Anime and MS Excel

[Nozomi]

Or: "How to Schedule and Organize Your Anime Watching"!

(Cue the Excel Saga theme song... Wait, no! Crazy girls trying to satisfy some underground space lord with crazy antics is NOT where this thread is headed! ...Still fun to reminisce about that, though.)

Anime is a hobby for me. I like to have organization in my hobbies. Therefore, I like to organize how I watch anime, especially since there are so many titles in my to-be-watched list. Since I don't like to spend many full days on end watching anime while in my late 20s, I prefer to ration out my anime in monthly schedules. At first, I just used paper and moleskine notebooks, but sometimes I would lose track of them, and erasing things when I got off-pace got to be annoying.

Solution: Microsoft Excel!

I took the paper schedules into an Excel Spreadsheet, with one tab for each month (currently, I have the schedule projected out to 3 months). Then, I added tabs for To Be Watched (TBW), Completed, and (Anime) Movies. I've been using it for almost 2 years now, and it definitely helps me stay focused on what I'm watching and when I'm watching it (I just passed 2,500 episodes for lifetime watch count, which would not have happened quite as soon without this).

Recently, a friend of mine who has just started watching anime asked me how I did it, and I showed him the sheet. I offered him a copy and he said yes, so I set about to making a clean (no recorded data) copy for him. And then I got to thinking that others might like to use this, so I further edited his copy into a public one, which I would now like to offer to you!

Here is the link for it: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/206 ... ublic.xlsx

Each tab has basic instructions written into it, so I don't think it should be difficult to figure out. But, if you have any comments or questions, you can naturally reply to this here thread. For those of you who would find this useful, I hope you enjoy it!

(Also, I'm well aware of MyAnimeList.net. It too is a useful site for this sort of thing, with very similar concepts. However, when working on episode counts for finished series in the Completed tab, I found that my system was somewhat different from theirs (I include all of the Gundam titles under the label "Gundam Mega-Franchise", instead of separate titles and episode counts, for example). So if you use them already, keep on using them! I just wanted to offer an alternative. Also, you can use this document if your internet connection goes down or you're away from it for awhile (though in today's anime watching world, that can limit your watching capabilities quite a bit, unless you have the DVDs/VHSs (old 90s series fans, rejoice! heh)/Laserdiscs (they do exist) on hand.)

(Also also: Yes, I know that some people just watch anime series whenever they feel like it, for however long they want to. That's cool too!)

[Crossfire]

Oh man, I've been meaning to write down a list of all the episodes I've watched throughout the years. This should give me an excuse to get at it.

[Nozomi]

Yeah. I've found that wikipedia helps with episode counts (provided you completed a full season or all of the title in question), as well as MyAnimeList, ironically. It was easy for me to compile my list in the beginning because I'm obsessed with completing an entire title/series/franchise, including every OVA episode (if I can find it) before I add it to the count.

Also: Here's a GoogleDocs/Drive link for you all as well! (I think the sharing option I have on it allows for downloads, but I'm not exactly sure. Kinda new to the Drive concept.)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... sp=sharing

I think this will help for those of you who don't have/use MS Excel 2007... eheh.

[ForeverInspired]

I just use My Anime List's simple setup for organizing anime. It's not as detailed, but also less work for me.

That spreadsheet is a nice idea though.

[drill]

Wow! This is very helpful. Thanks Nozomi!