It’s that time again! That magical time of wonder and excitement when a young otaku’s fancies turn to love…for a brand new series of anime! It’s new season time!!!! YAY!
I have only been following new seasons of anime for a few years. Before that I just randomly watched whatever I happen to fall on with very little conception of when it actually aired. Not that much has changed but sometimes I know something happens to be airing. However, regardless of how little practical impact it may have on my life and viewing habits, I still get excited about seeing all the new releases come out every season. Maybe my new all time favourite show if just about to air its first episode! Maybe my last all time favourite show got a new season! It’s like Christmas in July…well June… and September… and also at Christmas… I’m going to stop this now.
As fun and oddly exhilarating as new seasons of anime have been, I found that for me, they can also be a bit overwhelming. There is so much anime out there and so much of it looks great. I also still have a lot of older titles I want to watch. Like a whole lot! I’ve secretly been hoping that release schedules slow down a bit. We need to give animators some time to breath too.
So with time, I’ve been perfecting a way to quickly figure out which anime I want to watch each new season. Or more accurately, which anime I am ok with skipping.
I’ve started using this site when it comes to upcoming seasonal anime : https://www.livechart.me/summer-2020/tv . I still enjoy AniList for tracking my anime. I like the look of it and love playing with the stat options. I also really like the fact that AniList will bring me directly to the appropriate streaming service for shows that have already aired through the watch tab. But that’s not available for upcoming shows. I really like how livechart tells me at a glimpse all info I need. It has genre tags, studio info, number of episodes and even streaming service right there. And if the service isn’t on the front page, I can simply click on the title and it will clearly show any distributors that have the rights to stream in my region. I also like that I can tag them right then and there with “considering” or “skipping” to help me keep track.
So right off the bat, I can eliminate all titles that Funimation already has the rights to. For the upcoming season that allowed me to quickly strike out Appare-Ranman!, Deca-Dence and Muhyo to Roujii all of which I had my eye on. Now I’m not getting my hopes up! Yay!
I am not a fan of romance, or at least I keep saying despite having just watched a whole slew of decidedly romantic Yuri anime and having enjoyed them quite a bit… In any case, Romance tags usually need something more that catches my eye in order to make it to my list and preferably not too many of them. That basically cut out half the list… My potential romance pics for nest season are Ikebukuro West Gate Park which has the “Mystery” tag drawing me in and Koi to Producer: EVOL×LOVE because Otome based anime have a good potential of being so bad it’s good or at least so bad I can tell from the first 5 minutes.
Anything that’s a second season of something I haven’t seen and isn’t already on my to watch list is out. So no SAO, Fruits Basket, No Guns Life, Bungo to Alchemist or Foodwars for me. Anything I haven’t enjoyed previous seasons of is also out. Sorry Snafu and Cinderella 9. However if I did enjoy the previous seasons that’s an automatic in! That means ReZero and Fire Force for me.
The rest is up to a few factors. Sometimes there are anime I happened to have heard of or be familiar with the source and be excited about. Like the God of High School or the Great Pretender which I hope will be available up here next season but I’m not sure. Other times, it’s the summary or tags that draw me in. Gibiate is an action adventure horror you say… Well I have terrible luck with those yet can’t resist trying them out every time. On the list you go. As for the slew of ecchi, harem or cute girl comedies, I will go with anything that has cover art that grabs my attention. Maybe Dokyuu Hentai HxEros and Chou Futsuu Toshi Kashiwa Densetsu R.
That’s all for me. That means an ultra reasonable 8 series and a short I want to watch next season. And some of them might not get picked up for streaming by any of the services I have. And one is a short! The two romance ones are the ones I foresee as being immediate hit or miss, they might get dropped at episode 1. Although I really love the cover of Ikebukuro West Gate Park and for some reason am very curious about it.
I had a lot of fun picking out my anime. in fact, I went ahead and picked out the ones for fall as well. There’s already 14….. I may be getting a bit ahead of myself. So what are you guys watching this summer? Are you looking forward to anything in particular?
