Until recently, Japanese anime existed only on the periphery of my entertainment world, with only very short excursions via a must-play video game or Studio Ghibli film. For the last two decades, I have engaged almost exclusively with only Western video games, comics, or movies. Anime and other media from Eastern sources have had little of my focus, despite their undeniable quality.

Up until a few months ago, my literacy with anime was only enough for me to dodge an awkward conversation about Attack on Titan (2013) or Cowboy Bebop (1998) with someone who was really excited about it. Everything I knew about anime and manga was confined to the shallow education I received in the late 1990s and early 2000s, from anime like Akira (1988), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995), and manga like Dominion (1985), Appleseed (1985), and Battle Angel Alita (1990).

Movies like Akira and Ghost in the Shell received my attention because of their adult subject matter, intricate plotlines, and striking visuals were just so diffrent from anything I was engaging with in the West. The dark ruminating subject matter fit my nihilistic Gen X world view, but it only got my attention when Western mainstream media got boring enough or The X-Files (1993) was out of season.

This is not to say that there weren't opportunities to engage with anime. Among my friend group, a cohort of disenchanted, anti-establishment, SoCal punk rock fans who had no idea just how good they had it back then, it wasn’t uncommon to find anime DVDs alongside CD collections containing Nine Inch Nails, Bad Religion, NOFX, and Face to Face in our bedrooms and apartments. But beyond the few works above, I just never did.

Any and all engagement I had with anime ended somewhere in the mid-2000s. During this time, anime’s advancement in the West was still being stifled by the 'aNiMaTioN iS fOr KiDs' stigma that has now mostly ebbed, thankfully. The only anime that really gained traction in the West were those actually aimed at kids like Sailor Moon (1992), Pokémon (1997), and Dragon Ball Z (1989); none of which appealed to me.

As the last two decades or so passed, the situation drastically changed. I was sort of aware of anime’s growing influence during the 2010s by way of a lot more people in my orbit mentioning it, but I never fully comprehended how much it has absolutely taken over. With the exception of Japanese games like Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015) or Dark Souls (2011), I have not engaged with entertainment from the East in any meaningful way at all. Until the pandemic, that was.

During the COVID isolation, my entertainment consumption greatly increased. After exhausting the usual sources of Western media, I happened across Castlevania (2017). Castlevania is an American-produced animation series funded by Netflix and is based on the Japanese video game series of the same name. But since it is produced here in the West, you can't technically call it an anime.

Castlevania's art style was influenced by Ayami Kojima,

the renowned artist of the Konami video game series.

The thing that I found so compelling about Castlevania wasn't just its incredible art style, which I completely fell in love with, but I was facinated by the fact that this was an American animation product that was trying to be Japanese! Something had truly shifted in the world of entertainment and I had missed it.

[Note: There's a longer conversation that should be had about the implications of Japanese anime (and by extension Japanese culture) becoming mainstream in the West. The ascendance of Japanese cultural soft power as it has happened in the last ten years is incredibly interesting, but it is too broad a subject to discuss here. Another time, perhaps.]

As the pandemic continued, I started watching more anime, this time directly from Japanese sources. I viewed Attack on Titan (2013), Cowboy Bebop (1998), and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022). In January 2025, I fully committed by purchasing a Crunchyroll subscription, giving me access to more anime than I could possibly watch in a lifetime. However, it seems I'm determined to try; since the start of 2025, the only streaming services I've used are Crunchyroll and the anime sections of Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max.

While discussing my new anime obsession on stream with chat (you can view that VOD here), we ended up creating a shared watchlist here. (It's also accessible via the main page menu bar under アニメ.) The watchlist is divided into four categories: reviewed, watched, on deck, and no interest. An anime is placed in the no interest list if it fails to capture my attention. I allow a series two episodes to make an impression. If it doesn't, that's the end of it. Sorry, not sorry.

I am going to provide short reviews of all the anime that I have watched since the 1990s to now, which is surprisingly achievable since there are not a lot of them. I don't really have a goal for this project, but it should make for an interesting journey since I am really diving into a whole new world for the first time. I have also been inspired to learn Japanese from this as well... more on that later.

Have your say or give me an additional watch recommendations in the comments below this article or come by twitch.tv/GameswithDeath to let me know what you think. Enjoy and see you on the other side.💀