Shows you love . . . but cannot rewatch

[ryverstar]

Have you ever watched an anime that you really liked and can't recommend enough to others who have not yet seen it, but find that you are just unable to sit down and rewatch? I am not refering to shows you see once and don't intend to see again. I mean shows you try to watch a second time and just can't for whatever reason.

Earlier this summer I rented Hell Girl. I loved this show. I could not wait for season 2 to be licensed. IMHO the stories were excellent, well written, and had quite a few twists I did not remotely expect. I have tried to get several friends of mine who are marginal anime fans but big horror fans to give this a rental (my friends do not purchase much). Recently when IFC added Hell Girl to their Friday night lineup, the DVR could not be programmed fast enough. I watched the first 3 episodes, but skipped the 4th (only one I did not like). When I got to the 5th episode I just erased it and took it out of the DVR scheduler. It creeped me out so much it was unwatchable. I still highly recommend Hell Girl, it will just be a very long time before I even attempt to think about watching it again.

Any similar experiences?

[ArcticMech]

Now and Then, Here and There immediately jumps to mind. But that's usually the case for most anything that's really well done but deals with depressing subject matter.

[Just Passing Through]

With me, that would be Barefoot Gen. Just too traumatic to watch again.

[Ashyukun]

Now and Then, Here and There immediately jumps to mind. But that's usually the case for most anything that's really well done but deals with depressing subject matter.
Yeah... I'm the same way with Figure 17. Since it's a really good show that very few people have actually ever seen I've long wanted to make an AMV using it to show it off a bit... but I'm afraid I'd have a hard time editing it together for tearing up constantly when going through the footage...

[JackW]

I'm very careful about rewatching my most favourite shows, for the simple reason that I don't want them to become stale. They are a treat, to be rationed carefully. :)

[something]

This happens to a lot of shows. I agree about Jigoku Shoujo - good show, still like it, gladly bought the singles. But I don't see any real need to rewatch it. Same with Futakomori, which I'd also buy in singles.

As I've said many times around here, rewatchability is not one of my be-all end-all criteria. If it's there, that's awesome, and it adds a lot - this is why Touka Gettan kept climbing higher up my most wanted list every time I went back to it, and why it's now sitting quite nicely in my top 10.

But if it's not there that doesn't mean the show was a failure. I don't need to watch a show twice to declare it a success. ef ~a tale of memories ~, for example, is one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen, but the only rewatch I gave it was right before I watched the last ep for the first time. I don't know that I'll rewatch it again for a few years, if that. I don't consider this a problem.

Probably the best examples are Serial Experiments: Lain and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Both were top 5 shows, Lain was my first #1 show and stayed there for years. But there's no way I could rewatch either nowadays. Even though I still consider them two of the best shows, they've totally slipped out of my top 10 and I'll probably never watch them again.

[Shiroi Hane]

Well, there are a couple of shows that I saw fansubbed, imported the box sets in TRSI sales as no UK release was forthcoming, and never gotten around to completing (or in some cases even starting) to watch them. I've never watched more than one or two of my Snow Fairy Sugar DVDs, only got halfway through Stellvia and only watched a few CCS DVDs (although I watched that one all the way through on my old accidental bootlegs at least twice). I have no good reason why not, although at the moment waching R1 DVDs on my main monitor requires swapping HDMI cables with my PS3 which is a hassle.
Oh, there's alsos Saikano - bought the UK Box set, started watching it, remembered how depressing it was and never finished.

[Ty]

Definitely have to agree with something about Lain. I can't put my finger on why that show is hard to re-watch, but it is. I probably will never watch Grave of the Fireflies again despite having the DVD. It wan't too hard to watch, but once you've taken the story in once there's no need to depress yourself again really. Aside from that I rarely come across a show I liked enough to watch once that I had trouble watching a second time. Different shows for different moods of course so it can take a long time to get back to some of them.

[Collectonian]

Only two come to mind: Grave of the Fireflies - just hurts too much to watch. Also, Saikano...awesome the first time, but I've never been able to rewatch it, nor even read the manga all the way through, so finally sold both off.

[littleharlock]

For me MONSTER falls into that category. Bought all five DVD Box sets as they came out, watched them all as they arrived here...but up to to now I haven't gone back rewatching the series even once yet. For a huge part I blame that on that you simply can't rewatch it without proper time to do so. At least I failed to find the time required to get this series rewatched in one go and it's definitely not the kind of show you can pick out single episodes for independant viewing either (due to the ongoing plotline which often directly takes on events and brings up characters introduced or which faced development during previous parts of the story). Hence whenever I feel like watching some Urasawa Anime, I stick with the (time-wise quite intensive though as well) compilation "OVA" contained on the Premium Disc for this series. It's a shame I know, as I do consider MONSTER to be a mighty fine Anime (if not one of the best that Madhouse crafted an adaption of).

[Classical]

The only show that I can think of that I may not rewatch anytime soon (though I loved it) is Cardcaptor Sakura. Honestly, the length (70 episodes plus two movies) is a bit daunting. Still, as time passes I may give it another go.

[Njr Scrawl]

I am going through a family bereavement at the moment, & there are many shows just too painful to re-watch, which I would really like to, including KOR at present.

