Before we get started, I have to ask a very important question.
Is the ampersand (&) sexy or not sexy? Please, let me hear your thoughts in the comments section down below.
Now that I’ve distracted you all with an essential query, I want to blab on something that I actually don’t really know the answer to yet feel compelled to post about anyways.
Around 9 months ago, Lethargic Ramblings wrote a lovely piece about why he usually doesn’t bother with seasonal anime until the series is finished. Very good reasons were given, too. I won’t be providing an abridged version of his words, though, since I’m afraid that’ll convince you all not to check it out. So go check it out. I’ll wait.
Along a similar vein, Thoughts That Move has Tweeted (do I capitalize “Tweeted?”) similar sentiments before. Unfortunately, I can’t find the Twitter thread. Don’t @ him and ask him to reiterate his thoughts (that move), though. I’m sure he’s kind of already over it after getting into several debates over the topic back in early 2017. However, if you must contact him to hear his opinion, then please make sure you don’t mention me.
Well, I’m here to state the reasons why I prefer following seasonal anime on a weekly basis, which is totally not the stance the aforementioned wonderful wordsmiths (usually) embrace at all. If you want to see why I’m wrong, though, then you can just turn to them.
To be completely honest, I’m writing this up after I just finished watching 70 episodes of Cardcaptor Sakura within two weeks. I had actually meant to get through the series before Clear Card Arc started, but, well, sometimes you fall short of your own resolutions. If you’d like you can see a blogger slowly go insane in a Twitter thread by clicking on the Tweet underneath this paragraph which seems to extend into the horizon and beyond since he won’t stop typing holy moly please shut up.
At any rate, I just want to say that this was hard. Watching all these episodes was hard! Difficult! Hard!
Not that the series was bad. I loved following along and seeing Sakura, Shaoran, Meiling, Touya, etc grow and develop as characters. Sure, it might have dragged on for a bit too long since there were simply so many Clow Cards, which meant the series came across as being a bit formulaic. But it also means that corners weren’t being cut and that the series was rather thorough. All in all, it’s rather easy to see how Cardcaptor Sakura, the magical girl classic which inspired youths around the world, is widely regarded as a beloved series.
However, that doesn’t change the fact that getting through 70 episodes was a slog for me. I’m not exactly a newcomer to marathoning anime, either. I remember I breezed through the first two seasons of Shakugan no Shana pretty quickly in 7th grade. I also rushed through both seasons of Love Live! School Idol Project a few weeks before Love Live! Sunshine!! debuted in 2016. Lastly, I sat down and watched all 10 episodes of Devilman Crybaby in a (mostly) single sitting two weeks ago. I took a break to eat dinner, admittedly, but that still counts to proving that I’m a psychopath and a pervert, right? I gotta earn dat street cred or I won’t be able to graduate from Blogger School. See, this is what happens when I just type.
At any rate, Cardcaptor Sakura was the largest series I tried to complete, I believe. So perhaps I just underestimated how much of a daunting task getting through 70 episodes can be, but I just feel like I’m now ill-suited to marathon/binge-watch series. Aaaand after giving some thought, which is a rarity in and of itself, and browsing through a few posts, I believe I came up with some reasons why I’m more suited to be a seasonal anime blogger despite my inability to consistently produce seasonal anime content.
It just so happens that all of my reasons are the exact opposite compared to that of Lethargic Ramblings. Imagine that! What a coincidence, wahaha…
No, but it wasn’t like I was forcing this. What follows is the truth and the reasons why I prefer following seasonal anime by the week (and desperation as I try to publish this post before 12:00 AM PST I failed hahahahaaha).
Lack of Concentration
Concentration? Isn’t that what comes with orange juice or something?
Seriously, though, I have trouble concentrating on things. That’s why having an extended conversation with me is a nightmare. I go off on weird tangents and confuse all involved parties, including myself. It also makes watching several consecutive episodes from the same series a difficult task because I get distracted by social media, by my phone, by my urge to eat something even though I’m already full, etc.
Variety is Better than MSG
They say that the spice of life is variety, right? Well, I’m saying it’s even better than Make Stuff Good. You can quote me on that.
I’m following A LOT more shows than I originally had planned to, yet it’s not really painful for me. Granted, part of the reason why that’s the case is because I have a bit too much free time right now. Still, I never feel bored. To me, watching 9 episodes of different seasonal anime series when I wake up in a few hours from now isn’t that scary since each series is so different and I’m kept on my toes, engaged and attentive. Meanwhile, trying to watch 10 episodes of CardCaptor Sakura in a single day was actually more difficult than coming to terms with the fact that my high school classmates are much more successful than me.
