I don't really think about this. I just watch stuff I'm interested in and my list grows, but I don't care about the 'real' numbers. I watch ton of shorts because I find them interesting, I don't see why they should not count. Same for movies and independent OVAs. The only thing I really see as 'number farming' are the countless short specials, picture dramas and similar stuff belonging to bigger franchises. I tend to watch those for completionism and also because it never hurts to watch characters you like in a different situation than usual.
But I can always go to MALGraph and look at my overall distribution to see how many TV Series, how many movies etc... I've seen. And despite how much shorts and specials and music videos I've been watching, TV Series still lead followed by movies. I'd say those are the two most uncontroversial options that everyone can agree on being 'legit'.
To answer some of the questions:
Do you think of short movie series like Kara no Kyoukai and Towa no Quon as many films or do you treat them the same way you would a TV series? What do you think of longer non-TV anime like LoGH, Kiss x Sis, Flag, and Magic Kaito?
I think of them as multiple movies, just like I think of star wars or harry potter as multiple movies. Just because it was clear from the start that there will be more than one doesn't mean they aren't still a bunch of movies that happen to be sequels of each other.
I generall mostly see either series, or movies. Whether something aired on TV or as an OVA doesn't matter to me as long as it's their own series with more than 1 episodes which is not just a special of some existing franchise. Which leads us to the third type, specials belonging to an existing franchise. And lastly there are shorts/music videos (which I also group together). That makes 4 main categories I group anime in although they don't correspond to any of the pre-set types. 'movies' can be either OVAs or Specials, Series can be OVAs, Specials can be OVAs or ONAs, and shorts can be specials, movies or ONAs when you look at the DB. For me grouping them based on a mixture of episode length, overall number of episodes and independence from existing franchises makes more sense tho. |