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How do you find new anime to watch?
Not necessarily new, could be old but you simply haven't watched before.
Simply curious about everyone's habits. Like for me, I know about the dedicated databases but in practice, I just stumble upon whatever the algorithm decides to show and if the art looks eye-catching I'll give it a shot.
-My friends keep up with the new releases and share mini reviews
-YouTube, either creators or trailers.
-Our "what anime are you watching?" weekly topic
-Other work from a studio that made something I liked
-inspirations for something I liked
-MAL lists
-popular stuff on <redacted torrent site>
-pull from a wikipedia rabbit hole
Very diverse, it didn't occur to me that torrent sites could be a source of recommendations. Reading the weekly topics also made me realize that people here has quite a broad span of interest despite our small number, which is nice.
What sort of rabbit holes you fall into?
Internet memes mostly 🤣
I have this childish thing where I hate being suggested stuff by people. Especially if it's something popular that I don't already care about. It turns me off. Memes feel a bit more of a natural discovery even if driven by an algorithm.
That's not to say I watch everything suggested by a meme. Things will just catch my interest. Whether it was a picture/caption meme on reddit or my insta algorithm or a YT short. Occasionally one will interest me and I'll check it out.
Sometimes I just read descriptions on CR and will watch based on that. Like with Frieren last year. Sometimes I pick randomly and it works out like Apothecary diaries. Those are popular choices obviously, but point is no one told me to watch them lol.
Lately some trailers for new upcoming animes catch my attention and I watch that.
Meme is the engine of culture. I also learned about Frieren because of that looking up meme heh.
Oddly enough I often find new but lesser-known manga to read from all the "what is this from?" ask posts on r/manga, because the asked images are very striking. Sometimes the more interesting reccomendations come from when they're unintended.
When I got back into watching, I just hung around /r/anime and whenever someone mentioned a title I hadn't heard of before I looked it up and added it to my backlog if it looked interesting. After doing that for a decade it's rare to see someone else mention an anime that's new to me outside of airing/upcoming releases, though even if I was just relying on that I'd have plenty to watch even now given just how big my backlog was. Still, at some point I became a database gremlin and began regularly combing through MyAnimeList, Anilist, and aniDB for things that no one talked about and started watching some of those. Usually they're forgotten over time for good reason, but there are some things here and there that I truly enjoy. I also watch anime films and OVAs with a friend on a regular basis and we often go for some of the most obscure (usually old) things we can find that have an interesting description. They also watch airing shows so we sometimes recommend each other new things that we didn't pick up on our own.
As for specifically what to watch next, picking up nearly every new romance anime that comes out plus a few others that look interesting each season gives me more than enough since that's currently more than a dozen new series every three months, but even beyond that I've taken to making bingo boards at the start of the year for 2025 (romance anime that aired in 1995, 2005, and 2015) and now 2026 (romance anime that I previously started and dropped for whatever reason). Previously I had more general themes and picked something that generally fit them as I went through the year without having a predefined target list, like a film a week on average or anime from 2000 or earlier.
Is that a healthy way to go about picking new anime? Absolutely not. Am I having fun with it anyway? Most of the time, yes.
Sounds like you're very into collecting and organizing media haha. Having friends to watch together make it more enjoyable yeah. That bingo idea seems like fun, is it something you play with your friends too?
I have lists upon lists, the tags column on MAL is useful for me in that regard. The board idea is just something I've seen other people do for a while, basically another way of making a shortlist for a year; my friends aren't that obsessive.
Though that also just reminded me of several other ways of getting into new anime for me that I haven't done much of in recent years: community events.
One is joining a swap/secret Santa event where you get to anonymously recommend anime to someone and another person gets to do the same for you. I've had mixed results there but it's a good way to make me watch something I wouldn't necessarily get to soon on my own.
Similarly I used to regularly do contracts which is more of a direct swap with one other person, usually because I want to shill one specific series to other people and get something of equal length in return from anyone willing to take me up on it.
And the third is group discussions of non-airing series along the lines of an episodic book club (called rewatches on /r/anime), which I've used to see dozens of series over the years. That includes long ones for bigger franchises with hundreds of episodes that I wouldn't normally bother with like Gundam and Naruto, which ended up being a great bonding experience spanning a year or more for the smaller number of people that stuck through the whole thing.
Oh yeah I miss those community watchalong threads on r/anime too. I noticed it's been tried here in the past but not much success, which is understandable I suppose since this group is small.
Wonder if there's a way to adapt somehow. The current weekly threads seem more fit for talking about general impressions. Dedicated threads tends to produce more involved discussions.
