Last night, I finished The World God Only Knows, for whatever reason. I suppose I wanted to finish what I had started. However, I’m glad I did, because it sparked this thought in my head. In the last episode, Keima laments all the time he has spent trying to capture real girls hearts. It’s kept him from completing all those lovely dating games. Now, he’s fallen too far behind to ever catch up, so he comes to the only obvious solution. He must complete multiple games at the same time! As you would expect, the anime takes it up to insane levels where he eventually collapses and/or hallucinates from exhaustion. We could just write it off as filler because they lacked enough time for a proper arc. However, it actually points out a struggle some of us might have: entertainment overload.
Keima, you are such a god modder!
Well, let’s face it, in this technological age people can create content at a pace that far outstrips any single person’s ability to consume. Youtube estimates 24 hours of video get uploaded every single minute. A brief conversion will give you four years of content uploaded over the span of a day. I have a feeling their reported number might be blown up a bit, and obviously there’s a lot of duplicate material. Even scaled back, it’s insane.
Perhaps more relevant to our interests, right now we’ve got 21 new anime series airing, and this isn’t even the busiest season. Altogether, it generates 8 hours and 24 minutes of material to watch every week. The number doesn’t include series that carried over, such as Index or Bakuman. Nor does it include any other viewable content, such as OVAs or movies. Forget about trying to figure manga and light novels. Obviously, I don’t expect anyone would want to watch every series, every week, all the way through the season. In all likelihood, you’ll only watch a small fraction. In my case, I’m juggling 6 series.
That doesn’t sound like a lot, and of course, it really isn’t. There’s so much else you or I probably want to do though. For one, we’ve got these things called backlogs, anime we want to watch but haven’t quite found the time to do it. Right now, my list is populated with 424 episodes, not including the incredibly long Keroro Gunso or Gintama which I’ve barely started. I also like video games, and I have the misfortune of enjoying RPGs the most. I think my backlog there is about 20 games deep. There’s also books, American television, blogging, and so forth.
Of course, there’s other things that must be done, such as sleeping, working, schooling, and maintaining a social life. All of these are far more important than anything I’ve listed up until now. I’m also realistic. There is no way in hell I will ever catch up with everything in my backlog. Still, I have a desire to at least try to chip away at it. So what’s a guy to do?
Come on man! Get it together!
Well, I’m typing this while watching television, if that’s any indication. Last night, while I was watching TWGOK, I was playing Phantom Brave. Probably later tonight, I’ll try and knock out a good bit of School Rumble while I play something. Tactical games really are good for this sort of thing. So yes, I’m multitasking, and this isn’t a unique experience. Most of the people I know are working on at least two things at the same time. This isn’t to the comical extent of Keima, but it’s multitasking nonetheless.
It’s kind of funny that Keima points something else out about his games. They used to be savored. You got drawn into a game and really immersed yourself in the story or the gameplay. Naturally, he tosses the idea aside immediately. However, there are still things that receive my undivided attention. When Gosick is on, the mystery is all that’s running through my head. Katanagatari had scads of dialogue you couldn’t ignore, not that you’d want to if you were a fan of its storytelling. Nor can I divert my attention away from a good round of Team Fortress 2, unless I really wanted to die. This is entertainment I want to fully enjoy. You could probably make an argument that anything I don’t give my full attention to doesn’t need to be watched, played, read, or whatever. You’d probably be right too.
I suppose I’ll cap this post off by opening the floor to you. Do you feel at all overwhelmed by the amount of entertainment? If so, what do you do? Do you try to do multiple things at once, or do you still try to savor every experience?
Sometimes I feel incredibly overwhelmed by all the means of entertainment found in this day and age.
After I got into anime a few years ago, I stopped reading novels at my usual breakneck speed. I used to consume a whole book in a day, sometimes only a few hours. I was constantly immersed in a novel, whether it be my own or from the library. I still enjoy reading a lot, but my change in reading habits has changed immensely. I don’t read for pleasure daily, and whenever I do decide to read, I can only take in about forty minutes worth of it (depending on how good the book is, of course). I look back at how I used to read for hours on end with nostalgia. Nowadays, I sit down and watch anime for hours on end. Times have changed. I don’t regret it, though. I love anime. :)
I used to follow TV shows religiously, but I find myself so swept up in watching anime or work that I miss them.
Also, I do love playing games, but I prefer anime much more. Lately, I’ve found that I’ll start a game, but never finish it because I’d rather watch anime. That doesn’t mean the game wasn’t fun, I just don’t feel the motivation to sit and finish it.
I don’t try to savor all this entertainment at once, though. Instead I ask myself what I feel like doing in my free time, and whatever I wish to do, I will do. It’s as simple as that. I’m not going to force myself to do something in hopes that it’ll be entertaining when I have another form of media that I KNOW will entertain me.
Also, in response to WOGK, I found the ending to be particularly interesting. I don’t remember which blogger, but someone tried to watch four anime at a time and posted his results to his blog. I think I may have to try watching four anime all at once, if only to say that I’ve done it before.
PS. WOGK opening was awesome. :3
I actually used to read a lot as well. When I was going to school, you weren’t allowed to sleep during class or study hall, you always had to have something to do. Since I got done with all my work quickly, I was always carrying a book everywhere. Now there are few books I read besides text books. One exception is the next Star Trek New Frontier book… whenever it’s released.
I seem to enjoy content in cycles For a period of time I’ll really want to work my way through a game, and then I’ll want to knock off an anime series.
As far as choosing a single thing to do, there’s an interesting thing Tycho (I believe) said once on Penny Arcade. When he had an abundance of things to do, it leads to indecision, and then not doing anything at all. I tend to do that as well.
I usually try to pick one entertainment activity and focus on it, though during baseball season I often put on a game and catch up on some reading while I’m half paying attention to it.
If a tv show, anime, video game or book is not worth my full attention, it’s probably not worth any of my attention.
Yeah, there’s some shows that lend themselves to an even more passive viewing experience. For example, So You Think You Can Dance, which I’m usually only interested in for certain segments. The rest is kind of background noise.
I think it’s time to work on prioritizing more. :]
I used to play a lot more video games than I do, now that I work full time. No joke, I dropped over 1,000 hours in Devil May Cry 3 and Ninja Gaiden (combined, mind you). To me, TV shows and anime have largely supplanted the role of video games in my life, because their short episodes make for easier, bite-sized consumption (as well as consumption in transit and consumption with friends). There are too many great games out now that I know I’ll never get to play.
Still, I have an unrealistically large backlog of games I want to get through. I’ve been stuck at halfway done through Tales of Vesperia for close to 2 years now. Only 6 hours into Final Fantasy 13, nearly a year after starting it. I’ve been playing Mass Effect 2 for over a year. It took me close to a year to play through Persona 3. I’ve come to appreciate the short, quick games like Bioshock or Half Life 2. I do wish I had the time to master Bayonetta the same way I did with DMC and Ninja Gaiden, though. The combat system in that game is simply sublime.
Well you’re not quite as bad as I was with some of my backlog. I finished Xenogears 10 years after I started it, and I think SaGa Frontier 2 was 8 years. I’ve got a Dragon Quarter save that’s halfway through but hasn’t been touched in about 5 years. I even have a copy of Suikoden Tactics I bought the day of release, still in plastic. Ah well.
I’m starting to appreciate the shorter games too, and games that are predominately multiplayer. I can just pick them up and play them whenever I want. Still, RPGs are pretty much my genre, and there’s a few I really want to complete.
Btw, Vesperia is very good, you should definitely work on finishing it.
According to the infographic here, YouTube is up to 35 hours every minute now. Mindboggling.