Six Till Three-Hundred – Have You Been Counting Your Anime Milestones?

Ninja Scroll - Baby's First Anime

If the number is divisible by five, and especially it it’s divisible by one-hundred, then chances are it will bring up some kind of significance in your mind. Your top five, ten, or twenty shows. Your 500th or 100,000th hit. All will feel somehow special. As an anime fan, I’ve never done much thinking about the totals of anime I’ve seen, since they never add up to significant or convenient numbers. However, on MAL, I have been told that I am 6 shows away from completing a total of 300 shows (out of the 630 I’ve seen any of, LOL.) Since I saw it, I felt I should do something special.

This is probably the most significant milestone I’ve ever been able to enjoy as an anime fan, next to when MAL told me I’d seen 100 Days worth of anime. That accomplishment was almost completely marred by the fact that my total times on MAL are fucked up the ass, thanks to me constantly switching episode counts on shows in obscure ways. I’m not sure if I crated my account before or after I’d completed 200 shows, but I don’t suspect that 200 would have been so great a number in the face of how much anime I’d needed to watch back then.

My ‘total anime’ has always been my bragging right even if it’s totally fucked. The number was more true before i added a bunch of ‘planned to watch’ shows recently (and plan to add more) but originally, it was a good way of being able to say to people ‘I’ve seen over 600 anime’ if just to make them understand how much of a different plane I’m on than them so they’d stop asking if I’d heard of Mushishi. However, these absurdly high numbers are hardly satisfying. I’ve dropped 140 shows and have about 240 on hold (inc. my ‘watching list’ which is the stuff I’ve been too lazy to move.) In a very good number of those cases, I’ve seen exactly one episode of the show in question. Sure, it means I know about every show ever and have a taste of them, but it says nothing about how many shows I’ve genuinely experienced.

But now I’m coming up on a solid chance. A true, notable number. A number that is high enough to really be proud of, and difficult enough that I feel like I’ll really have achieved something. It’s a convenient number, divisible by one-hundred and higher than ‘a couple hundred.’ Three-Hundred. King Leonidas would be proud.

So, how do I plan to ceremoniously commemorate my completion of three-hundred anime? I am going to do ‘what I should have done a long time ago.’ The six anime that I watch to make 300 will be shows that I’ve been watching FOREVER. Each of these is a show that I really, really enjoy. It’s a show that’s been waiting for a spot on my favorites list with bated breath, held back merely by the fact that I was too lazy to finish them. I actually had a list of about 25 shows, but I narrowed them down by ease of finding, length, and, of course, spiritual importance. Here’s the list.

1. Super Dimensional Fortress Macross – About five years ago, I was a big fan of a certain show called ‘Robotech.’ I watched 24 episodes of Robotech, never finishing the first 36 episode part of the series known as ‘the Macross Saga’. Years later, I got the lowdown on what Macross really is and have desperately wanted to watch it since. This was one of many series that on so many random nights I would feel a want to watch suddenly, but streams of it did not exist and the series only recently released in original form in the US (which I’ve never had the chance to buy.) However, it’s been on Funeral’s Terrabyte for a while now, and there is no better reason or time to finally get to it than now.

2. Space Adventure Cobra – Back in 07 as I was exploring the study of anime, I was introduced to Cobra by Wildarmsheero and, subsequently, my pal Roast-beefy-weefs. Cobra was the first 80s anime that I found myself really able to get into because it had a lot of style and the most badass hero ever, Cobra. I started watching it with good pal and normalfag Zerodyme, and we had a blast for 7 episodes. About 6 months later, we had a blast for about 6 more episodes. We have been patiently awaiting the next blast.

3. Neo-Ranga – I’ve been interested in Neo-Ranga for the longest time in spite of it’s blatantly lying cover art. Neo-Ranga is fucking strange, not in any way that I can compare to something else. It’s got everything, and it’s awesome, and a ton of fun. I started watching one day streamed, and the stream froze during episode 7, and there were NO OTHERS ON THE INTERNET. I pined for a box set ever since, however I did download the series. I watched 18 of the half-length 40 episodes, and then just stopped, and eventually had to delete it for hard drive space. Now, I FINALLY own the complete collection as of my 18th bday yesterday~

(oh what the fuck? Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko was supposed to be number 4, but it looks like I somehow deleted it from my hard drive. When did this happen?! Well that’ll take weeks to re-download, so……)

4. Mushi-shi – The new addition, perhaps a respite from what are mostly older or aging shows. I started Mushi-shi in early 07 when I was first getting back into anime, and after the great first episode, I decided I should watch the series with my brother. We were watching it on Youtube where not all of the episodes were available, and we got through 14 episodes before I guess running out. Later that year, the DVDs started coming out (spectacular releases, by the way), and so I bought the first two, but I simply never (and still haven’t) got around to buying the rest, and thus never finished the series. It’s always really strange when I realize this, because it feels like I know the series so well, when I only saw about half of it.

5. FullMetal Alchemist – What a pain in the ass this series has been, that I felt I absolutely had to put this on my list. I was a big fan of this when it started when? Something like late 2004 on Adult Swim? I was watching it and then at about episode 26, my family moved, and our new house, for the 5 or 6 months we lived there, did not have cable. This was, of course, right after the second half had finally started airing. So I never saw the second half. Fast forward years later, and I always want to watch it, but Adult Swim airs the episode in random or inconvenient orders. So rather than seeing the new episodes in order (as I refused to watch them otherwise) I kept watching reruns, and have seen a lot of episodes from the first half as many as 4 times. Then I finally started watching it online with the original Japanese cast (better, I don’t care what you say or how good Mignogna admittedly is) and naturally, the streams I was watching hit a snag. So I’ve been fucked ever since. But not this time.

6. Excel Saga – And finally, Excel Saga. Oddly enough, I’ve been ‘watching’ this show the longest. Back in 04, I had a friend who I introduced to anime, and he bough the Excel Saga box set among others. I watched the first DVD of the series, and liked it enough, but I simply never watched any more of it, and never even really considered it. It’s actually the oddball of this list in that I haven’t tried to continue it a number of times. I always felt like I didn’t want to watch it until I’d seen more of the 90s anime it parodies, and since I’ve pretty much seen all of them now, I feel like I’m ready. This is probably the perfect benchmark anime, too, being what it is.

So that’s my list, now wish me luck! I’ve already started on Macross, and I’ve already got a post on it coming right up!