100 Days of Trying (and Failing) to Watch More Anime

This series is my occasional countdown to Anime Weekend Atlanta. I’ve done it two or three times with varying levels of success, and I am once again embarking on a quest to spend 100 days writing 100 posts about anime, manga, animation, comics, film, and conventions. We’ll see what happens.

100 Days of Anime 2026

Day 002/100

OP of the Day: “Hohoemi no Bakudan/Smile Bomb” by Mawatari Matsuko from YuYu Hakusho (1992)

Currently Watching: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

In the past, I’ve made big lists of the new shows I was definitely, certainly, positively going to watch. Then I might watch one of them, and that was probably binged all at once or in a couple of sittings a month after the season ended.

Today, I watched no anime. I read no manga. I didn’t even think about it until I realized how late it was getting and that I needed to hurry and write this post.

I did watch YouTube videos at an alogrithmic whim. I did watch this week’s episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Tonight, I sat down and browsed AniChart, and I was going to make an ambitious list of all the shows from the last couple of years that I want to catch up on. And then I decided that would be a really stupid idea.

I wouldn’t watch them. So what keeps me from watching them?

Time, procrastination, poor discipline and no set schedule. Something like that.

I used to work a stable office job. Back then, I’d sleep until I absolutely couldn’t wait any longer to get up. I’d go to the office. I’d leave the office at 5 p.m., and I would waste most of the evening chasing dopamine on endless social scrolls before crashing.

Now, I still waste a lot of time. I’m getting better on that front, but my schedule is erratic. I also have the terrible predisposition to sit and do nothing when I know I have something to do in the middle of the day. This is a bad combination.

There’s another facet, too. I think the seasonal grind, the big lists of anime to watch, the checklist websites, and the “episodes watched” counters all tend to treat anime like a hobby. I don’t know that there’s necessarily anything wrong with that, but I wouldn’t consider watching anime to be a hobby of mine.

I like good art, and I want to enjoy the good art, but I am not watching it because it’s anime. I don’t want to watch things because they’re the in thing at the moment (though it is nice to recognize cosplay at conventions). I don’t want to watch bad things just to say I have.

I just want to watch the things that interest me, and I think the hobbyist approach gets in the way of that for me.

I suppose it’s the difference between eating because you want to have a good snack and eating because you want to be a gourmand or competitive eater.

I like a good steak or a nice bowl of ice cream. I will go out of my way to eat better steaks and better ice cream. I’m not terribly interested in reviewing the steak or ice cream unless I definitely have something to say. I’m not trying to develop a specialized palate, establish a reputation as a foodie, go to all the trendy restaurants, or sample every exotic food, though certainly my interests lean in that direction. I’m definitely not trying to eat the most hot dogs.

I can learn from the gourmand, but the gourmand’s regimen is not for me. What I have learned from the competitive hot dog eater is that his approach is not for me.

But I’m beating the dickens out of that metaphor.

What I’m getting at is this: trying to consume as much trendy anime as possible in a given period is, for me, a recipe for immediate burn out. I could not remotely do what Geoff Thew does. I would go mad. (Props to Thew. I sometimes find his delivery a little much, but he’s just about perfected the art of a recommendation.)

Now, I still want to be watching those shows that interest me. I think I’m just going to try downloading streaming apps on my phone. It’s not my favorite way to watch things, but there’s lots of dead 30 minute windows in my life where a bigger screen isn’t to hand.

We’ll see how it goes.

Also, I’m thinking about totally rebooting my MAL profile.

Until next time.