“That sounds like a great story! Can I watch it with you?”
“Well, I want to watch it with some regularity…so no.”
After completing Avatar: The Last Airbender and Violet Evergarden with me, my roommate has learned well how hard it is to align both our schedules, even though we live in the same house.
When I was a teenager, I had so much time to watch anime, but I didn’t have many people I could watch it with, and I didn’t particularly want to watch it with anyone else anyways. My brother, the only person in my family who liked anime, would watch an entire anime over a weekend and then give me small spoilers while I caught up. So in the end, I preferred to watch anime alone, and then rejoice about how great it was with my internet friends at a better time. The last thing I wanted to do was watch it with someone who might not like it very much, and end up feeling like I’d wasted their time, or even worse, judged.
Now, I actually prefer to watch anime with a friend, if I can.
Time is so short, and most of my friends now like anime. If I can find one we both like, nothing is more delightful than watching an episode with them and chatting about it afterwards. The only problem is, the days when I could put off my responsibilities indefinitely are over, and so we have to fit together the pieces of our schedule to watch even one episode together.
My brother never did stop watching anime all at once, but I persuaded my mother to watch Haibane Renmei with me. She enjoyed it, but never agreed to watch an anime with me again, until recently, when I convinced her to watch episode 10 of Violet Evergarden with me.
“So,” she said “There are how many episodes of this?”
I can only hope.
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featured art by 锦筠Rex | reprinted w/permission
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Haha, episode 10 was definitely the most amazing episode in Violet Evergarden! That’s a good choice to convince someone to watch an anime. I’ve also been trying to watch anime with various people. I’ve been trying to watch more anime with people too. I already watch 2-3 things with my brother, and I was able to get my mom to watch Yona of the Dawn and FMA: Brotherhood. Of course, that’s all during school breaks; when I go back to college, there are anime I am thinking of watching with people, but I know it would be difficult for schedules to align. I guess one has to be very intentional about making time for it, probably by setting a weekly schedule would be nice
Yeah, I thought I would not cry as much when I watched episode 10 for the second time, but I think I actually cried more. I’m impressed you got your mom to watch FMA:b, it’s a really long series!
In all honesty, I am not very good at time management. It’s gotten better in the past few years, but I still need some work. If you start thinking about scheduling and things now, it’ll probably be easier for you down the road. Watching anime with friends can definitely be done, you just have to have a lot of patience. Also, when you get to the last three-ish episodes of a series, try to make sure you have the time to watch them all at once.