Anime

While watching Kanon, I've realized something about the way people watch anime.

There are two ways people tend to watch anime:

1) Following the series on TV or following the series on torrents, hence always waiting close to one week inbetween episodes.
2) Borrowing/getting the series in one complete chunk and spam watching it in one fell swoop.

In certain cases, manga follows a similar trend. (Comics do not because there are so many that any person, even if they took huge stacks at once, would eventually end up following it one by one XD)

All my favourite anime (discluding the RK OVA which was 2 hour's worth of sheer beauty) are all series that I follow one by one: Last Exile on Arts Central, Cowboy Bebop on Arts Central, and Kanon Remake on torrents. Now why is this?

There are two major differences between anime and cartoons (No, I shan't be elitist and say 'quality'): Target audience and length. Anime caters to a larger target audience whereas cartoons are mostly catered more towards children and/or family (Not insinuating that it shouldn't or can't be watched by those outside the target audience). As a result they have a tendency to be longer than anime (Let's compare Simpsons to any anime. About the only anime I know that can even begin to compare would be Pokemon, the ever-dear 10+ year old franchise. And who's that catered to? Kids.) and tend to be - dare I say it - shallower. (Note that I do not include comics here. Western graphic novels are as good as they come, though infinitesimal amounts of interpretations to the same character does get confusing)

What about anime, then? Any anime that attempts to have any thematic value to it is less than 50 episodes (Hint bleach hint naruto hint one piece. Manga not included). And sometimes, the kind of underlying issues shown in anime are astoundingly deep. To take examples, Serial Experiments Lain: A simple 13-episode series that explores reality, life and existence in an extremely radical way, so much that the creator of the series even attempted to craft the series in such a way that the Western and Eastern cultures would collide in their interpretations of Lain. Irregardless of the fact that ultimately both cultures came to similar conclusions on the series, Lain is a very thought-provoking and philosophical series that sparked much analysis and debate with a mere 13 episodes.

Death Note is definitely far longer than that, but its exploration of ethics is interesting in the way that there is no protagonist. While certainly that sounds absolutely normal in modern writing, it is far rarer to have a cold-blooded murderer to be treated on the same level as a genius working with the police to catch him. A simple foundation that led to a story that has sparked large amounts of debate in Japan about the actions of Kira - whether they were right or wrong, and it is a far more difficult question to tackle than is expected.

I would talk about love stories too, but nevermind on that. I dislike talking about Kanon because I can't convince people to watch such a series, no matter how beautiful and touching it really is.

So how does this tie in?

Any anime that has value in it should be watched in moderation. If one tries to watch it all at once, he cannot fully appreciate the value of everything. A day to appreciate a day's worth of value is far better than a day to appreciate a week's worth. Which is one reason I like following a given series on torrents rather than on TV -- you can rewatch it. I have no idea how many times I rewatch episodes of Kanon each week - probably what should have been just 20-25 minutes of Kanon has been multiplied by 3 to 4 times. And why not? It is impossible to fully appreciate the beauty of anything in just one runthrough (Assuming that said object/thing/wadeva is actually beautiful, hence rewatching episodes of Musashi Gundou will not actually make the series any better) . What is there to rewatch anyway? Dialogue, animation, simple and small things that make Kanon very beautiful.

It is also because of this reason that no matter how much I like Lain, Death Note, Haibane Renmei, Air and other surprisingly wonderful series, I cannot place them among my favourites -- There isn't that special connection, that extra effort that makes me go 'Wow, that was a wonderful series'. And sadly, there's a very good chance that it's because I only watched it once in one fell swoop. "Why not just rewatch it now, then?" some ask. It's simple. I'm too busy rewatching Kanon. >_>