My Memory is Pretty Go– Wait, What Was I Going to Say Again?
I like to think I’m a pretty attentive viewer with a decent memory. However, I also have my blind spots and can experience total lapses in memory. Like, I don’t remember what I was doing on April 23rd, 1999. Like, at all.
Even if my memory isn’t quite as good as I’m hyping it up to be (trust me, it isn’t), I don’t mind doing a bit of backtracking to confirm things I might have missed or forgotten. It’s part of the fun, really. I feel like I’m a private detective in a Noir novel or something. Except I’m just watching anime and I don’t get paid to help damsels or dudes in distress.
Some Semblance of Structure
Keeping track of which series comes out when is part of the fun. Obviously, it all changes after 3 months and you have to learn the new order while mourning/praising the ending of the seasonal series you loved/hated. But it gave you something like a schedule in the meanwhile, right?
I’m no good with most schedules in real life. Remy still has nightmares where dream-Remy freaks out over missing college classes even though he’s no longer in school (for now. Ugh). But having something to look forward to and to stabilize my week, no matter how chaotic, is reassuring. I feel like I can keep trying or something.
I’m running short on time so I’m ending this here. Hopefully I made some sort of sense as I rambled prattled blabbed about my thoughts on marathoning (long) series and following seasonal anime. Dang, some of my fellow bloggers have snatched up the words I love to use and it’s all awkward now. Just kidding. Catch you, catch me, catch you later.
Please don’t forget to tell me your thoughts on the ampersand. I need to know.
The Lily Garden 
Hurricane catreena more like hurricane tortilla
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I don’t know what I feel about &… sure, they have some serious curves, but… meh.
Fun fact: in Portuguese it’s called ‘commercial and / commercial e’, because it’s mostly used for business, and in Portuguese and = e. Yeah, only the letter e. 🙂
I like to watch seasonal anime, but it just don’t work for me. Usually I try to start more shows that I should have, and end up dropping most of them, not because they suck, but because I don’t have time. Or… if in any given week, for any reason, I don’t watch an episode, I’ll be out of schedule. And I don’t know why, I just don’t watch it anymore after that.
And that happens with western TV shows and comic books too =/
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I really don’t know what to do when anime is over ! It’s so terrible feeling !
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It’s really awful, yeah! Hang in there!
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I will😊
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Forget a season marathon – I can’t get into an anime until it’s completed. I tried Sinbad when it first aired and kept up with it, only to find out there was another season. I didn’t know how long it would take to come back and completely gave up on it afterwards. Around that time I decided, y’know what, I’ll stick to completed. For years I’d check up beforehand to make sure the anime was done. I got screwed with Shokugeki no Shoma, a friend got me in and none of us knew at the time it was only done season one.
ANYWAYS, I recently started Violet Evergarden on netflix, and as I was five episodes in, I found out it wasn’t even done airing…god, I was mad. I had gotten so invested! I’m waiting for it to finish now.
p.s. I do copywriting, I never use ampersands professionally. I do use it for my own personal documents, for the sake of style
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I only watch anime seasonal, I never tried marathoning it because my sched is wack but i always find the time to watch anime
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Mmm, I feel you. Real life is wack!
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I’m a few days late to this due to how swamped I’ve been recently, but I’m here now!
Thank you for the mention and for sharing my own post on the subject. I really appreciate it!
This is a very solid explanation as to why you, and likely many others, prefer to watch Anime seasonally, and it’s very interesting to see things from the opposite side of the table.
I also think some shows are better watched seasonally, such as episodic shows, which can be a real pain to watch in one sitting. Those seem to be the exception for me, outside of shows I decide to keep up with for X (where X = intangible reasons).
Great post Remy! Thanks for sharing!
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Sure thing~
No problem! Glad to hear you were cool with it.
Thank you! Your post was similarly eye-opening, as well.
Ahh yeah, this particular post of mine was a bit too black-and-white for my tastes in that regard. Some shows really are better off marathoned. You right.
But thanks once again!
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I think I was taught somewhere along the line using ampersands is lazy, so I guess in that way, ampersands aren’t sexy…but I never thought of punctuation marks as “sexy” in the first place, so there’s that too.
I have a (loose) quota of shows I comply to with a pretty even split between older and new shows, so I never get bored.
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Fair enough.
Mmm that sounds like the most efficient way to handle things.
