Taking a Break
I originally planned to use this summer to catch up on anime that have been sitting on my to-watch queue and deliver a whole slew of new reviews. That doesn’t seem to working out as I had planned. To be perfectly honest, I think I’ve grown a little bit sick of anime for the moment. The last series I watched that truly impressed me was Future Boy Conan. After that, I picked up quite a few other series and gave them all a chance, but ended up dropping all of them due to distaste with what seemed like increasingly obvious cliches and archetypes. Maybe I’ve reached the saturation point, and have run out of the “cream of the crop” anime that have sustained me this long. I’ve never had any interest in the most popular demographics anyways (shounen and otaku), so maybe it was only natural.
Anyways, just thought I’d drop this post as a temporary placeholder during my inactive period. Who knows, I might jump back on the anime bandwagon as soon as next week, or maybe it will take months. But if anyone has a refreshing recommendation for a tired anime viewer, my email is theowne [at] gmail [dot] com.
8 responses so far
Which animes did you end up dropping?
I watched Natsume Yuujinchou based on your review and loved it. The second season, which you had said you hadn’t seen yet, is equally good in my opinion. There seems to be very few anime that I want to watch this year — or maybe my taste is getting more and more josei / seinen-ish the older I get — I no longer find the typical “over the top” comedies or mahou shoujou / blockbuster Bleach-type series that interesting.. it’s too bad most of the stuff that’s come out recently seems to be imitating the usual formulas.
Hi Anna,
That review was of course written after watching the first season alone. Since then I’ve seen the second and loved it as well.
I agree with your other point of course. A few years ago I probably believed that I wouldn’t grow out of anime, but I think that’s exactly what is happening.
I don’t think that you grow out of anime, you just don’t watch every piece of shit any-more at a certain point.
I have watched very little anime recently too (mostly re-watched good old shows in I had already seen in HD on my new 40″ television 
), but I am sure that as soon I get aware of something with a good story I will watch it, because most and foremost a good story is what counts, the medium is secondary.
As for recommendations, have you already seen ‘House of the Five Leaves’? It is not an over the top show, but quite decent. And what about some classics like ‘Chie, the Brat’ or ‘Horus, Prince of the Sun’? They should fit your tastes, since you liked ‘Conan, Boy of the Future’ so much. And what about reading a good manga once in a while? ‘Takemitsu Zamurai’ is just awesome with it’s fleshed out characters, good story and beautiful art. I love it.
Yeah, bad choice of words. For example, I will always love Ghibli and Satoshi Kon films. But that’s for being well-told and interesting, and not related to the medium, as you said. Maybe more appropriate to say I think I might be done being an “anime fan” specifically.
And yes I’ve seen all your recommendations – apart from the manga, which I’ll give a try.
Theowne…this is a bit off topic…but do you know what happened to the Ghibli tavern? The link isn’t working anymore. I hope it didn’t get deleted.
There’s a message on it that says “Forum is temporarily turned off to fix some anomalies.”
The actual server still seems up, since the main site works.
Phew…I think I just panicked! Hope to see you around