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What is Seasonal Anime? (A Beginner’s Guide)

Monochromatic Aberration October 2, 2025

I love anime. There’s nothing quite like it, with narratives you won’t find anywhere else, visuals that transcend what can be filmed, beautiful and exciting music, unforgettable characters, and moments that you’ll carry with you forever. Best of all, there’s already a lifetime worth of anime already waiting for you!

Looking for some recommendations to get you started? Check out my reviews of last season's anime here: Winter 2026 Anime Retrospective

But rather than dipping into the archive, I think one of the best things about anime is watching seasonal anime as it airs. In a world of binge-streaming where full seasons are dropped in a day, watching seasonal anime is a great way to let a narrative unfold over time. I love sitting with an episode over the course of a week, thinking about what happened and what might happen next, and anxiously awaiting when I can watch the next episode. It gives such a sense of routine, a lift to your days—few more comforting thoughts than it’s ____ day, isn’t it? —something altogether and frankly novel today. I love feeling a sense of community with the other viewers, interacting in episode discussions, reading others impressions, seeing what they noticed I didn’t. It’s truly a unique experience; not only a fun hobby, but makes you a more thoughtful art-appreciator.

So where can you get started? I thought I’d write a guide on getting into seasonal anime; on how to watch anime as it airs. We’re just a few days from the start of the next season, making this the perfect time to start. So let’s get into it!

How does seasonal anime work?

Seasonal anime is broken into the four seasons: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn—in that order. At the time of writing, we’re heading into the Autumn 2025 season, which will run for the next 12 weeks or so, and then the Winter 2026 season will start.

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Anime is often an adaptation of an existing media property, usually a manga or a novel, though of course original anime exists as well. Original anime are self-contained stories, where adaptations may take years to cover the source material, or may only cover part of the story, finding a neat (or not so neat) stopping point, hoping to entice you to read the source directly. Often, it doesn’t make a huge difference, but seeing what the source of the anime you’re interested in is (or if it’s original) can help put some context to your watching.

Anime series run in what’s called a cour , which comes from the French cours —course. There are four seasons in a year (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, of course) and they cover roughly three months each. A cour is usually 12 or 13 episodes, and most anime is one cour, and is usually thought of as one narrative arc , one contained story. Usually, a cour lines up with a season, however, there are series that extend to two cour or more; for example, adaptations from longer manga or novel series’ might end up being 24-26 episodes long, stretch across two seasons (such as Summer and Fall). Even longer series, like some of the famous shonen manga adaptations like Naruto or Jujtsu Kaisen might run even longer, split across multiple cour and seasons.

Even within a season, there are series that will vary the number of episodes, from 10 to 15 or anything in between—though either 12 / 13 or 24 / 25 are the most common. Usually, these are announced from the start, though occasionally it’s not clear how long a season will be until the Blu-ray is listed for sale.

Finally, anime mostly airs once a week, though occasionally, they’ll skip a week due to alternative programming, delays in production (that’s right; anime is being made as it airs), or unforeseen circumstances. It’s usually not important unless you plan on watching anime as close to the time it airs as possible, but in Japan, anime is usually broadcast in the dead of night: think midnight or beyond. These are the absolute cheapest slots to broadcast something, and it’s been this way for a long long time.

Where do I find seasonal anime?

With some of the background out of the way, where can I even find anime to watch? One of the best resources for this is the website anichart.net.

AniChart is an offshoot of the site AniList, which is a super useful web app used to track and catalogue anime watching: think of it like Goodreads or Letterboxd, but for anime.

Personally, I use MyAnimeList (also called MAL), which is sort of the original of this sort of thing. There’s also Kitsu, and anidb. It doesn’t really matter which one you use; but I highly recommend using one. Especially trying to keep track of season anime as it airs, these apps have lots of super helpful features to know when series are airing, track what you’re watching, participate in discussions, and more.

At the top of the page, you can see a tab highlighting the current or closest season, and all the anime that will be airing during that season below. By default, this list is sorted by popularity, so you can get a quick glance of what the most-anticipated anime is right from the jump.

Each of these cards contains a lot of useful information about a series. You can see the title and a key visual. They list how long until each series starts or when the next episode airs. They also show the source of a series, or whether or not it’s a sequel. There’s a synopsis of the plot, and a few tags listed, to give you a sense of what’s in store.

Hovering over the card expands the synopsis, and reveals a trailer, so you can get a sense of the art style, the voice acting, and the general vibe of the show.

