As with other genres, anime has its high and low seasons, which can lead the classic consumer to step away a bit, whether due to an unexpected void of titles or an excess of offers. Returning to the fray is also complicated, since the mix between short projects and endless series adds an extra layer of confusion. If you want quick recommendations based on a story you've already seen or read, all you have to do is visit Anime Suggestions and enter the series in question…
I've said it several times: I consider myself a person “retired” from anime and manga. Obviously things changed a lot in recent years, and to tell the truth, I don't feel entirely comfortable with those changes. Most short series have become “platforms” to shift the consumer's interest toward the manga, and on the other side I keep seeing endless projects that challenge the patience of fans. Without intending to offend, I honestly don't understand what One Piece can tell in 78 volumes, or Naruto in 72 (though Naruto ended last November). But it's at this point that I betray myself. If I'm “retired” from anime and manga, how can I know all this? Anyway… suppose for a moment that you find yourself in a situation similar to mine, and you don't know what anime to watch. Where do we start?
A good starting point is the Anime Suggestions portal. With a Spartan design, all the site asks for is the name of an anime that allows defining, to a certain extent, what your tastes are. As an example, I decided to enter Fullmetal Alchemist (the initial adaptation, not Brotherhood), and the site returned some very interesting results, starting with D.Gray-man (103 episodes, the manga hasn't finished), Blue Exorcist (25 episodes plus an OVA), the very striking Baccano!, and of course the sister series of FMA, Brotherhood, which follows the manga's events much more closely. As we scroll further down the list, the recommendations lose precision, and they reach a point where they make no sense at all.
Anime Suggestions also has a personalized recommendation system, but it requires a bit more work. The recommendation is to enter between ten and fifteen anime series, each with scores, and from that data it calculates the projects we should watch. The system is in beta, so it can be even more wrong than the basic mode, but it never hurts to try.
