For 40+, who else is nearly done?

[ArrowSmith]

I've watched nearly 400 anime series + films. Mostly over the last 15 years and I feel with every passing simulcast season less and less that catches my eye to the point that right now I have literally 2 shows in my watchlist. I think going forward I'm going to activate my streaming account only 1/4 of the year to binge-watch the few series I will find at that 'masterpiece' level. I just can't take any more high school comedies, slice-of-life, magical girl, cat girls, NTR or any other of the tropeville.

I know it's this is the 'cycle of life', anyone else reaching that point?

[Nivek von Beldo]

Originally Posted by ArrowSmith

I've watched nearly 400 anime series + films. Mostly over the last 15 years and I feel with every passing simulcast season less and less that catches my eye to the point that right now I have literally 2 shows in my watchlist. I think going forward I'm going to activate my streaming account only 1/4 of the year to binge-watch the few series I will find at that 'masterpiece' level. I just can't take any more high school comedies, slice-of-life, magical girl, cat girls, NTR or any other of the tropeville.

I know it's this is the 'cycle of life', anyone else reaching that point?

Nope just anime quality collapse, is not quantity but quality, watch baseball in the mean time

Note: i'm not that old but i've watch anime 20+

[ArrowSmith]

Agreed about the quality collapse. I can't believe I made myself to watch 'Quintessential Quintuplets' last season. Ugh what trash.

[Nivek von Beldo]

Originally Posted by ArrowSmith

Agreed about the quality collapse. I can't believe I made myself to watch 'Quintessential Quintuplets' last season. Ugh what trash.

your fault, that anime was trash since the manga.

[ArrowSmith]

Down to zero tolerance now. Spring 2019 is a big fat zero in terms of picking up any new shows on VRV. Perhaps there is a couple of things on Funimation but their iOS app is terrible, so I won't give them any money.

[0cean]

Originally Posted by ArrowSmith

I've watched nearly 400 anime series + films. Mostly over the last 15 years [...]
I know it's this is the 'cycle of life', anyone else reaching that point?

I've started watching Anime around 15 years ago, too.
However, I've reached the point of over 400 anime after a mere two years.


The only thing I've noticed is that I can't keep up. I remember that back when I started I would notice things like "this is my 200th anime" or "this is my 1000th" anime. Today I only remember that the Girls und Panzer Movie was my 10.000th anime and I've already reached a point before, where I had watched every anime that is available for watching (and that wasn't obviously trash, like yaoi or sport anime).

That was a very bleak day, for there were no more anime for me to watch.


During the years there have always been people like you mentioning either a kind of burn out feeling or lamenting that there are no interesting anime to watch anymore. Usually they drop out of the fandom never to be heard of again. And I think I can say with confidence that anime hasn't changed all that much, but you probably have.

[Lex79]

I'm 40 and I watch anime since I was...don't really remember, maybe 3. Despite being way older than the target audience my enjoyment watching anime (or reading manga and light novels) hadn't lessened one bit, I even mostly prefer them to tv shows. I too don't think anime are really much worse than in the past, but it's mostly people that change and that's perfectly normal.

[Nivek von Beldo]

Originally Posted by ArrowSmith

Down to zero tolerance now. Spring 2019 is a big fat zero in terms of picking up any new shows on VRV. Perhaps there is a couple of things on Funimation but their iOS app is terrible, so I won't give them any money.

Looks for good Series, Dororo is one, Yaiba is another, cinderella nine seems decent even if too basic and conventional, fairy gone is shaky

[ArrowSmith]

I am thinking the issue may not be age, but amount watched. In the simulcast era(2009-2019), people have had an opportunity to watch way more anime than ever. My anime viewing eras:

1985-2003, Only a few anime that were licensed for American television, dubbed and adapted like Robotech

2004-2011, mainly renting anime on Netflix, about 25 shows/OVA/films a year. Also watched a good amount of subtitled on Youtube before they started cracking down c. 2008

2012-present, Crunchyroll and streaming services.

I have to say that I've probably consumed 60-70% of my lifetime anime in the last 'streaming' period. If had been born in the 90s and had come of age in this streaming era, I'd probably had seen these 400 titles by my mid 20s instead of early 40s.

