The title is a bit dramatic, since I’m still technically a fan of anime — I just don’t watch nearly as much as I used to. Anime went from being a huge part of my life to barely featuring at all.
I thought I’d outline exactly what happened and how I got here, along with the things that shaped my initial love for the medium. My goal is to create a kind of timeline, showing why I liked anime so much, and how that love faded. Hopefully, some of you can see yourselves in this journey or recognize patterns that might explain why you’ve drifted away from it too.
Someone once told me that anime fans move in cycles. A person discovers the medium, dives deep, consumes everything they can — then eventually moves on. In my arrogant youth, I thought that would never be me. I thought I was different.
Early anime
Being a child of the 90s, the first exposure I got to anime was children’s anime in the form of Pokemon, Beyblade, and Digimon along with Spirited Away, but more on that later. Funnily enough, I always liked Digimon way more than Pokemon. I thought it treated the audience (kids) with a little more respect. The themes were a bit darker and the villains were more evil. You are not watching Pokemon and thinking team rocket is going to win.
Later I would get into Yugioh both the anime and the card game. I use to play with other kids at my school.
I used to watch a lot of cartoons and the anime kind of blended together. I did not think of the anime as something else. I did notice how the eyes were different and some of the jokes were told differently, but as a kid I did not reflect on where the cartoons on the TV came from, I just watched them.
That is until I saw Spirited Away in theaters. The film moved me a lot back then and still does to this day. Having seen it while at the same age as Chihiro, I was frightened to death about the whole situation. Being in a hostile new environment with your parents turned to pigs scared me a lot along with zero face. I was scared of the film. It felt different. It did not protect kids the same way Western cartoons did. I was convinced I did not like it. However, it kept lingering in the back of my mind. The film never let me go.
The Gateway
Through my growing love of film, I ended up consuming quite a few anime movies. I thought they were superior to most Western animated films, which seemed more focused on appealing to children. I loved animation as an art form, especially the hand-drawn style you saw in Ghibli films and Ghost in the Shell. At the time, Western animation had mostly shifted to digital, and it just didn’t hit the same way.
One day, I was watching a video essay about Princess Mononoke that I really enjoyed. I wish I could remember who made it, since this was years ago, but I ended up checking out more of their content. One of the videos was about Death Note. I had heard the name before, but after watching that breakdown, I knew I had to give it a try.
I also knew this was a commitment. I had a feeling that once I dipped my toes in, I wouldn’t stop.
Death Note marked the beginning of my anime fandom. It opened the floodgates. After that, I had to watch more, but where do you even start? At the time, almost no one talked about anime online. It was still very much a niche thing. I found a few lists of “must-watch anime” and started working through them.
That’s when I discovered the YouTube channel Glass Reflection, which was probably the first anituber most people came across back then. I watched a ton of his videos and eventually found out he had a podcast called Potaku, which I listened to religiously.
In the beginning, I wanted to build a strong foundation. I watched what people called the classics — Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Code Geass, and others. None of my friends watched anime. In fact, there was still a pretty heavy social stigma around it at the time. So having podcasts and YouTubers talk about anime became essential to my enjoyment.
At some point, I realized the conversations about anime were starting to feel more exciting than watching anime itself.
The First Shift
As time went on, more people began getting into anime, and its presence on YouTube grew. New channels started popping up, and I started listening to the Anipod podcast, which featured anitubers like RCAnime and Kevin Nyaa. Through them, I discovered Animeeveryday, a Scottish YouTuber I liked quite a bit at the time.
Back then, most anime content was just generic reviews. Nobody had much depth or insight — but how could they? No one was really practiced in talking about anime. The broader discourse hadn’t been built yet. Unlike the film world, which has a long-standing tradition of respected criticism, anime had no equivalent. The only people creating content were super fans.
In 2012, the first big paradigm shift happened in my anime fandom.
That year, Sword Art Online (SAO) was on everybody’s lips. It was the new big thing, and the hype was massive. Everyone was talking about it. Even the Podtaku guys, though they weren’t huge fans, gave it some credit. Glass Reflection gave it a 7.5 at the time, which in hindsight feels extremely generous.
Then came the now-infamous Digibro.
Digibro was a strange figure online, presenting as a self-aware, unapologetic degenerate otaku. But regardless of persona, he was, at the time, undoubtedly the GOAT of anitube. He made a long, in-depth video critiquing SAO, tearing it apart point by point, exposing its flaws through thoughtful analysis. It wasn’t a rant. It was critique.
That video changed everything for me — and arguably for the community at large.
First, it introduced the idea that just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s good. SAO wasn’t some misunderstood masterpiece. It might actually be bad. And if most reviewers weren’t willing to say it — if they were trying to stay positive to avoid backlash — then who could you trust?
Second, it marked a shift from basic reviews to more serious analysis. Digibro made analytical videos cool. Other creators like Kevin Nyaa, GoatJesus, and Animeeveryday followed suit, switching from reviews to deep dives and essays.
