Those of you who know me know that I’m certainly a fan of anime simulcasts, since they’ve made anime accessible for many more people around the world. One aspect of the viewing process, though, is learning about and adapting to each outlet’s specific aspects and quirks. Funimation has primarily done simul-dubs as of late, meaning there’s a slight delay in the episodes that they’ve chosen for that process (I’m frankly surprised that there’s not more of a delay – they certainly have the process optimized at this point). HIDIVE’s player has a few quirks (I wish I could figure out how to make it stop defaulting to Portuguese subtitles every time I log in!) and the way it’s set up makes it a bit more difficult to take good screen captures. Amazon Prime doesn’t have a great way to access their anime in one place – you have to know what series you’re looking for ahead of time and search for it. It’s an interesting process learning how to adapt and keep track of your watch list if, like me, you’re watching anime at many of these sites at one time.
The same is true for Netflix, which, for us United States fans anyway, sometimes waits to drop entire series (or sometimes even just single cours) until its broadcast complete. This is great if you’re a binge-watcher and don’t necessarily care how timely your viewings are. It’s also nice if you prefer dubs – often the series in question has been already dubbed into multiple languages once it arrives on the scene, so viewers don’t have to wait. I have a review “system” I like to work with, though, and when anime series that are, say, listed for the Spring season don’t end up on US Netflix until early Summer, it bungles things up for me. I’m a person who desires order and regularity, so my anxieties start to flare up when that isn’t possible.
This is obviously my own problem to work through, especially since Netflix seems well aware of what works for them and their success. What I’ve decided to do is to put these episodes into a separate category – rather than stress about including them in the season in which they’d be broadcast in Japan, I’ll just review them as they arrive (or, as I have the time, as will be the case with a few upcoming episode impressions). When it comes to any future end-of-year “best of” lists, then their season might become important for organizational purposes. Ultimately, though, I think the best thing for my sanity is to just ignore the “season” altogether and treat these all as special cases.
Thanks again for your patience, and stay tuned for a few of these Netflix episode impressions to pop up over the next couple of days! The goal is to finish writing them before the Winter 2019 anime season gets into full swing this weekend – wish me luck!