Enjoying Anime in the Modern Streaming Era

As I’m diving into my 100 Anime Challenge, I find myself remembering what it felt like to rush home after school to catch whatever was airing on Toonami and sneaking into the TV room to catch Adult Swim to find out what happened on InuYasha.

My family banned me from watching afternoon and evening TV shows (aside from the ones they wanted to watch together), so I had to sneak around, record episodes on VHS, and watch them later. Once I had my driver's license, if I wanted to collect a series, it meant driving 45 minutes to buy a DVD from Best Buy or I'd have to deal with the small dubbed VHS collection at the local Wal-Mart.

Now, thanks to streaming services like Crunchyroll, Netflix, and Hi-Dive, it feels like the entire anime universe is at our fingertips. We can find both subbed and dubbed versions in high quality with just a few clicks. 

Unless you want to watch Bleach.  For whatever reason, that remains the one anime you can't watch within a reasonable amount of time or in any reliable quality if you're streaming old episodes.  WHY.

But anyways...

The sheer variety is amazing, and we're seeing more genres than ever before. It's also great that anime has become more global, letting fans around the world enjoy different shows simultaneously.

The only catch is keeping up.

With dozens of new titles each season and constant hype in fandom communities, it can be tough to decide what to watch next. If I pick just a few shows, I might miss out on the ones everyone's talking about. And if I try to watch everything, I never have time for anything else. Still, I would rather have too many choices than too few.

How do you handle the ever-growing watchlist? Share your priorities and insights with me on Discord!