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It takes a fair bit of commitment to stay on top of seasonal anime (and even more doing episodic reviews of them – I don’t do that, so I can’t really understand how pressing it would be for those of you who do :3). So I simply marathon them, albeit watching at most 6eps per day, because I still want to process the information portrayed.
But I certainly would keep in touch with seasonal anime on a weekly basis if I had the time and dedication for that. & also if I can hold off withdrawal symptoms as if anime is a kind of drug itself XD
*
Ampersands are sexily concise, but I won’t really use them in continuous prose I guess~
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Anime is truest drug.
#team& grows stronger.
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I am generally the most engaged with a show when I’ve settled into a regular rhythm of watching 3-4 episodes at a time, once a day or once every other day. Less than that and I tend to drift away, more than that and I tend to get bored. CCS is actually a perfect example, because that’s exactly the pace I followed the first time I watched the uncut version of the series. After episode 15 I got away from it for about a month before I came back, but otherwise it was a steady 3-4 episodes a day, 4-5 days a week until I finished, and the only time it ever dragged for me a bit was the long stretch of filler episodes in the middle of the Sakura Card arc (all but two episodes from 53-64 are fillers before it gets into the actual finale, and I found that the weakest part of the whole series).
I don’t mind weekly streaming, but the drawback is that I have so many other interests and other demands on my time that it’s hard for me to keep up with more than one or two new shows at a time anymore. There was a time a few years ago when I could handle five or six streaming shows a season, but I haven’t been able to do that for a while – whenever I try I always end up keeping up with one or two and falling way behind on the rest (like with last season, out of five new shows on my list I’ve only finished LL Sunshine – I still need to watch the last 4 episodes of YuYu, the last 6 episodes of GLT and Food Wars, and Magus Bride left me behind somewhere around episode 3).
On the other hand, I’ve never been able to fully marathon shows either, except in short bursts. Like with Saki, I ended up marathoning Achiga-hen’s entire semifinal match because it was so gripping, but that was only 8 episodes (9-16) and I only had to do it once. Otherwise I stuck to my usual 3-4 episode pace for all three seasons. I remember when one of the teenagers in my anime club marathoned all 600+ (at the time) episodes of One Piece in about six weeks one summer, which works out to somewhere around 15-20 episodes a day. Even if I didn’t have a full time job and other hobbies, I still can’t even contemplate spending that much time every day watching a TV show.
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Keep it at 3-4 episodes a day seems reasonable!
Mmm falling behind is a terrible feeling, in my opinion.
Your acquaintance is actually insane.
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Marathoning anime can be a privilege of sorts. I’m not going to lie, I binge watched a ton of stuff back in high school after finishing homework or other projects. As an adult with long work weeks, I rarely do that even for Iridium Eye. Sure, I was able to sneak in some sessions of watching Key the Metal Idol, Patapata Hikousen no Bouken, and Kimba the White Lion (that series is 52 episodes, by the way), but that was only on certain days when I didn’t have to work as much or when I had the occasional early morning shift. I do applaud the reviewers who can make it work while still being able to have a life. It’s why I do my best sticking to movies, short films, or shorter anime series whenever I tackle a TV show or an OVA.
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#team&
I used to be more of a weekly watcher, but now I’m more of a marathon watcher.
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#team&
Mmm both are fine ways to watch anime~
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I personally find that you can never go wrong with a good ampersand, especially when it separates two different ideas (it kind of acts like a thesis divider). As for marathoning anime, I can only do it if I set aside the time in advance exclusively for watching said show/tackling said franchise. I’ve had a blast with my Valentine’s day sci-fi binges (Steins;Gate, Evangelion, Ghost in the Shell), and it’s become somewhat of a tradition now to anticipate spending a weekend in February marathoning a classic.
For seasonal shows…I’m not as good with those, haha! Typically I fall behind around the 8th week, and spend the last week or the week after watching the four so episodes of the finale all in one go.
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I’m in agreement with you there.
Mmm having to schedule marathons makes perfect sense to me. Ohhh I like that set-up you’ve got going on in February!
Oh, dear. Yeaaah following seasonal shows can get so hard sometimes. Such commitment is always required!
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I was trying to figure out where I fall on the marathon and seasonal scale, and I think that I may have fallen off. I mix it up. Even shows that have already finished usually end up being watched a rate of one or two episodes a week for me, but I will sometimes marathon shorter series if i’m in the mood to review it.
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Mmm I didn’t mean to paint a false ultimatum or force absolutes onto anyone. The way you watch anime seems lovely, to be honest. Easygoing yet dedicated (if need be).
