How Many Re-watches Is Too Many?

Comander-07 said:
I dont think anime I rewatch multiple times will ever get boring for me, but I would argue aside from 2 or 3 philosophic anime everything we do here is a massive waste of time. But thats why we are on MAL.

But I guess one a year in the long run is pretty sustainable. Depending on your amount of anime you watch you will have had enough input to justify a rewatch. Things you watched for the first time can be rewatched multiple times in the same year, happened for me with Jojo.

So I would say 100.000 times would be a bit much, because thats basically your entire life.

MadHobbit2 said:
No amount of rewatches is ever too much as long as you still enjoy it. I've watched Steins;Gate 43 times because I love it so much and it never gets boring for me. Planning a 44th rewatch soon too lol.

MadHobbit2 said:
No amount of rewatches is ever too much as long as you still enjoy it. I've watched Steins;Gate 43 times because I love it so much and it never gets boring for me. Planning a 44th rewatch soon too lol.

84DaysWithout said:
No such thing to me. I enjoy the process of re-affirming why my favorites are my favorites regardless of how my preferences change over time.

Zerxeez_ said:
I have re-watched LoGH 100 times and I do not plan to stop.

AngryCactus said:


I am somewhat skeptical of that claim

zagzee said:
aaaaa

As am I. You seriously watched LoGH 100 times? Isn't it 110 episodes?

AngryCactus said:


As am I. You seriously watched LoGH 100 times? Isn't it 110 episodes?

AngryCactus said:


Yeah, shows that are really dense with information or are subtle and that reward the viewer for reading between the lines definitely have the most longevity. I'd give FLCL as an example, but some people might argue that it is just intentionally confusing. Probably another reason I like to rewatch things so much is because I have a sewer drain for a memory.

Comander-07 said:
It doesnt even need to be subtile or anything, I think I rewatched Mirai Nikki the most. Partially because its one of the first anime I had digitally so I could watch it even without internet.

AngryCactus said:


Impressive. Most Impressive. The only thing I've ever watched that many times would be a vine. What draws you to Steins; Gate the most?

AngryCactus said:
I watch Harry Potter 1 every Christmas since it came out in 2001, which comes out to probably 17 times. Still enjoy it.

MadHobbit2 said:


The best thing about Steins Gate is how elegantly it deconstructs the notion of determinism within the framework of a story-driven character study. The idea of a choice between two equal but different outcomes, either of which we could have taken, is mostly unrealistic. This is because we don't care about most things equally. For example, there's a sort of unspoken priority in most people's minds of who/what you would save in a burning building and in what order.

But Steins;Gate does present us with that scenario: the choice between the lives of Mayuri and Kurisu, two people Okabe cares about deeply. Instead of making the hard choice, like he had in the past, when Okabe was presented with two equally bad options, he simply couldn't make a decision. In the end, Kurisu had to make the decision for him, since she saw things from a different perspective. Okabe prioritized both Mayuri's and Kurisu's happiness, making it a perfect zero-sum scenario, whereas Kurisu prioritized Okabe's and Mayuri's happiness, which would be fulfilled much more by her own death than Mayuri's. Presented with the same scenario, Kurisu was free to actually make her decision.

And that might be the key to free will. A choice is just the ability to cause one of multiple possible outcomes, and maybe we could consider free will as getting to use one's own unique priority list to make a decision, instead of being forced onto one outcome by an outside force. In that sense, Okabe does exert free will: he had options that would have fulfilled some or most of his priorities, and he chose between them, instead of being railroaded down that path. Nobody was forcing their decisions onto him. The tangled mess of if-statements and priorities that was Okabe's brain made those decisions on its own.

And this is barely scratching the surface. The world of Steins;Gate itself is extremely well-constructed. Stories involving time travel should naturally get a little bit of creative leeway regarding paradoxes and plot holes, but one thing I've always loved about the Steins;Gate franchise is that it locks the sci-fi concepts into concrete bounds that allow the narrative to flow naturally without bogging the viewer down in abstract theory and semantics. It's certainly fictitious on many levels, but the way it's presented gives a level of believably to the story without sacrificing complexity.

