I was asked this question, quite innocently, by someone in real life who actually expressed an interest in my blog and what I spend so much of my time working on. And I have to admit, I did have that momentary pause as I thought it through. It isn’t as though I haven’t had weekends where I haven’t been in the mood for watching that next episode of whatever (fairly recently my desire to finish Conception or Release the Spyce has been pretty low and A Certain Magical Index was dropped because I just couldn’t stomach watching anymore) or even seasons where it feels like there are slim pickings on shows I am genuinely interested to watch. More importantly, it is something I have seen happen to quite a number of other bloggers. They take a break and put the blog on hold or change topics for awhile because they feel they’ve hit a rut or they’ve lost their passion for anime.
And there’s been a real glut of these kinds of announcements recently with reviewers and those who discuss anime deciding they need a break to re-find their passion or just explore other options. It makes sense that when you are putting so much of your time into one thing burn out is a real problem.
For me though, that isn’t something I am overly worried about. While I have the off day or weekend where I am genuinely too tired or just over everything, for me stories have always been what have grounded me. Whether it is books, movies, TV, games, or any other form, I’ve always surrounded myself with stories. It is a feeling like no other for me; that moment of possibility and hope when I hit play on a new show or movie or crack open a novel for the first time. The pure joy found in watching Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai or falling in love with something like Girls’ Last Tour, or even just the fun of revisiting something like Sword Art Online, is more than enough to keep me coming back for more.
And specifically with anime, I think the reason I’m not concerned about ever getting too tired of it is because I don’t limit myself to a handful of genres. I’ll give pretty much anything a go (now that I’ve gotten over my snobbery about sports stories and I’ve become less inclined to drop shows that are in a genre I don’t like mostly because I want to give things a bit more of a go) and I’m regularly surprised by what shows end up grabbing me. And my tastes change with the season and with circumstances. Basically, every season is a new beginning and while I might end up disappointed by the end the wonderful thing about seasonal anime is it is seasonal. In three months time a whole new round of shows will roll out. In the meantime, it isn’t as though my watch list has actually gotten any shorter. There are a plethora of shows I genuinely want to watch that I just never had the time for so a slow season might give me that opportunity.
I think I might feel differently if I was just an anime fan. However, it isn’t actually anime I’m in love with. I’m in love with stories. Well crafted stories with great characters, trashy and predictable stories, stories that fall apart under the weight of too much ambition, characters that I can love, hate, feel something for, just experiencing stories. For me, anime is the medium that allows me to experience an incredible range of stories in a way that is fun and engaging. Some of them have great depth and others are completely shallow and cliché filled dribble and yet there’s always something out there and the next great story that will blow me away could be just a click away.
So to answer the question of what happens when I get tired of anime, I would have to say that I don’t anticipate that happening. I anticipate the kinds of anime I like and what I look for in an anime to change over time as it has already, and I anticipate that there will be seasons where I get a bit stuck as nothing really grabs my interest, but given the wide variety of shows out there if I ever can’t find any anime that I want to watch it would have to be because I lost my love of stories. And that would be a very sad day indeed.
A question then to all the ani-bloggers out there: Do you ever worry you will get tired of anime?
Thanks for reading
Karandi James
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MY LITTLE PONY BISHOUJO 1/7 SCALE PRE-PAINTED FIGURE: PINKIE PIE