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Oh, I was under no illusion that you had. It’s more that when two or more styles seem to be prevalent, I like to see if I got more on one than another 😀
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im not saying that you’re doing this with this post, but i always find it amusing that marathon vs. airing is seen as some kind of conflict. but more to the point, ive never been shy about the fact that i watch almost primarily airing shows. you definitely hit on a couple of my main reasons, variety (which comes with what id call a heightened sense of exploring the unknown) and schedule. there was a time when i forced myself to watch only 1-2 episodes of railgun every day and i got through that series pretty easily. the other thing ive noticed is that i forget more about the shows i marathon in the long run, but i freely admit that this is a heavily biased opinion. i watch way more seasonal stuff and i write about many of them, which makes it easier for me to keep track of them. i just think there’s something to be said about concentrating an experience into a short period of time. but you know…to each their own.
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Ahhh I broke one of my rules in an attempt to finish the piece before midnight and sort of painted the situation as a false ultimatum.
Mmm fair points. I think I wouldn’t have been so stressed out about marathoning if I had kept to 1-2 CCS episodes a day instead of 5-10.
But mm, I like that term, a heightened sense of exploring the unknown.
Somehow keeping track of all the little details in long runners gets really difficult and I think you’ve touched upon why.
To each their own!
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Lol: you learn something new every day: ampersand. I’m going to agree with Karandi, I have never really thought of sexy punctiation marks either lol.
I have only started with watching seasonal anime last Year’s final season. I mainly did that for one reason: I really wanted to interact with everyone in the community who watched seasonal anime. I really enjoyed it, but I also have to be honest that I really have to be selective. I can only watch about 3-4 shows. I simply don’t have the time to follow everything because of my dayjob.
But bingewatching shows in the weekend is also something I love doing. So honestly I don’t really have a preference anymore 😊 They both have their pros and cons so to speak 😀
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Sleepy Remy strays into interesting topics.
Being selective about the shows you watch is a good thing!
Mmm both methods or preferences have their ups and downs, you’re totally right~
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I have never thought of punctuation marks that way nii-san XD
Attention span is an important point though, because I don’t have one. My real life conversations tend to get a bit random because of this haha.
I don’t watch seasonal anime. Wait, strike that I don’t generally watch anime, because I can’t sit for 20 minutes waiting for the episode (I know, I know, this from a girl who just sat for three hours to re-read Haikyuu for god knows how many-th time)
At the same time, I’m proud of my memory, partly because I can’t follow thirty + ongoing manga else wise and also because I don’t know what humility is ^^
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I thiiiiink it’ll do you good to start doing that! Just kiddingggg.
Mmm I can really relate to that. Hang in there, Auri!
Well, it’s definitely apples and oranges in that case, isn’t it? Reading manga goes so much faster than watching anime. So your preference makes total sense. Hakiyuuuuu
That IS pretty amazing. Pfffft who needs humility?? Totally unnecessary.
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I didn’t even know it was called ampersand. Well, it’s sexy, delicious curvy as it is.
I am not a seasonal watcher. That is for two reasons. My memory is terrible. And I mean terrible. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast when I go to bed. So the chances of me remembering what happened in an anime a week a go are very slim. The other reason is that I need a boost to get into an anime. I go by the three episode rule mostly and if I am gonna do that when watching one episode a week I might as well stop to watch before I have even begun (which is the result of me not actually watch seasonally), since I have most likely forgot the first episode when episode 2 airs.
There are of course exceptions but I like to bingewatch. It gives me the power over the anime. I watch whenever and wherever. The downside is of course all the reviews I can’t read. All the posts about the particular anime I am interested in.
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It truly is.
Mmm those are solid reasons to support your preferred method of consuming anime. Too bad about the reviews, though.
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Ideally I like to keep up with new shows week to week, partly because like you I have a memory like a sieve when it comes to many things. The only thing I can be trusted to remember with any reliability is song lyrics, and that’s partly because of my choir conditioning 😆 So I generally find it easier when every episode gets time to breathe before I go on to the next one, and depending on what I’m watching I think it’s better for letting the rewarding themes and messages of a series sink in. I didn’t watch more than a couple episodes of Devilman Crybaby at once for that reason – it’s heavy going, in a brilliant way, and it needed the contemplation space.
The worst thing when you’re trying to keep up with several simulcasts is when you just get behind on a show, for no particular reason other than you just fell off at some point, then you find yourself way behind mid story flow. So many series I’m trying to rectify that with at the moment, because it would be a real shame not to see them through to the end.
