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When you Can’t Find Anything you want to Watch or Read — 12 Comments

  1. This happens to me on a fairly regular basis. I have ADHD so sometimes my brain just isn’t in the right mindset to enjoy a new show (or any show) and everything is frustrating and not fun. Honestly, the best thing to do then is for me to either admit I’m too tired to concentrate and go to sleep, or get up and go for a run or something active. I also just generally find it difficult to find shows I really like; perhaps because I get frustrated at not understanding what’s going on. Jdramas are better than anime for this I find – probably because there’s more acting and scene cues to pay attention to – but they’re also harder to find streaming (crunchyroll has a very small set of them).

    • Yeah, it’s best to choose a time when you are more likely to be open to new shows, and focus your searching then.

      And I agree that it is easier to find J-dramas that you’ll understand over anime (anime for the most part is inherently harder)

      • It’s worth highlighting that I think, because I think I assumed that since so many anime are produced for older kids/younger teens, they’d be easier to understand than dramas which are usually for/about adults.

        Not so, apparently (unless you end up in a legal drama or something).

    • Viki is the only other site I know of that has legal Jdramas. Not a huge set, and there’s some overlap with Crunchyroll, but it is another option.

    • I do the same except go on a walk! It happens fairly often that literally nothing appeals to me, whether japanese related or not, and whenever I feel like that I go for a walk and after 30 minutes – 2 hours I usually find something that I want to do!

  2. I’m not sure if this is quite the same phenomena you’re describing, but I find my tolerance for watching and listening to material I don’t understand varies widely over fairly short timescales. Some days I can ease myself into something where the voices and/or imagery are pleasant, other days it all just gives me a headache. For the most part I haven’t found a better solution than “wait it out.” Although the one bit of advice I might offer is to check out forms of media you haven’t before, things like drama CDs, audio books… and games. Right now I’m obsessed with a mobile game that, although it’s a rhythm game at the core, has a lot of text all of which is fully voiced.

    • What’s the name of the game? I love rhythm games and if Japanese is involved then I can give myself permission to play!

      • “Girls Band Party” (https://bang-dream.bushimo.jp/), it’s part of the “BanG Dream!” multimedia project which also includes an anime, CDs, live concerts, a novel, a couple of manga series, etc. The “Love Live” and “iDOLM@STER” franchises — both of which I love — have similar games which I always resisted for fear they would consume all my free time, but if they also have embedded stories with ample amounts of text I might reconsider!

    • It’s a similar phenomenon, because the same outside factors (tired, fatigue, frustration) can lower your understanding, and make it less likely you are going to enjoy whatever you are sampling.

      You bring up a good point though, that sometimes it’s because you are singling your search too much to one type of material, and the freshness of another can make a difference in sparking interest.

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