So yeah I'm 99.999% burnt out on anime in general and at this point it will take something very special and quirky to catch my interest. F.e., Carol & Tuesday looks promising.

Originally Posted by 0cean

During the years there have always been people like you mentioning either a kind of burn out feeling or lamenting that there are no interesting anime to watch anymore. Usually they drop out of the fandom never to be heard of again. And I think I can say with confidence that anime hasn't changed all that much, but you probably have.

True. When I look back at so much of the anime I rented on Netflix in the middle 2000s, it was the same tropeville crap that pollutes every simulcast season today. It's just that now, we get 15-20 of these shows every season and back then there were 15-20 anime produced TOTAL per simulcast season, whereas now we get 70-75.

Ironically Netflix these days is batting a very high % in quality with shows like 'Violet Evergarden', 'Kakeguri', 'Forest of Piano', 'Aggrestuko', 'High Score Girl'. The problem is I hear about these shows and I have to wait 4-5 months to see them because of US licensing rules. LOL, it's closer to how things were in the 'old days' when it took years to get an anime from Japan to US.

[SeijiSensei]

I've expressed my feelings about the decline in shows that target an adult audience many times here. When I first started watching anime in my mid-fifties (2005-2006 or so), I found a lot of options, including both older shows like Monster and new seasonals like Bartender, Hataraki Man, and Oh! Edo Rocket. After the recession the number of such shows declined and their diversity narrowed. Production committees appeared willing only to finance sure things which meant more otaku-oriented shows with reams of adolescent characters.

Today I can still usually find three or four new shows each season. Shows like Flip Flappers, Princess Principal, and Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryouko all have cute adolescent girls in the main roles, but the stories themselves have a depth that makes watching them worthwhile. There's also still the occasional Sakura Quest or Hataraku Saibou to keep me interested. However this season has been especially barren of shows I want to watch. I've continued with Dororo and GeGeGe no Kitarou (2018) and can only hope the rest of the year has more to offer. (I'm watching Demon Slayer, Mix, and Carole and Tuesday, but none of them have yet really held my attention.)

I've weathered similar droughts before, and I'm still here. (My MAL list includes fewer than a dozen shows from 2010 for instance.)

Could a show like Bartender, with a cast that includes characters as old as me, ever be made today? I doubt it.

I suggest tracking down the recently-released Orphan fansub for Hidamari no Ki and giving that a try. It's an adaptation from 2000 by Madhouse of a manga by Tezuka Osamu. One of the main characters is his own great-grandfather, a doctor who promoted "Dutch" medical techniques like vaccination against smallpox in the face of opposition from the Shogunate's physicians. It covers the 1850's as the Shogunate began to collapse in the face of internal corruption and Western pressures.

That said, I still enjoy shows like Kill la Kill and Konosuba. My same-aged friend would probably rank Kill la Kill at the top of the list of shows we've watched together.

[ArrowSmith]

I'm a sucker for tragic stories, so when an anime like Angel Beats! or Death Parade comes along that's like discovering an oasis in the desert. But most of the shows are either:

Cute girls doing cute things
high school comedy
harem
teenagers tasked with saving the world for the millionth time
magical girl

How about Junji Ito Collection Season 2 or a full Blame! series?

Oh and I should have mentioned Netflix is getting all this glorious content because they have much deeper pockets than Aniplex.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by ArrowSmith

Oh and I should have mentioned Netflix is getting all this glorious content because they have much deeper pockets than Aniplex.

I've found Amazon Prime to be a better source than Netflix, plus they don't embargo episodes into cour-based releases. Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens is a hidden Amazon gem worth a look.

[Kanon]

I've watched three times the amount of shows you have and I'm not feeling burnt out at all. It's pretty clear the current season is one of the weakest in a long time though. I still managed to find some shows I enjoy, but that's because I'm open to every genre. There's really nothing that's a turn off for me. Well, maybe isekai with overpowered main character.

Based on what you've been posting, it sounds like you need to take a break from seasonal anime and dive into older shows. There are tons of good ones you've probably missed.

Sometimes that feeling is just a phase. I experienced it a few times with video games. Stopped playing for a couple years then went back and played more than ever.

[Fvlminatvs]

I think there are a variety of factors involved.

