The Dilemma of Rewatching Shows

Over these past couple of months, I have been getting temptations to rewatch a lot of my favorite anime.

Of course, I didn’t fall for it. I felt like I had this obligation to catch up on all the anime I missed out on while I was taking a semi-break. But I am getting this urge to rewatch anime again. For some of them, it has been around five years since I first watched them. Because of that, my memories of what occurred to even what the general premise of some of these shows are are very blurry. It’s not even about an anime is so bad that it’s forgettable; I just have a bad memory, to be honest.

But before getting to rewatching anime, it feels like you’re wasting your time watching something you’ve already seen when you could be going on a whole new adventure to the unknown with a brand new cast full of new characters. It’s this cycle of overthinking that eats up your time when you could’ve just gotten a show over with.

Jerem, you know you could just do both right..? 

That’s the thing: I can’t. I’m not as heavily invested into anime as I used to be so I try to be more efficient with my time. I wish I was still deeply into anime where I could watch a one cour series in one sitting. But nowadays, it would take me a week just to get one done. I wish it wasn’t this way, but anime just isn’t my number one priority anymore. I have become a casual fan..

So why are you writing this post? 

I just kinda wanted to vent about this dilemma of mine. I have so many anime on my backlog and every week I find something else to add to it or even becomes a must watch on the spot. But at the same time, I see GIFs or clips of all these anime that has a special place in my heart and can’t help but get this longing to revisit it. I mean I’ve already fallen to this temptation once this year, and it hasn’t even been long since the first watch either. I watched Houseki no Kuni around December and six months later, I was tempted to hit a rewatch because of my anime convention experience in Fanime. What I got out of it though was a deeper understanding of Phos, and I even wrote a post about it!

What shows exactly are you thinking about rewatching? 

I’ve been getting the urge to rewatch these certain shows for years now and I might just go ahead and go for it.

A Certain Magical Index/Scientific Railgun 

With the announcement of the third season of Magical Index, it’s finally time to revisit this series. I remember watching it five years ago because there was an abundance of Misaka Mikoto on my Facebook feed so me, being curious and open to any anime, decided to check it out. The episodes were honestly bad quality on the site I used; I was a broke college kid who didn’t know how to watch anime legally, and I was still foreign to torrenting at the time. So I watched it with its blurry ass 240p fight scenes and bad bitrate thanks to my also bad internet, but I somehow still enjoyed it because the plot was enough to keep me going. This time I would probably enjoy it more since thankfully, Crunchyroll has it! So hooray for that!!

Of course, this rewatch is probably going to take a long time. Magical Index and Scientific Railgun combined are a whopping 96 episodes and I watch anime at a snail’s pace now (RIP). But I know for sure it’s going to be worth it.

Likelihood of getting rewatched: I’m actually going to be starting my rewatch very soon so I am excited about that!

Hyouka 

One of my favorite slice of life anime. If you have been keeping up with my blog posts, you could see how many times I’ve used Oreki as a picture. His hair is aesthetically pleasing plus he has the KyoAni eyes so what can I say? Other than that, I remember Hyouka to be this laidback show. The persistent force that was known as Chitanda was enough to shake up Oreki’s dull life was very entertaining.

Likelihood of getting rewatched: I will probably rewatch it before the year ends, as well.

Chihayafuru

Just like Magical Index, Chihayafuru has also been announced for another series. I was particularly fond of this series since it has a more mature vibe to it compared to the bubbly, sparkly feels that the typical shoujo anime/manga give off. This was the first anime that introduced me to Jousei and I like it a lot because it’s basically a KDrama animated.

Asides from that, Chihayafuru was also a sports anime to me. Karuta might not seem like an interesting sport to watch. In fact, I didn’t even know this sport existed until I came across this show and it made it seem very intense. Just like any sports anime, the cast goes through training in order to hone their skills and this is very satisfying to watch.

Likelihood of getting rewatched: It isn’t as long as Magical Index so rewatching this should not take as much time. I will probably begin right before the third season starts.

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So thanks to all of you guys for putting up with my rambling. Now, I have a question: How often do you all rewatch anime? And how exactly do you balance it with watching new anime?