by watching a select number of moments and filling in the gaps in your mind. The more fiction you've seen and read the more proficient you become at filling in the blanks. One thing nearly all mediocre anime have in common is that they're not very "dense". You can skip quite a lot of material without losing anything of value. This is how I quickly categorize shows into 4 types: 1. Shows that I like and will take the time to watch. (Minimal skipping. OPs and EDs are usually skipped after the first time unless I really like them.) 2. Shows I don't really like but there's SOMETHING there that keeps me going. (Moderate to high interval skipping.) 3. Abominations I really shouldn't continue watching but I have a masochistic desire to see how it ends. (Maximum skipping. From the recent season "Hitori no Shita - The Outcast" would fall into this category but I'm a sucker for cheesy martial arts involving supernatural powers so mediocrity be damned I'm finishing this.) 4. Shows I have no interest in. Dropped. (Like a dirty penny it shall never be picked up again.) Of course, no matter which type a show falls into, if there's a character I don't like or someone is having a "whiny crybaby moment" those are automatically skipped, practically on reflex. Ain't nobody got time for that. |
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Shuffleblade
Posts: 9 |
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What I do is prepare for the upcoming season by sifting through the upcoming series and writing down the series I want to start watching. I rarely read the synopsis (since I love being suprised) what I do is look at the genres and the pictures. Basically I dropp any series that are mainly slice of Life, Comedy or ecchi which are the genres I generally don't appreciate while taking notes of genres i like for example shounen, seinen, action, drama and so on.
This means I usually start watching the first episode of 60-70% of all shows that airs but the way it usually goes is i drop 25-30% of those shows after/during the first episode and then keep dropping series which fail to keep me interested throughout the season. Maybe I start watching 30 series, by the end maybe I'm watching 15 or less which I actually finish. |
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relyat08
Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I've heard about other people using similar methods to watch anime. Personally, I don't get it. If a show is good enough for me to watch, I'm going to watch it at normal speed while paying full attention. If I just wanted the cliff notes version of something, I'd just go find a thread to get exactly that. Otherwise, I want to absorb the animation, the sound, and the story as holistically as possible. In iyashikei shows, which I watch a lot of, it seems particularly counter-intuitive. It is meant to be relaxing and to pull you into its world through atmosphere. I can't imagine that working nearly as well if I'm trying to get to the next plot point as quickly as possible. Not to say your way of watching is wrong, you do you, but I could never do that personally. |
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Desa
Posts: 285 |
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The type 1 shows I watch "normally" as you say. As for reading summaries online it relies entirely on the trust you put into whoever wrote the summary. I find that I understand something far better and quicker by seeing and hearing it for myself rather than relying on the accounts of others. And generally even bad shows have good moments that you would miss out on if you just read a summary, especially high action scenes which essentially can't be conveyed as text. The way I watch focuses my time on the enjoyable while not wasting time on the annoying or unnecessary. A kind of "Min-Maxing" if you will. It all comes down to what you do with something that is mostly bad with some good. Do you throw it all out and walk away or quickly sift through it and perhaps find something you weren't expecting? Certainly if a show was ALL bad I wouldn't bother watching it or even reading about it. I know I focused a lot on skipping things but having offline files also makes it really easy to instantly replay fantastic moments over and over again. The time I save not watching boring moments I spend by rewatching awesome ones. For instance, watching Mob Psycho I find myself constantly replaying various scenes such that the total time I spend on one episode exceeds an episode's runtime. Like this I feel I can get the most out of an episode. |
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1231 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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I just still bring up Neregate (despite the fact anime listing sites now have their own charts that get updated more often, a change that's especially welcome for looking at the years before charts were a thing (pre-2009/2010 or so)), and go through all the TV series that I may want to watch, and put the list together. As I'm too open, this leads to me watching a ton of stuff, and it doesn't help I'm a completionist, so I don't drop stuff. That leads to me having way more on my plate than the average fan (and I've seen more in general than the average fan; been watching since late 2008, most of this is from 2011-2013)
But anyway, I just put the shows down on a schedule that I made on a spreedsheet through Google Docs, and that's what I use to keep track of what show has episodes coming out on what day. I also have 2-3 catalog shows for each day, and (when I stick to the schedule) watch 2 episodes from one show, 2 episodes from another, and one episode of another one each day. If you're terrible at marathoning (like myself), this is what I'd recommend as far as going through catalog shows, having some sort of schedule for how much of it you'll watch a certain day/week. It allows me to get through those quicker.
Still, if you don't have very many hobbies outside anime and don't yet have more responsibilities, watching about everything is still feasible. |
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Cptn_Taylor
Posts: 925 |
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The answer is I simply don't care to keep up with so much anime. So each season I choose from the outset 2 maybe 3 series that look promising and that is it. The urge to watch all that is watchable is not for me. Viewing anime has to be a pleasure, not a chore, and certainly not a job. As an old saying goes "too much of anything kills the good in it". |
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