Why I stopped watching anime...

Just about ten years ago I moved to Boston, and joined the Northeastern University Anime Club. I had a general interest in anime, but really there just wasn't any other club at the school that was even remotely tied to my interests. After several years with the club, though, I was a certified addict.

We watched things like Genshiken, a sort of meta experience of watching an anime about an anime club, and Durarara a blend of mind bending dialogue, and hyper violence. I went to Anime Boston for a few years during this time, bought a ton of anime, and when it was being piloted got a CrunchyRoll subscription.

In the last 5 years or so, I've stopped watching anime almost completely. I spent some time thinking about that change in my life. I'm married now, I live in Ohio (I know, it's only temporary), I have two dogs, a well paying job. Maybe I'd just "matured" past anime. Maybe it was just content you can only be interested in during your slightly younger years.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that wasn't really the case. I miss anime, a lot. I miss the romantic comedies, and the absolute mind-fucks. There are anime about farming that I watched in a single night, and for some reason I loved every minute of them. So why I had stopped watching?

Time. Not in the sense that I'm much busier now with the life I live now, but in a much more general sense that my mind has conditioned itself (think about that for a moment) to believe I don't have the time to dedicate myself to certain things because there is so much to do.

I could be spending time with my wife, reading a book, watching a Netflix show, browsing the web, getting work done, taking my dogs out for a hike, going kayaking, watching a World Cup match, catching up with the various Yogscast YouTube series or podcasts, playing a game, building a web page, or....the list is infinite. The idea of just doing one thing is almost daunting.

I can watch Netflix because I can also check Instagram on my phone, pop my laptop open to browse Reddit, and catch up on Orange is the New Black ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

I don't read as much because my full attention has to be on the book. I can watch Netflix because I can also check Instagram on my phone, pop my laptop open to browse Reddit, and catch up on Orange is the New Black ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

Anime falls into the reading category for me though. I don't really like the work being done for dubbing or localization. So I have to watch anime subtitled, but that means I can't split my attention to anything else. To keep up with the subtle visual queues on screen, as well as the dialogue, my eyes and mind have to be plastered onto the screen.

So I've chosen to just stop watching anime, or more accurantly my mind has (maybe less accurately depending on your viewpoint). The reason isn't what I'd expected, and it's almost sadder than just simply outgrowing something.