Bubblegum Crisis, Gunbuster, Rurouni Kenshin, Maison Ikkoku, Sailor Moon, Tenchi OVAs, Gokusen, Urusei Yatsura, Crying Freeman, Blood+, Oh! My Goddess, Noir...all are unwatchable at present.

Strangely Evangelion is OK, maybe because it is so tragic itself.

Luckily I have a huge backlog of completely unwatched shows & Yawara, Aria, AMG TV, Cardcaptor Sakura, Twelve Kingdoms, Saiunoko, Stellvia are my "new" keystones.

[Mateo_home]

For me I don't think I could rewatch Paranoia Agent. It had a great mystery to it, but I just can't bring myself to watch it again. Add Elfen Lied to that list. Not because it was dark, but because it was a little too bloody.

And since I've seen it mentioned, I need to give CardCaptor Sakura another rewatch sometime soon. It's been a few years since then.:P

[Lego]

Onegai Teacher for me. A good show, I own it on DVD yet I can't sit through most of it aside from the Winter music video :sweat:

[Herron]

The only show that I can think of that I may not rewatch anytime soon (though I loved it) is Cardcaptor Sakura. Honestly, the length (70 episodes plus two movies) is a bit daunting. Still, as time passes I may give it another go.

This would probably be the series I'd list too. I actually just tried to rewatch it a week or two ago, got through the first episode and stopped... :sweat:
I don't know why I just wasn't in to it.

[aemartell]

The first one that comes to mind is Chrono Crusade. I wouldn't say that it's one of my top ten, but I did enjoy the show a lot. And it's been sitting on my shelf ever since I first watched it. The thought of popping it back in the DVD player for a second go-through has never once occurred to me. My eyes just skim right over it when I'm looking for choices. I don't know that I'll ever want to relive the emotional experience that the last episodes gave me, and I don't think that time will ever soften my response. Heck, I knew the ending going in, and I still cried like a baby.

The second would be Koi Kaze. An absolutely beautiful show, with some of the most stunningly subtle symbolism that I've ever seen in an anime (the coffee! the coffee!), but it's another show I just don't want to see again--at least not at the moment. I think that's the effect that the anime, on the whole, has; I found myself rooting for them despite it all, yet I was disturbed that I had that sort of reaction. Thinking about it now, I want to re-watch it, but I just can't bring myself to go get it off the shelf.

And on a completely different note, The Twelve Kingdoms. Loved the show to pieces; it was fantastic high fantasy with great character development and a well-developed world. Yet the episodes lulled me into sleep. I couldn't sit anywhere comfortable and watch the show, or I was out before the the end credits. Strangely enough, I am glued to the novels, and have read the first two in one sitting each.

[ZenAmako]

For some reason, I always watch the most depressing anime again and again. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Windaria (especially the bridge scene near the end). I usually skip to the end of the second Yamato movie. I "enjoyed" the endings to Grave of the Fireflies, the X movie and Saikano. A certain someone's shocking death in the last episode of Giant Robo is another one I like to rewatch. >:) I think I just like extremely emotional scenes in anime. Another good one to rewatch (to me) is Asuka's battle against the prototype Evas in The End of Evangelion. It's just so visceral.

As for an anime I like but can't rewatch... Probably something with too much filler between the good stuff. I would get impatient trying to rewatch Fushigi Yugi; I'd want to skip right to episode 33 and beyond. :)

[Digital Boy]

Urusei Yatsura, but only because it is 200 episode, 11 OAVs, and 6 movies

[Richard J.]

There are no shows I love that I can't rewatch at some point but I've found that the longer a show is, the harder it is to do a rewatch. For some reason, I can't seem to finish a rewatch of Fullmetal Alchemist despite having started rewatching it about 3 times now.

[Kouji Tamino]

Chrono Crusade here, too. Good grief, those last couple of episodes are just draining.

[mk2000]

Now and Then, Here and There immediately jumps to mind. But that's usually the case for most anything that's really well done but deals with depressing subject matter.

Now and Then, Here and There as well.
Critically incredible but so sad to watch. I've never been a big fan of trapped-in-post-apocalyptic-alternate-future-world series. Too depressing and such a sense of hopeless desperation.

Grave of the Fireflies
Nobody really helped them. What a bunch of selfish A-holes.
Such a sad story.

[Suwako Moriya]

The longer the series is the harder it can be to do a full re-watch. Anime that relies on suspense and horror can also be hard to re-watch. Simply because you only want to hear the scream once. Beyond that I can't think of any specific examples. It's more time constraints than anything else for me.

[Serial Experiments Nobue]

The longer the series is the harder it can be to do a full re-watch. [...] It's more time constraints than anything else for me.

Exactly. Especially with watching new additions to my collection before they gather too much dust in my backlog, it gets really difficult to find a place to fit in rewatches, especially for longer shows. It's been close to five years since I have watched Gundam Wing (my first series) or any of Sailor Moon. I've only watched Cardcaptor Sakura once, and that was three years ago. I want to rewatch all of them again, but fitting them in my viewing cycle is difficult when my collection continues to grow by the month.

The one content-based reluctance to rewatch situation I can think of is Grave of the Fireflies. It's an excellent film, no argument there. I can see why it debuted with Totoro. You'd need to watch the latter just to remind yourself that there's reason to be happy in this world after all.