My Anime Watching Habits Over the Years

I said in my previous post I'd have to make a post about my anime watching habits. Well, here I am, I guess.

In my childhood, I watched anime like Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z. It was a time in my life where I didn't even realize it was anime. Hell, when I first read Harry Potter, I didn't even realize the books were set in England. In fact, being an autistic kid with ADHD, for a good chunk of my childhood, I wasn't even cognizant of when new episodes came out, so I think I missed a lot. By the time I was old enough to know what anime was, I was in middle school and in the middle of a phase where I thought anime (and animation in general) was dumb and for babies. In high school, I softened a little bit to thinking anime just wasn't for me, but I was still resistant to watching it. Then, in 2011, after I had graduated high school, a friend of mine told me I needed to watch Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

Madoka Magica was the first crack in the dam. Even then, I was resistant to watching more anime. I convinced myself I just liked magical girl shows. I would binge shows like Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura at this point, at night, on my porch, because I was a hopeless romantic I guess. At the same time, I was starting to be more open to watching shows like Adventure Time, so this era was marked by a lot of me getting over myself. However, in 2013, the same friend who showed me Madoka Magica recommended Attack on Titan. I fell in love with that show, and still love it to this day. Yes, despite the weak ending. It was so good, in fact, that I actually started reading the manga after there was no second season in sight. In that time, I also saw the two Little Witch Academia OVAs and got really excited for the prospect of a show based on them. Yet, still, throughout university, I wasn't really into anime.

Come 2016, I had just left university and was looking for my first job. That April, I was excited to watch the first season of the Ace Attorney anime adaptation. This was the first anime I had watched while it was airing from the start. Madoka Magica finished by the time I saw it, and I started AOT seven episodes in. Same with Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress that season, which I started eight episodes in. Eventually, up through 2018, I fell into a pattern. I'd watch two shows that had finished, and maybe one new show a season, two if I was feeling spicy. At the time, I was working weekends, but my shift on Sundays would start later, like in thwe afternoon, and I would often watch anime in the morning before work, and I'd usually try to watch seasonal shows the day the episode came out. I got to watch the Little Witch Academia TV show when it came out, and hey, AOT finally got a second season! I even dropped my first show, Fuuka. I also watched a little show called Death Note.

Death Note was ten years old at that point, nearly 20 now, and I remember hearing about it at the time. Watching it and loving it as much as I did made me realize how truly foolish I had been. All the wasted years I spent being a pompous, self-righteous asshole! I really do wish I had been more into anime when I was younger. I missed so many shows I probably would've loved.

In late 2015, I had a new job with weekends off. It didn't happen right away, but at some point, I started condensing my anime watching into Saturday mornings. This may have started summer 2019, as I had a shift in the number of shows I was watching. That summer, I was watching five shows. Granted, two of them were half length, but still. Even after this, I'd often just add shows to my plan to watch list, thinking I couldn't handle that many shows at once. LOL. LMAO, even. Something would happen that would turn that idea on its head.

In 2020, COVID started and delayed many productions. As a result, the studios kind of just blew their load all over the start of 2021. In that winter season, I watched eight shows, an unprecedented amount for me. It was crazy, or so I thought. The very next season, I would watch 11 shows. Honestly, this was too much, and I was a lot less amicable to the idea of dropping shows, so I kept going with a couple shows I should've just dropped. That summer, I only picked up one show, Sonny Boy. I was still watching four shows that season because of the leftovers from spring! I can't remember if I stopped watching all my shows during this or before, but at some point, I just started watching all my shows as close to release as I could.

I'm looking at my MAL charts as I write this, and it looks like the blowback from that one season lasted longer than I thought. Until fall 2022, I didn't go over four shows, and more often, I'd only pick up a couple new shows. In that fall, I watched seven shows, but four of those seven were sequels. In 2023, I watched a whole lot of shows, with only summer dipping down to four.

Unfortunately, in 2024, I had a year of fatigue. In winter, I picked up one show. In spring, I picked up seven. Then, in summer, I felt like I couldn't keep up, there were just so many shows that looked so good. I felt like I didn't get to watch a lot of shows I wanted to, and honestly, I kinda wish I traded a couple of shows I did watch. Not that any of them were bad! Giji Harem, for example, put a smile on my face, but I would've rather watched Makeine. The very next season, I was just having trouble keeping up. I ended up having to put two shows on hold and drop one. I didn't even dislike the one I dropped, but I just didn't see a whole awful lot of potential in it.

2025 started out looking much like 2022. Three shows in the winter, then two in the spring, despite there being other shows I thought looked interesting. To use my own phrasing at the time, I guess I was taking a break. One of those was Mobile Suit Gundam: GQuuuuuuX, which was more like Gundam G-CUCKED ME. Hold that thought, we'll come back to it. That summer, I watched seven shows, but one of them, Takopi's Original Sin, I ended up watching in the inbetween time before the fall season. I preemptively dropped Sakamoto Days season two (part two of season one?) because, honestly, it's not a great adaptation and I had better things to watch, and I also dropped Kaiju No. 8 after one episode because I just wasn't feeling it. If what I'm hearing is correct, I made the right decision, as apparently the source material just gets more boring and generic as it goes on, ends unsatisfyingly, and completely leaves behind what made it special in the first place. In other words, a waste of my time, and this was when I was starting to try and be more mindful of what shows I watch.

Also during this time, I watched the original Gundam with a friend, the same friend who I watched GcuckS with. Gcucks was my first Gundam, and I wanted to like it, but it was just bad. It was like the franchise sniffing its own farts. It made Char uninteresting! And I can say without a doubt now, after watching the original, Char is an interesting character. I definitely want to watch more Gundam in future.

In any case, summer 2025 was a banger of a season, partly because I didn't waste my time with bullshit. Fall 2025 was also really good! I've even started watching Turn A Gundam week to week to follow along with a podcast type series, which is indeed still going on, if you saw me questioning that in the last post. I was worried because this same pwerson also did a previous podcast that did something similar, but ended abruptly. and it was fun following shows week to week for that as well. This and the Gundam TOS experience made me want to watch more older shows, hence me making that resolution. The same friend I watched Gundam with also wants to watch Digimon, we just haven't found the time, but we'll do it eventually.

If you'd like me to elaborate on anything I've said in this essay, by all means, reach out to me on Mastodon or Bluesky and ask! Maybe I'll even write a followup post. Here's to more great shows to watch in 2026!