Lastly, it changed SAO’s legacy. Once seen as the next great anime phenomenon, it is now mostly remembered as a generic, mid-tier series with wasted potential.
When the Floodgates Broke
Since I didn’t have any real-life friends who liked anime, I had to find my community online. Anitube became that place. After being introduced to Digibro, I started developing a more refined taste in anime. I became more critical, and I started holding anime to a higher standard.
That period made up the core of my anime fandom. More and more anitubers entered the scene, and the medium grew in popularity. Today, anime feels almost mainstream. At the very least, the old social stigma is gone.
Funnily enough, the growing popularity of anime also marked the beginning of my falling out of love with it. One of the most important aspects of the experience for me wasn’t just watching anime, it was participating in the surrounding discussion. The analysis, the thought, the shared curiosity. That part of the culture has been completely eroded by popularity.
Let me explain.
In an old episode of Podtaku, Glass Reflection mentioned the idea of “tiers” in anime fandom. At the top tier, he placed shows like Cowboy Bebop, the must-watch titles. His point was that there are certain shows you need to have seen in order to fully engage with the medium, or to understand its evolution.
I actually agree with that to some extent.
Imagine a film fan who’s never seen Casablanca, The Godfather, or Citizen Kane. Sure, it’s technically possible to love movies without watching those, but without some historical context, it becomes harder to appreciate the medium as a whole.
Anime, unlike film, never really developed a clear canon. That’s not necessarily a bad thing the idea of a canon comes with its own problems, but it does mean most casual fans aren’t concerned with anime history at all. In the film world, we have critics who actively champion older works and argue for their importance. Because anime lacks that level of professional criticism, there’s no one with authority to keep older shows alive in the conversation.
Some creators like Digibro and Animeeveryday did their best. And for a brief moment, it seemed like they were succeeding.
With the massive rise in popularity, anime shifted its focus almost entirely to what’s airing now. And here lies the problem — too much content, not enough quality. Keeping up with every new release feels like a full-time job and a straight shot to burnout.
Anime is released on a schedule, neatly divided into seasonal drops. Most anime podcasts follow this formula: first impressions, mid-season thoughts, final wrap-ups. Repeat. When is there time to revisit the classics? The shows that actually stuck with people? You can’t. You’re too busy trying to keep up before the next wave buries the last one.
In the anime community, everything moves too fast. That one show you loved from three seasons ago? No one’s talking about it anymore. It’s already ancient history.
This kind of rapid, surface-level consumption is one of the biggest problems in modern media in general. Streaming services are packed with content, and every platform is churning out more by the second. But how much of it is actually good? How much of it changed you? Can you even remember a YouTube Short or TikTok you saw yesterday?
This is the official reason why I fell out of love with anime, but there is a more petty reason and that is the fact that I had to hide my fandom for so long, talking to people who thought anime was that strange tentacle stuff or whatever the fuck people thought it was. Being repeatedly met with “Are you into ‘that stuff’” was difficult and while I did not get bullied at all and my experience was never traumatic in any way, I did feel a small feeling of shame.
To be honest I’m just a tiny bit annoyed that people can enjoy anime without the social backlash, it is petty I know. My problem is also with shallow anime fans who have not seen the good stuff, the classics and any discourse I have with casual fans are no fun to me. I am an extreme person. I get into stuff in a big way, I get deep and into the history, I simply can’t just watch the popular new thing if it offers no value for me other than we all can talk about how we are watching the hot new thing.
Anime is just kinda…Bad
You might call me an elitist and that is fine for a time I did identify as such. Anime is simply not for me anymore and there is a reason for this. I’m old, or at least significantly older than I was. I have seen a lot of anime so I feel compatible competing on this.
Anime is geared toward younger people. The protagonist is mostly young, the story is often spelled out for you with painful examples of exposition. The action scenes in Battle Shonen are all about how mad you can be or how much you can push your power level. Most of all anime takes place in high school a setting I am not interested in, in the slightest. Most drama anime can be resolved with the characters just maturing a bit, romance is full of will they won’t they and the 2 mains never get together before the end, essentially tip-toeing around the interesting part.
I know there are exceptions to each of these examples, but my point is still that anime is way less subtle with overly large expressions. In the beginning, it was fun to see a different cultural way of doing stuff, but I do think anime has reached its endpoint for me. This is the last part of the cycle where people leave the fandom.
The reason is that most people get into anime through classic gateway anime, for me it was Death Notes. They then brought their horizon and consumed a lot of anime. At one point they would have seen everything relevant to them. I like deep mystery and psychological anime, I have already seen Lain, technolyse, and Paranoia Agent. You name it, I do not think new anime is going to come out with the trends we see that can top these shows.
Conclusion
I fell out of love with anime because it changed over time and hey maybe it was me that changed, my sensibility is not really the same as when I first got into anime and the truth is I was just a kid back then, I am an adult now. All the people I respected back then also stopped making anime content. I guess they had the same experience as I did.
There is no reason to dwell on the past, I have to move forward. Anime is in the past now, so I’ll leave these reflections for anybody interested or who might be going through the same.