We’ve all heard it before, I think: Anime fans and people in general have smaller attention spans nowadays. In American movies, individual scenes are significantly shorter than what they were 20-30 years ago.
I have to wonder, how much of an impact has this had on anime? Aside from the aged look of the artwork, is this a possible reason why older shows tend to be neglected? I haven’t bothered with a stopwatch, but just how long or short are individual scenes in theatrical anime films, anyway?
Please tell me, oh anime fans, what do you think of your own attention span, and how it may or may not affect the anime you choose to watch or keep watching.
OGIUE MANIAX 
I don’t blame anime. I blame 4chan.
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It’s true. I’ve got so much stuff grabbing my attention, especially in front of the TV. I’m currently watching Lost, CSI: Miami, Gall Force, Zero no Tsukaima, and THX-1138, all in equal quantities. That doesn’t even count what I watch on my iPhone.
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I think my attention span (and my ability to be patient) has shorten more from the affects of the Internet than Anime or any other media (movies, radio, TV, video games, ect…).
I expect everything in life to be faster and more immediate than ever because of what I can find on-line. Since high speed connections became the norm, even waiting in for such meaningless crap like coffee is a drag, but that’s tempered now because I can pull up the ‘Net on my Blackberry and pacify my impatience with scrolling eye candy.
Our information economy and on demand lives have cut our attention spans shorter than pubic hair. Look at how long the average person stays employed at the same company/business. I believe I read that on average people stay with a company 2-4 years. In my Dads time, that was unheard of.
The wired and our pop morality.
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Side thought, but is this why shows tend to be running on the shorter side now as well, or is this a result of genre shift? A lot of the shows of old (Cardcaptor Sakura, Marmalade Boy, and of course Sailor Moon / Pokemon / DBZ / Eva / etc etc) span dozens and dozens of episodes but more and more today are getting just a single cour (12/13 eps) or occasionally double.
Outside of shonen fighting shows (D.Gray Man, Naruto, etc.), long-running shows like Shugo Chara and Hayate are becoming rare. Is this just because we have more shows and less attention span, or because of the content of anime itself?
On topic, I do find myself getting distracted from shows a lot easier now with the internet browser lurking behind the media player. I suppose an increase in multitasking and a need for maximum efficiency is to blame in my case.
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@CCY: I think you bring up a good point about newer series length (number of episodes).
I think the shorter shows might also be due to less production money, but maybe that’s tangentially related to more competition for eyeballs and compressed attention spans of fans.
I think some of the creators (the Japanese companies) have been burned on longer shows that lacked enough sustainable content to span 24, 48 or even 100 episodes. I think they pushed some shows too long and the plots became too thin and people bailed. Plus, it’s sucks trying to buy a 100 episode series. You end up forking out a lot of cash.
“Sustainable” in the sense of keeping people’s attention.
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I have to agree with Keith – the Internet more than anything else has decreased my attention span. It doesn’t affect what I watch – I pick what I watch based on what I like. Some of my favorite series are those long 48-100 episode series.
I have seen herds of otaku sit for (literally) hours on end watching one episode after another in a series (old or new). There will be occasional breaks for things like food, the bathroom, and possibly a quick argument on some aspect of the previous episode but for the most part, it’s pretty darn impressive for both series attention and real-time attention span.
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I like to think of myself as a patient gal–it actually just depends whether or not the anime suits my taste. If I reckon it’s worth my time then I will watch it–even old shows. However, we now live in a fast-paced world and prioritizing is needed more than ever. You can’t spend the whole day just watching anime–unless if you’re a true blue otaku/hikkikomori. :-)
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I know why anime series are shorter – I mean, I have a theory:
Back in the days of the original Dragonball there wasn’t much of a home video market. In television, ratings are everything. Before the DVD market, hardly anyone collected TV series on commercial VHS tapes…
Anime on DVD in a collector’s market means that most shows car air late at night and ratings matter less, DVD sales matter more. The above commentors are correct – collecting, say, all of One Piece on DVD is pretty daunting. It doesn’t matter for One Piece, though, since the demographic of that show buys more toys than DVDs, so it airs earlier and probably relies on commercial airtime sales and merchandise licensing.
My attention span is shorter because of the internet. Sometimes marathoning an entire series over a weekend is the only way to work it into my already-hobby-booked schedule.
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