There’s a lot of anime in this world to watch. I get told pretty much everyday about things I need to see. For instance, I’m regularly told to watch Jojo, Death Note, Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, and the second season of Code Geass. And none of that is counting things I’ve personally chose that I want to watch.

Obviously, this isn’t an issue exclusive to anime. I suffer from this with games, books, all sorts of things, but anime is one of the biggest offenders since it’s a hobby I share with most of my friends, who generally watch anime in the opposite way. They watch the more popular things, I watch the weird things, which makes the disconnect worse.

At the end of the day, it’s super simple. There’s too much anime and not enough time to get through it. Even a 12 episode anime can be intimidating, made even worse with seasonal, which are, at this point, an ani blogger’s best friend and worst enemy.

And a lot of the series people want me to watch have more than 12 episodes. 20, 30, multiple seasons. There’s a lot. There’s just way too much to keep up with. And so, this leads to me not watching anything. So, why do I bring this up? Because I’m going to start watching something big, and it has nothing to do with anything I’ve been asked. No, I just want to watch some Gundam.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, is the next Gundam anime currently airing this season. I say “next” because Gundam is quite possible the oldest and most recognizable mecha anime series, with the first anime airing in 1979. In that time, as you might imagine, quite a bit has come out.

I played the recent Gundam game, really enjoyed it and that mixed with my mecha curious brain and that’s why I’ve decided to start watching this latest installment. Yup, 12 episodes is too much, so I watched one of the oldest anime franchises instead. Makes perfect sense, I’d say.

This brings me to the main point here, why did I choose to start such a long series with the most recent, and what is the best way to watch an ongoing series? Answers actually vary on this quite a bit, and really no choice is wrong, per se.

Many people will tell you to start at the beginning. It’s often important for lore to watch from the start, and there won’t be a big shock going back in quality from later installments. Many will tell you to go with the newest because it will likely be the best made or look the best at least. My opinion is boring. Choose what you like.

People often get so wrapped up in what’s the best place to start that I think they often miss the point. The entire reason you get into a big series is to get into it. You want something that will hook you and keep you interested, so whether it’s the latest, first, worst, or best, you should choose what you want to watch. For me, it’s easy to get into a new seasonal and I find the name fascinating, so I’m going to watch this Gundam for now over the others.

Will this be a good decision? I don’t know. I’ve yet to start watching the series, but just the thought of doing so brought up another really interesting topic to me that I wanted to talk about and share, and I’d love to hear your views on this. Because at the end of the day, I’m the type to randomly watch an episode of Chargeman Ken before watching any series actually worth a damn.

Thank you very much for reading

How do you decide to get into series?