There's a bunch of other stuff I love about it too, like the lack of "anime moments", the well-developed cast of characters, the comedic timing being on-point, the animation style and music choice, etc. I could basically go on forever about how much I love the show, and I'll truly never get tired of watching it.

Arkab said:
I'm gonna be extremist here and say: there's no such number. When you like/love something... you like/love that something. If you happen to rewatch it at any additional time and you find that you are not enjoying it...to me you really didn't like it/love it in the first place.



Lol it's amazing how so many people do that. That movie, along with Home Alone (from Chris Columbus too), are just the perfect movies to watch that time of the year. They just screeeam Christmas XD.

AngryCactus said:


I would be surprised if you felt as strongly about the second season. How does it stack up in your opinion?

Aldnox said:
You don't need to watch explicitly philosophical anime to learn something from anime.
Also I'd argue everything is a waste of time since that's just how time works and we're all going to die regardless of what we do.

MadHobbit2 said:


Not gonna lie, at first I was stoked as hell when I started watching Zero. But discounting the nostalgia rush I got from seeing my favorite characters back in action once again, I've come to realize that it's a rather disappointing spin-off (and here I use "spin-off" instead of "second season" because second season implies it's a continuation of the first, which Zero is not; rather, Zero takes place in an alternate timeline completely separate from the original and only loosely follows the original's plot).

I'll run down a few of my gripes with Zero here:

1. Drama feels forced and often out of step with the plot. A lot of superficial elements are introduced and then discarded without being expanded upon, so the tension the show tries to create often falls flat. For example Okabe seeing a therapist, Daru's part-time hacking job, or that whole episode about the song Mayuri sings. In the original Steins;Gate, everything had a point, and elements of character development were never introduced lightly. Everything was expanded upon and, later, somehow woven into the story. Zero does not do this, and a lot of threads are left dangling, leaving the viewer to question whether they even mattered.

2. Remember when I previously mentioned "anime moments"? And how there were literally NONE of them in the original Steins;Gate? Well, Zero has them in spades. Note that, when I refer to "anime moments", I specifically mean actions or dialogue that reinforce common tropes and stereotypes within the anime medium. Things like overly exaggerated facial expressions, rapid body movements accompanied by sound effects, distorted character sprites displayed on striated backgrounds.......the original Steins;Gate had none of this whatsoever, and I absolutely loved it for that. But Zero does these things numerous times, and it makes me feel like the creators were trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator by throwing in these cliche scenes that weebs could recognize as uniquely "anime". This isn't even mentioning all the loli jokes surrounding Maho's character, which are in poor taste at the best of times, and completely unnecessary and cringy at the worst.

3. Altered character designs. Not talking about personalities here, but their physical appearances. Nothing much more to say here; all you have to do is look at the bust sizes of the female characters in Steins;Gate, them compare them to the bust sizes in Zero. Again, trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

4. Kagari's character in general pissed me off. It's bad enough that her existence itself was literally just for fanservice and Kurisu-nostalgia bait, but she contributed almost nothing to the story, and actually serves to slow the plot down considerably, like they were trying to stretch out the runtime or something. The first few episodes with her were literally 90% cutesy yuri scenes with Mayuri. And later on, after the whole mind-control shit kicks in, she's rarely seen at all until the last episode where she's practically a Deus Ex Machina to wrap the plot up nicely.

5. Inconsistencies in the plot require the viewer to suspend disbelief much more than in the original. At least Steins;Gate tried to cover its sci-fi with actual science. Zero just goes "Oh yeah, the time machine can turn invisible, cuz why not?" or "Kagari's love for Mayrui is so strong that she can survive enough gunfire to bring down a hundred people; also she can literally rip people's heads off with just her bare hands". This kind of shit isn't what Steins;Gate is about.

Overall, Zero left a bad taste in my mouth, and it goes without saying that a single viewing is enough. It's a travesty that a show that bad can even be related to a masterpiece like Steins;Gate.