Staying On a Balanced Diet of Anime!

Every year when the weather starts getting warm and sunny, and the produce stands offering dew drenched lettuces, purple carrots, and berries fresh from the fields are starting to open for the Summer season, I get an unquenchable craving for fitness! My mind blossoms with delusions of molding my Pillsbury doughboy body into the sleek minimalism of a runway model. It’s a rigid diet I feverishly follow, one that allows little sweets, a ban on fried crunchies, and absolutely no pastries. I follow this diet devoutly as a nun up until about Thanksgiving when it dies an untimely death and is completely forgotten until the next Summer rolls around. One of the many things I’ve learned over the years of seasonal dieting is that a balanced diet is vitally important. Staying on a well balanced diet filled with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, carbohydrates, and proteins is key to keeping your energy up and maintaining a healthy body. A balanced diet not only helps maintain a healthy body but also a healthy mind too. The same could be said for staying healthy as an Otaku. To maintain a healthy love for anime, and to avoid that dreaded Otaku burn-out, it’s important to stay on a well balanced diet of anime and manga that has a wide variety of genres and formats. Sometimes even just changing up where you watch anime or on what streaming service you are watching can help to keep your diet of anime interesting. And just like it’s important to eat seasonally to get the freshest produce, it’s also important to watch some seasonal anime to ensure you are enjoying the freshest content available.

Carbs – Long Run Series

Just like healthy carbs are important to maintain a stable blood sugar level, to give you slow burning energy, and to keep your tummy feeling full, Long Run anime series as part of your daily Otaku routine are important continuous stories that keeps you grounded and comfortable in the anime world. A Long Run anime (an anime with lots of episodes) are amazingly versatile and they can be something you binge or watch one episode at a time. And Long Run anime are vital for filling in gaps between anime series, seasonal anime, or when you just can’t find a new anime you want to watch. Because Long Run anime are so long, you have a constant anime companion that is always there for you to watch.

Fruits and Veg – Shojo/Slice of Life

Much like fruit and veg add vital nutrients and vitamins into a healthy diet, introspective anime like series in the shojo and slice-of-life genre also add important depth and personal meaning to your anime watching experience. From dealing with abandonment trauma and the feeling of not belonging with Natsume Yujincho to being a socially exhausted introvert with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya to letting go of past loved ones with Slow Loop, there are so many anime that can relate to your life on a more personal level and turn casual media watching into a life changing experience.

Protein – Action

Nothing builds muscles like protein and exercise, and nothing gets an Otaku pumped for anime like an action packed adventure ride! Just like many new to healthy eating might mistakenly think that the only way to add protein into their diet is through meat or eggs, many new to anime mistakenly think that the only genre that has action is shonen anime like the Dragon Ball series, Naruto, or One Piece. But, much like you can find protein in a variety of unexpected foods like beans or seeds, you can find action in a variety of anime. From shojo anime like Pretty Cure to children’s anime like Flint the Time Detective and Pokemon to even comedies like Nichijou, there is a lot of action packed anime out there!

Sugar and Spice – Artistic and Different

Though Otakus (or anyone else) shouldn’t have a diet overloaded with sugar, that doesn’t mean that you have to avoid it completely! Used along with a wide variety of spices, a little bit of sugar can enhance flavors and make healthy food more enjoyable. Just like a little bit of sugar helps the veggies go down, a little bit of artistic or avant garde anime can spice up your viewing diet. Non main stream anime can help you look at more common anime from a different perspective and it can expand your horizons of what is possible in animation and even stretch the boundaries of what is anime! But be careful and remember to enjoy artistic anime in moderation. Just like too much sweets can overwhelm your tummy, too much artistic anime can be visually or mentally overwhelming.