As for the ampersand, definitely sexy. It’s the curviest symbol in all of punctuationdom.
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Ohh, choir conditioning is way better than physical conditioning, in my opinion.
Having some breathing room between episodes is definitely something that should be honoured for some series, I agree. I sort of wish I had done that with Devilman Crybaby for the same reason you brought up, haha.
Ahhh, that’s a tough situation to be in. It really would be unfortunate to let those stories go!
Yes, I am in full agreement with you there on the ampersand. It is truly voluptuous.
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I like ampersands in titles!
As for seasonal anime, I prefer watching things weeks to week. I can’t watch more than two or three episodes of the same show so seasonal anime works betters. However, I do like to watch finished anime so I can watch it when I want to.
For example, I’m watching Princess Principal at the moment and I like being able to sit down whenever I want to and watch an episode. With my seasonal anime I can’t do that.
So I guess I’m somewhere in between. Or at least watching finished anime similar to seasonal anime.
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They sort of grab your attention better than “and” in titles, I think!
Mmm it does sound like you’re in-between. Or you approach watching completed series in the same way one would tackle seasonal anime, like you said. Neat~
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Well when I see & I just remember Homer Simpson walking with his butt in the floor xD probably there are people that think that’s sexy, not for me though xD however everyone is different xp
Regarding marathons and seasonal Anime… I think I’m in the middle xD I don’t watch seasonal Anime because I don’t like to wait a week for a new episode, but I also don’t marathon an Anime in many years xD for me to be able to marathon through an Anime it needs to be a great one! I’m also trying not to get in longer animes… Naruto was enough xD so I prefer to watch animes that already ended But I watch like a episode or two daily xP I also watch 2 different animes at the same time, the one that I’m currently watching with my boyfriend and another that I watch for the blog xP
I also don’t have good memory and even if I take a week or two to watch an Anime there are things that I don’t remember or that passed me without me noticing, however I do not go back and watch it again, but that is because I want to review Anime as a casual viewer and not a private detective blogger xD both are right and interesting but I prefer the first one xp
Great post eheh
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I don’t understand that reference but you do you! c:
Mmm I guess you’re in-between, yeah. Some bonding time with your boyfriend is great!!
Fair enough. Gotta make the most of your time, right?
Thanks~
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Here: https://i.chzbgr.com/full/6188615424/hB4966D33/ 😀
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Ararara
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I don’t like ampersands, but that’s mainly because I work with HTML as a day job and ’ and ” marks being helpfully automatically inserted into my work is the bane of my existence. (WordPress is guilty of slipping in a few &nsbp;s when I don’t want it to, as well, but I have at least learned to predict when it’s going to do that.)
Also, Twitter wants you to capitalise “Tweeted” according to its brand guidelines, so as far as I’m concerned that’s a good enough reason to continue using “tweeted”. I used to have an editor who was big on not following brands’ guidelines for how to present their name; he used to tell me off if I wrote LEGO or SEGA instead of Lego or Sega. (“You’re not doing their marketing for them, so you have no obligation to follow their guidelines!”) I kind of kept the habit.
As for marathoning, I like to do it every so often, and I find it helps me keep the coherence of a story straight in my head. Remembering plot threads from week to week with seasonal stuff can be challenging!
Last show I watched in a single sitting was Ano Hana. I was an emotional wreck by the end of it. I don’t regret a thing.
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Ohhh that’s a solid reason to not care for ampersands (Mmm it’s a bit intrusive, frankly, but I guess it could be worse).
Heh. That’s some good advice he gave you.
Fair enough. It’s a lot to keep track of! Ahhh Ano Hana really gets the emotions flowing. And you tackled that in a single sitting? That’s actually very impressive, holy moly.
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I somehow have never considered the possibility of a sexy punctuation mark and I think I’ll leave that one alone.
On marathoning and seasonal, I do both and enjoy both. Though seasonal is still fairly new (only the past couple of years as before that accessing current shows was more or less not going to happen).
There are some shows that work better with breaks to process what has happened and time to anticipate what is going to happen and other shows that work better when the story is kept tight and the pace just keeps moving forward. I’ve found a number of shows that week to week are just too slow are sometimes better when I can just get to the next episode and find out what happens whereas other shows just kind of feel jumbled when watched all at once.
So, I think both have their place and I think people will do what works for them given we’ve got a lot of options now.
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Fair enough. It’s a very divisive topic.
Very great points. I think it’s possible for people to have their own personal preferences, but what works for one show can utterly fail when applied to another show.
Living in the 21st century is pretty great.
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