Losing the Love

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It happens every so often. You reach a point where it all just matters very little and you wonder why you carry on doing it. It always begs the question “will I ever fall back in love again?”

It’s the question I’ve been asking myself about anime for the last couple of months. While I’ve been reviewing the latest Naruto and have the Darker Than Black review ready to set loose on the world, I find myself less inclined to look at anything else that isn’t work-related.

It could be down to a brief hiatus that I took from everything last month that may have moved my interest out. Before my break I was keeping up with series such as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and K-ON!, with Valkyria Chronicles, Phantom and Eden of the East running in the background to those two. An interesting and varied selection of different genre’s for sure. But since my break I’ve been less inclined to sit down and watch any of these series. Even stuff I ear-marked for the new season such as my favourite Spice and Wolf’s second season and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 have done little to spur my interest. So what is going on?

Myself and a few others have a theory which I’m going to coin a name for. The Anime Burn-Out or ABO to give it some sort of medical terminology. Every so often, maybe every couple of years a lot of people will encounter a point where their interest in anime wanes quite a bit. This may be down to lack of anything of interest, the finishing off of a uni course, workload increase at a job or any number of personal reasons why. What we do seem to find, once this has past, is that one of two things happen. The fan either drops out completely or comes back with an enormous appetite for more. Personally I don’t see myself going anywhere at the moment, just taking a break for the time being.

Now before the fanboys start lighting their torchs and sharping their pitchforks for what I’m about to say, hear me out. Personally I think a break is needed. The worst thing I can think of doing when getting home from work, is sitting down to watch TV with subtitles on it. That requires a lot more concentration than just chucking something on the TV. True you could switch to the English dub, but if it is one of these new shining streaming deals, then that might not be possible. A break from anime can help hugely in rebuilding and reflecting on the reasons why you became an anime fan in the first place.

Which is what I plan to do. To step back and catch up on some other things. Still got a pile of games to make my way through. Tales of Vesperia is going to suck the life out of me for sure. So don’t take this as my resignation letter, I’ll be around for a long time yet.