The 5yr Watch Has Ended - And General Thoughts on Anime in 2026

The Prologue

Just about 5yrsago I started to do this thing, that I watched both the shows that were airing in the current season and whatever was airing 10yrs ago. And it worked really well for a long time, much longer than I ever expected. But by this point after watching and finishing 788 shows according to Anilist, I think I’m burnt out.

The Old Stuff

Lets start off by talking about that stuff from 10yrs ago, and I’ve kinda ran into the issue that I’ve reached the time when I originally started watching anime which was around 2015. And I dived in hard and fast back than, watching far more shows than I ever could now. But while I’m much older now, my general tastes are much the same. So going back to these 2015/2016 seasons I just find fewer and fewer shows that I’ve never watched before, and it being a new show to me was one of my self created requirements to watch it. And while there are still many promising shows and highly rated stuff I’m missing, I just don’t think I have it in me to keep going through the seasons in the same way anymore.

And than there is the second issue, nothing I’m watching from 2015+ feels original or all that interesting. By this point anime largely feels very similar to what is currently available. I’m not finding things to be largely different in any ways at all that make me want to watch to see the unique content or visuals.

The New Stuff

Now for the new stuff that is coming out, I am just tired of pretty much everything I see anymore airing. Each season we get a massive spread of high quality shows, but none of them are original ideas or all that unique. They are all adaptions of already massively popular and translated manga/light novel series and don’t add anything with the adaption. And sure this was always and issue, but the difference is how easy it is to access the active translations of this stuff. What entices me to spend 6hrs to watch the adaption, when I can read the original source material in less time, and not have anything cut or modified to fit into the rigid 12 episode cour system. And than have to read the manga/light novel anyhow when the show ends so I can see how it goes, if I’m reading the source material to start, my interest in the anime goes way down with very few exceptions. These are shows like Frieren or Eminence in Shadow (which also made changes and additions that actually improved on the source). I really wish there was more original shows that didn’t have horrendous pacing issues, which is a whole other complaint I have made in the past.

Than we run into the same issue I’m having with the old stuff, a lack of any new ideas it seems. Have we just tapped out of new and interesting stories? Every season seems to have the same collection of escapist fantasy and isekai shows with a mix of romance but don’t do anything unique with the idea. Where did the high budget scifi shows go, or dark modern day dramas. Or a show with some detailed hand drawn animation that doesn’t fall back to cheap looking CGI whenever a monster or horse or enemy army shows up that looks terrible.

I just look through the current season, and see nothing of interest to watch. A season 2 of a show I was already watching that I’ll watch, or the occasional manga adaption that I might watch but not super excited for.

The Future

So where do I go from here, well for sure the seasonal watches that I have been doing are finished. I just don’t feel it in any way anymore. But what replaces it? I think I will be looking into watching some specific shows that I’ve been wanting to watch in the past, a series that I missed but want to catch up on. Or re-watching some old stuff that I haven’t watched in a while. And just jumping around far more in what gets watched. With that should come more actual reviews and thoughts about shows, is that show I watched when I was in high-school still worthy of an 8 10yrs later?