First, I think the market is oversaturated. Market oversaturation can have a number of side-effects, both on the market itself and on the individual consumer. In addition, the ease with which anime can be consumed and the amount consumed can and will be overwhelming and lead to decreasing enjoyment over time.

The amount of utility (the usefulness, value, overall benefit from consumption of a good or service) you get decreases the more you consume anime. This is Gossens 1st Law, the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. So if you are consuming (or have consumed) too much anime, you can experience "burnout" which is common.

Secondly, and we see this in other industries, is massive amounts of imitation of what appears to be successful. Back in the 1980s, production committees produced a ton of mecha shows geared toward toy production--shows would typically run for approximately 18 months which was determined to be the point which related products would stop flying off the shelves. This led to a LOT of mass-produced mecha shows by the late 1980s and a crash in mecha anime by the late 1990s. The production committee model and the imitation of that which was previously successful is a major factor in the sameness of many of the shows (cf. Jonathan Clements' book ANIME: A HISTORY). Investment via production committee has become rather risk-averse, and so they want to bet on what appears to be "sure things" unlike the 1990s when, despite the East Asian economic bubbles bursting, there was a sudden and massive amount of freedom in OVA and television production where a lot of original and experimental things were greenlit. We're back in a more risk-averse environment.

Today's sure-things are usually culled from light novels, VNs, and manga, so there aren't as many original IPs being animated. Many of the products are becoming more and more centered on successive generations of otaku who are becoming more and more reclusive and alienated from overall society, as opposed to 80s and 90s otaku who were more willing to clash with society head-on (comparatively speaking). For example, KyoAni gets a lot of its adaptations from its related LN publication services, which are in turn drawn from the more popular web LNs found on various LN farm websites. The LN industry is its own can of worms, don't get me started on it.

So, what's happening here? Two things--you're getting tired of repetitiveness. Just look at MAL's seasonal release list and you'll notice more variety in the 80s, 90s and early 00s. Yeah, there were periods where one genre (mecha, for example) was over-represented but you still had a good mix of various genres. This has also led to the ratio of good/bad to MEDIOCRE anime has changed. There is more mediocre anime than ever before. It's not that anime is BAD. The amount of BAD anime may actually be lower today than before. However, it is harder to find GOOD or EXCEPTIONAL anime.

The other thing is that the oversaturated market is having a direct impact on your viewing and consumption--especially in how you've been conditioned.

1) You're more risk-averse with your time. With time being a finite resource in your life (especially as you get older), you're more hesitant to invest in things you aren't certain to enjoy. People actually consider how much time they'll have to invest in a show to finish it before watching. There are charts on the internet for Netflix viewers telling you how many hours you will have to invest in various shows in order to finish them. Indeed, I myself have hit analysis paralysis because streaming provides so many options I freeze and can't choose what to watch next because that is time I can't be using to watch something else or do something else.

2) You're more likely to prejudge a show and drop it early if it isn't immediately grabbing you. Indeed, it is almost guaranteed to fail to excite or interest you because the utility you are getting from this show is going to have decreased relative to how many anime you've previously watched (especially recently).

3) You've been conditioned to expect certain things from anime and when it isn't delivered you're going to be more likely to drop it than you would be otherwise. Even if you are tired of the same tropes, there are still certain elements or tropes you desire to see and you innately associate with anime. This is partly why I suspect that younger generations find it so hard to get into older shows (besides "handdrawn animation looks bad, hurr")--too many tropes are either missing or too different in the past.

4) You're going to be inundated with anime and soon hit anime burnout as the utility you get keeps dropping.

A lot of us old guys fell in love with anime when it was hard to get. A lot of us watched crappy OVAs from the past and still enjoy watching them even if they're crappy because it wasn't at your fingertips. You had to trade fansubs, copy tapes, mail them and get them in the mail, make email pen-pals who lived in Japan who got the latest info, etc. The effort that went into it also helped increase the utility we experienced. Only about 1/10 of what came out every year in Japan made it to us via licensed distribution and you had to shell out for a VHS or rent it (dubbed) at Blockbuster. Now, it's more like 9/10 of what comes out each year makes its way to us and its all streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu, HiDive, Netflix, or you can (usually) find it on a torrent site or kissanime.