For new stuff, I check what's coming out next season on Myanimelist and see if there's anything that seems interesting to me. There's also a few anime youtubers that I watch from time to time whose tastes align pretty well with mine, so if they put out a video recommending something I'm not already watching, I'll probably give that a watch too. Shoutout to Demolition D, I know he basically quit uploading years ago but he got me to watch Ping Pong and I will always be grateful to him for that. Shame we'll never get that Angel's Egg review though.
Nice, I sometimes watch Glass Reflection, his opinions don't always align with me but he stays quite on top of new releases so I find it good reference.
I like being in on the jokes and references so I if I like an anime I will use my existing knowledge of a works influences as well as its Shoutout page on tvtropes.org example as a jumping off point to explore other media. I treat it as a sort of mapping project. For particularly reference dense work like the above example this can take a long time but I enjoy the process of gaining a more comprehensive view of a work.
That's a very research-oriented approach haha. Did you have any surprising discovery from the digs?
YouTuber Gigguk* puts out a season preview that's well edited and funny. My husband and I watch them and discuss which ones seem interesting to us, then we'll give the top contender an episode or two and see how we feel.
(Probably misspelled. My house is under huge storm and without power right now, I'll correct with link later)
I exist within nerd spaces, mostly the discords of friends and weird youtube channels, until I hear whispers of a genre-defining work on the horizon, and only then do I give it a look. If you demand a lot of anime, it's not a great approach, but if you're okay with only seeing a new anime once every couple years, you get the cream of the crop for very low effort.
I'll download any anime that really interest me, either because its recommended by fans of my favorite series, or I just randomly encounter it on the internet.
And then anywhere from 1 week to 10 years later, I'll get around to watching it. Maybe.
Mother's Basement!
I'm not in a rush to join the new seasons so I eagerly await Mother's Basements "Ones to Watch Season/Year".
Unlike most other YouTubers, Geoff waits until he has seen at least one or more episodes per show of the season before making the seasonal ones to watch. I tend to wait for those YT releases and then pick up what he's putting down.
I appreciate that he's mature in his approach while also recognizing (and sometimes celebrating) the idiosyncrasies and occasional outright weird anime things that pop into existence. His maturity towards the topic is expressed in the normal paced video and script without leaning into crazy quick edits.
Additionally he releases the "Hottest Trash of the Season" videos that lean into the weird that only anime can offer.
With a similar approach as the regular show, he assesses this season's strange, trashy, or outright trash shows and manages to pull some genuinely good shows from the dregs you might have otherwise overlooked if you looked at the synopsis or tags alone.
Keep in mind that while trashy has a different meaning than trash, he nevertheless finds both in equal measure.
These videos are presented with a knowing smile that yeah, anime is super trashy at times. Sometimes though, trashy is what you want. You can't always be in the mood for the Michelin star restaurants, sometimes the roadside mystery meat burger hits a much better spot. I've pulled some genuine hits out of the bins at Chez Garbà ge even if that means you have to look beyond the "insert bad anime trope" from time to time.
I don't really check out Geoff's videos these days but I do enjoy his podcast Quest for the Best with Tristan (Glass Reflection that others have mentioned) and Miles (former Crunchyroll staff and now marketing/analytics consulting in the industry). Aside from regularly talking about what they're enjoying from airing shows, I like the discussions they have about the state of the industry and specific anime even if my own preferences relative to the three of them are something like this meme, and I do occasionally pick out new things to watch from what they talk about.
Browse Crunchyroll, Netflix & Hidive. I use a filtered search if it allows it, and search by release date so I can avoid watching an unfinished season. Though that gets slim, at some point you've watched everything interesting except the stuff still being released or an occasional new acquisition.
I'll also look at a list on one of those free sites and watch whatever names sound interesting.
Sometimes I'll run across someone's post with screenshots (or memes) that look interesting and watch those.
We look at anichart at the beginning of the season, with mixed results. I will randomly watch something I hear about that seems interesting. And more formally, once in a blue moon, I just go down MAL's list of top animes (way down) until I hit something well reviewed that I've missed.
I have a couple of friends who regularly watch anime. While our tastes aren't exactly the same, there's enough overlap. So their recommendations are usually pretty solid.
Just perusing Crunchyroll is another method. Sometimes a thumbnail will catch my eye, so I'll give it a go. I won't always watch all of it, but other times I will. Like I'm watching through Classroom of the Elite just by seeing it on CR.
Lastly, trailers/teasers on YouTube have been pretty fruitful. I think I found Gnosis, Nippon Sangoku, and Witch Hat Atelier that way. Also the latest Ghost in the Shell series (easily my favorite IP). They just showed up on my recommendations and they looked cool. The World is Dancing is another that I'd like to watch, that I found through YouTube. I'll also include the Trash Taste boys here. I don't run out and watch that many of the shows they talk about, but I do keep some of those shows on my mental "I should watch that someday" list.