Regular on the left, hovered on the right.

Below the series’, you’ll see TV shorts, OVAs (“Original Video Animations,” often bonus videos included on Blu-ray releases), and movies coming out during the season.

Deciding what to watch

When a new season is about to start (like now!), I head over to AniChart, and spend a half-hour or so trying to decide what to watch. Not every season is created equal: sometimes there are lots of series’ you might want to watch, and sometimes only one or two might appeal to you. Additionally, everyone has a different appetite and capacity. Perhaps you’re fine watching a new episode a day (or more) to keep up, or maybe you’d just like to watch an episode or two per week; these are all considerations to take in while you’re making the list.

You might also want to consider what the airdate is, meaning which day of the week new episodes air. Maybe you pick four series, but they all are set to air on Saturday. This may matter to you, or it may not; just another thing to think about.

For me, I usually just take the time and open the series page of anything that catches my eye in a new tab. In the AniChart settings, you can select to open each series in either AniChart or MyAnimeList, which is useful for people like me.

With everything open in a new tab, I go through each page, and try to figure out what I want to watch. I weigh most heavily the plot, but also consider the studio, cast, source material, and other factors. Obviously, this is a personal decision. I tend to have quite a high capacity and appetite, so I have no problem selecting upwards of 10 series to watch. Additionally, and crucially, I’m not expecting to finish every series. Some things just won’t be for you, and that’s okay. Don’t feel compelled to see everything through to the finish; there’s plenty of other anime you’ll like better out there.

Seasonal anime page on the MAL Client app

Once I’ve made my selection, I add what I want to watch to my “Plan to watch” list—logical, right? Once these series’ start airing, I move them to the “Watching” list.

Watching seasonal anime

Now that you’ve picked what to watch, you get to do the fun part: watching anime!

Once an anime starts, both the MyAnimeList and AniChart pages will have links to the streaming platforms where it’s available to watch. Sometimes, there might not be a streaming platform available, or no one in your country licensed it. But fear not! There are options for those of you who have the courage to sail the black flag... But usually there’s an easy streaming option for those in the West.

As you watch a series, you might find it wasn’t quite what you hoped. In general, people talk about the three-episode rule (though it’s more like a guideline). Basically, if something is so-so, I try to give it three episodes to either hook me or lose me. There've been plenty of series I’m extremely glad I stuck with, and others that I knew five-minutes in wouldn’t be my cup of tea, and never looked back. It’s just a reference point; life’s too short for bad fruit.

After the episode

Now that you’ve watched the episode, how was it? I track the anime I watch right after I watch it, just so I don’t forget. And honestly, it feels good to keep things organized like that.

I use a third-part app on my phone, called “MAL Client,” which may or may not be available anymore. MAL Client has a handy calendar view, along with listing the number of episodes watched versus the number of episodes released, tracking the time until the next episode, and other useful statistics.

I keep my MAL very updated, so if you want to see what I’m watching, check out my page.

Community

Another aspect of seasonal anime I love is the sense of community. I don’t have many irl friends who share my interest, but I still feel like I interact with a lot of like-minded individuals through the power of the internet.

Reddit /r/anime page

On any database like MyAnimeList or AniChart, there are going to be forums where you can read through and participate in episode discussions. Additionally, the reddit Anime subreddit is great for this sort of thing. I love seeing what others take out of episodes, the things they notice I might’ve missed, and swapping theories with others. It truly makes my watching experience more fulfilling.

After the season

You’ve finished a full anime season! Now what? I haven’t often written reviews, though I want to get back to doing roundups. For me, writing just a couple of sentences about a show or a book reminds me what I liked or didn’t like, and makes it all stick a bit better when I look back on it.

I also love adjusting the scores of the series I watch. It’s hard to compare apples to oranges, but sometimes seeing things in a row helps me put things in context. There’s clearly series that sink or swim when juxtaposed with others—even across disparate genres—and seeing everything in one list can help me understand that.

Finally, I go back to AniChart and start the process all over again!

It’s so fun to watch anime as it airs. It’s a rare treat to watch something serialized in this day and age, giving you space to breathe and time to think between narrative beats, allowing you to watch a story bloom. It’s fun to discuss stories as they happen, and fun to share your hobbies with others. If you’ve been curious about watching seasonal anime, I highly recommend you give it a go.

If you’ve got any questions, leave them in the comments below.

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