So, we're oversaturated. Not only that, the JAPANESE market is probably oversaturated as well. In addition, the fanbase is fractured. That hasn't helped. Back in the day, we watched whatever we got our hands on--and loved all of it. The same people who watched DBZ would watch Sailor Moon, MD Geist, Devilman, Gunsmith Cats, Evangelion, Record of Lodoss War, Fushigi Yugi, Gundam Wing, Macross Plus, Minky Momo (if you could find it fansubbed), LoGH, Akira, Ranma 1/2, Baoh, the Guyver, Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, Magic Knights Rayearth, Inuyasha, and Tenchi Muyo.

Nowadays? You're more likely to find your shounen fans and yaoi fans and your harem fans, etc. And yes, nowadays, almost EVERYTHING takes place in a high school. Yeah, there were a ton of shows about HS back then but not as much as today.

[ArrowSmith]

Fvlminatvs - I'll respond to some of your points:

Originally Posted by Fvlminatvs

First, I think the market is oversaturated.

Absolutely, this is a huge factor. There is simply too much anime coming through every simulcast season to process anymore. So I throw my hands in the air and say 'no more'.

Originally Posted by Fvlminatvs

This is Gossens 1st Law, the Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. So if you are consuming (or have consumed) too much anime, you can experience "burnout" which is common.

Absolutely, with every passing anime season I grew more intolerant of the repetition, the tropes, the endless high school settings, etc...

Originally Posted by Fvlminatvs

There is more mediocre anime than ever before. It's not that anime is BAD. The amount of BAD anime may actually be lower today than before. However, it is harder to find GOOD or EXCEPTIONAL anime.

Agreed, with 70+ animes being produced every season, there is no way to keep a quality level anymore. It's just impossible. With every passing season, it's harder to identify a 10/10 for me. Even some of the recent stuff that I really liked on Netflix like Aggretsuko is still frankly mediocre compared to something like Watamote. Also I remember the spring 2013 being a real high point that was never quite repeated in my eyes. It speaks volumes to me that an anime like Aku No Hana never got a 2nd season.

Originally Posted by Fvlminatvs

2) You're more likely to prejudge a show and drop it early if it isn't immediately grabbing you.

Absolutely. A couple of years ago I adopted a 3-episode rule. By fall 2018 I was down to a 1-episode rule. By this spring, I found myself dropping after 3-5 minutes of the 1st episode. It's gotten that bad.

Originally Posted by Fvlminatvs

A lot of us old guys fell in love with anime when it was hard to get. A lot of us watched crappy OVAs from the past and still enjoy watching them even if they're crappy because it wasn't at your fingertips. You had to trade fansubs, copy tapes, mail them and get them in the mail, make email pen-pals who lived in Japan who got the latest info, etc. The effort that went into it also helped increase the utility we experienced. Only about 1/10 of what came out every year in Japan made it to us via licensed distribution and you had to shell out for a VHS or rent it (dubbed) at Blockbuster. Now, it's more like 9/10 of what comes out each year makes its way to us and its all streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu, HiDive, Netflix, or you can (usually) find it on a torrent site or kissanime.

I remember having to wait 2-3 years to get an anime licensed onto DVD via something like ADV back in the 2000s and that was 'ok'. Now with the streaming era(2010s), all that 'firehose' effect has rapidly burnt me out.

[Guardian Enzo]

Lots of interesting points being discussed here. I should point out, though, that the past two seasons (Winter and Spring 2019) have seen 30-40% declines in production compared to their counterparts in '17 and '18 (I do season preview posts so I keep tabs on such things). We weren't getting "70-plus" per season even before - only spring and maybe fall would approach that - but so far '19 has seen a big drop.

I agree overproduction has been a major problem. And I don't know whether what we're seeing represents a sea change or a blip, but a 30-40% drop for two consecutive seasons is a pretty big blip.

[Arya]

It was like more than a full year I watched my last series. Last try was darling in the franxx that I never ended. During this period I couldn't find a show that grabbed my interest. My impression is that the quality of the stories decreased sensibly as much as my tolerance and the result was I kept bumping into same cliches over and over again or stories overdone.
I was probably tired, this season finally I found something interesting again, Shield Hero and Tomare brought me back and then I found Dororo and Dragon Slayer. It may be just a period even for you. It's not bad taking a break from time to time.

what I noted is also as the discussions have decreased (at least here) and discussion is an active component in my engagement of a series.

