This is a blog right? Well, let's do something bloggy...

Preamble:

I've been watching anime for pretty much my entire life, but 2014 was different. 2014 brought my anime watching to a whole new level. Seriously. I was tearing through so much anime, and with such fervor, as if I were a mad scientist trying to figure out what a lethal dose of moe would be.

Turns out, you can't kill yourself with anime.

How It All Began:

1998 is the year I watched Akira, Ghost in the Shell and Ninja Scroll. on VHS. Those three just happened to catch my eye at the local video store, so I rented them one at a time and consumed them in rapid succession.

Guns, tits, blood, cyborgs, monsters, psychic powers...My teenage mind was blown, to say the least.

The promotional video that played at the start of those VHS tapes sums it up perfectly:

It was hands-down, the coolest shit I had ever seen. I watched that promo over and over again, which is probably what ultimately lead to me buying a copy of Ninja Scroll, and later, Ghost in the Shell.

But That Was It:

That's all I watched in 1998. Just those three. In 1999, a friend in her 20's showed me her hentai collection, and I watched End of Evangelion. The next year I watched Armitage III and a school friend gave me a CD-R with the Trigun series on it.

After that, my anime movie watching tapered off. I ended up watching more Anime Music Videos than anything:

• Macross Plus | Cake - The Distance
• Evangelion | Rammstein - Engel
• Akira | Gravity Kills - Enough

I accrued a huge collection of low-res, low-bitrate AMVs. It was a way to listen to my favorite songs AND watch the coolest anime shit, simultaneously. A good deal.

My anime watching wouldn't increase again until 2010. I watched 10 anime that year (10!), and 10 more in 2011. In 2012 I watched a mind-boggling 11 anime. Like, damn. I also bought my first Blu Ray, Redline.

By the end of 2013 I had completed 66 anime, an average of about 4 a year. Not exactly rabid anime consumption.

FOMO:

It felt like I had watched a lot of anime. I mean, I had seen Death Note, Perfect Blue, Paprika, Jin-Roh, Appleseed, Escaflowne, several of the Studio Ghibli films, and all the stuff mentioned earlier. That was a lot, right? It felt like a lot.

I kept encountering references to anime I was unfamiliar with though. Video clips, avatars, GIFs, jokes, memes. Certain titles kept popping up too, titles I hadn't seen, alongside superlatives like, "The Best" and "The Craziest" and "The Most F'ed Up".

Over the years this grew into a deepening feeling that I was missing out on something. It's just anime though, so I wasn't really missing out on anything. Or was I? It felt like I was. Like I was missing out on a lot.

They've Gone To Plaid:

A few months into 2014, I decided to do something about that, I decided to "catch up". I made a MyAnimeList account and began cataloguing every anime I had seen. I filled my Plan To Watch list with all the highest rated anime I could find. I added stuff based on it's relation to things I had already watched. I perused Top 10 lists, Reddit threads and reverse image searched anime GIFs to expand my list.

I bought a Crunchyroll subscription, a Funimation subscription, I populated my Netflix and Amazon Instant queues, I bookmarked a bunch of official Youtube playlists, and I ordered some DVDs and Blu Rays.

This led to me completing 175 anime in 2014.

175!

That's a lot. That number truly feels like a lot. It's so much anime it put my gaming habits on hold. I only played 3 games in 2014; Gunpoint, Broken Age and Goat Simulator. All at the start of the year too, because once I was in anime mode, there wasn't time for anything else. I wanted to watch anime. I wanted to catch up.

All Caught Up:

Here are some stats from my 2014 anime rampage:

• 82 TV Series.
• 28 Movies.
• 24 OVA.
• 11 ONA.
• 29 Specials.
• 1 Music.

• First of the Year: Attack on Titan
• Last of the Year: Yuru Yuri 2
• Longest series: Ranma 1/2 (161 episodes)

Most Enjoyed:

• Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (2012)
• Kaiji: Ultimate Survivor
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG

Least Enjoyed:

• The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya 2009 (Season 2)
• Mezzo DSA
• Persona 4

Biggest Surprises / Didn't Think I'd Like That:

• Free!
• Ping Pong
• When they Cry 2

Most Disappointing / The Hype Is A Lie:

• Barakamon
• From The New World
• Serial Experiments Lain

Started but not finished in 2014:

• Beck
• Code Geass
• Ergo Proxy
• Gintama
• Hunter x Hunter (2011)
• Legend of the Galactic Heroes
• Monster

Dropped:

• Folktales from Japan
• Ghost Stories (dub)
• Polar Bear Cafe
• Terraformars

I Watched It Because I Heard It Was Bad:

• Mars of Destruction
• Skelter+Heaven
• Striking Daughter Sayuri
• Shitcom

And lastly...

Series of Particular Note / Did You Watch ____________?!:

Full list here: Hamst3r's MyAnimeList

With that, I feel pretty caught up. There's still plenty of stuff I haven't seen; Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Panic!, Texhnolyze, Rurouni Kenshin, Wolf's Rain, Clannad, Hajime No Ippo, GTO, Kino's Journey, Nana, AnoHana, Hellsing Ultimate, among hundreds of others. I'm keeping track though, so I'll eventually get through all of it.

I started off the new year with more anime, finishing Baccano!, Ouran High School Host Club, and Code Geass.

Everything Must Eventually End:

This will never last. This is just how I consume content. I'm a binge watcher. I did the same thing with music, movies, TV shows, Giant Bomb videos. I've watched thousands of movies. Hundreds of TV shows. I typically finish a 12-14 hour video game in one sitting. But the fervor never lasts, it's just a phase. At some point, probably in 2015, I'll feel truly caught up and my anime fever will end.

Until then...I think it's time to finish Ergo Proxy and watch some more Mushi-shi Zoku Shou. I...I have to go. I've spent far too much time typing this thing up already. I'M OUT!

P.S. Bonus Entry: Best American Animated TV Series 2014: Rick & Morty.