[Fvlminatvs]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

I agree overproduction has been a major problem. And I don't know whether what we're seeing represents a sea change or a blip, but a 30-40% drop for two consecutive seasons is a pretty big blip.

I just looked this up on MAL and you're right. This probably indicates that the market is starting to correct itself. What that looks like in the long run, however, is anybody's guess.

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by Arya

It was like more than a full year I watched my last series. Last try was darling in the franxx that I never ended. During this period I couldn't find a show that grabbed my interest. My impression is that the quality of the stories decreased sensibly as much as my tolerance and the result was I kept bumping into same cliches over and over again or stories overdone.
I was probably tired, this season finally I found something interesting again, Shield Hero and Tomare brought me back and then I found Dororo and Dragon Slayer. It may be just a period even for you. It's not bad taking a break from time to time.

what I noted is also as the discussions have decreased (at least here) and discussion is an active component in my engagement of a series.

It’s not just here. In the 7 or so years I’ve been at Random Curiosity there’s been a big change. Pretty much the only shows that generate much discussion are LN adaptations (especially whatever isekai is the flavor of the minute) and ecchi shows (and to a lesser extent whatever CGDCT shows have traction). There was a time when stuff like Mob Psycho or Megalo Box would have had a ton of comments but they barely generate any these days.

[TinyRedLeaf]

I've been "done" with anime, in general, for several years now. My post history on this forum would speak for itself: The last time that I was actively involved in discussing or debating anime here was in 2012. Even then, the number of series I was actively interested in had already dwindled down to just a handful per year.

Based on what I can tell from my own notes, Chihayafuru was about the only show that sparked joy for me that year. I was also following shows like Black Rock Shooter, Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing, Nisemonogatari, Another and Guilty Crown. I recall enjoying Another to some extent, but the story was unfortunately very uneven. Last Exile and Nisemonogatari I watched for sentimental reasons, because I had enjoyed their prequels, but I felt let down overall by both titles.

I think Fvlminatvs nailed the main points very well. There is risk-aversion among production committees, so they go for what they feel are sure-winners and, for the last few years now, that has meant season after season of ever more isekai projects, each one trying to emulate the success of Sword Art Online.

It's also true that once you've watched enough anime, you begin to recognise familiar tropes, and there will eventually come a point where you become incredibly bored with the lack of truly innovative stories in the medium.

It's even worse when you realise that this is a deliberate strategy to appeal to hardcore otaku who generally prefer more of the same. Such audiences enjoy even mroe when you have shows that specifically pander to their reclusive/exclusive interests. It's like sharing an in-joke that only such fans can appreciate and enjoy. Whatever the reason, I think the industry has turned inwards, and this has contributed significantly to the stale state of storytelling in contemporary anime.

But I must also acknowledge that I too have changed, and the stories I'm looking for are no longer common in mainstream anime. On this point, I'm in agreement with SeijiSensei: There aren't really that many series today that are targeted at mature audiences. I think the most recent ones I can think of are Showa Genroku Rakugo, and Fune wo Amu.

There's also the possibility that my interests were very niche to begin with. The kind of anime I avidly followed in the past tended to be ones that inspired discussion on real-life social or philosophical issues.

I returned to anime as a young adult during the height of the sci-fi anime boom, through landmark titles like Ghost in the Shell, Jin-Roh, Akira, and Serial Experiments Lain. Ghibli films like Mononoke Hime and Spirited Away extended this further into ecological and social questions that seized my imagination.

And then there were series like Haibane Renmei, Kino no Tabi, and Mushishi that were one-of-a-kind, dealing heavily in life philosophies that virtually no other entertainment mediums were exploring at the time.

If I were to look at this objectively, I could perhaps say that these stories were the anime fad of their time. I think it was around the mid-noughties that the fad shifted into all things moe, thanks to the runaway success of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi and, I suppose, to a lesser extent, gag shows like Lucky Star.

So, yes, anime trends have changed, and they are no longer in synch with my current interests. And, as a result, I'm not as invested in anime as I used to be. Maybe that would change again. Who knows? I still try to watch a title or two every season, and there are pleasant surprises every now and then, like Made In Abyss and Houseki no Kuni.

But I'm reduced to just Dororo at this point, so I guess it's pretty dire for me at the moment.