I've always had a rather systematic approach to finding media to consume. Jumping from show to show based on what you've seen or heard is so subjective; what if, after all, you miss something you'd really like because you judge a book by its cover?

My first foray into this kind of thing was an attempt I made as a teenager to watch every magical girl anime listed on anime-planet in alphabetical order... which meant I'd often watch spinoffs before originals, consume large franchises in nonsensical ways, and use VPNs in order to pay for unsubtitled series on Japanese streaming sites. I learned the ins and outs of how to locate media, became a one-man fandom for several very obscure series I couldn't really talk about with anyone, and stumbled into explicit content that felt massively scandalous at the time. I didn't make it to Z; I'm decently sure I never even made it past M. Looking at anime-planet now, the early alphabet has since been populated with a variety of new and newly-added series, so I'd have to start over again if I ever wanted to pick things back up where I left off.

Without a system, I find myself going long periods of time without watching anything. So, this year, I devised a new system that works like this:

1. Go to IMDB's advanced search.

2. Set the 'release date' parameters to the current day.

3. Sort by alphabetical order.

4. Scroll down until you encounter a piece of media that fits your criteria. For me, this criteria is that it must be animated (did you know I have a hard time with faces in live-action content?) but you could make this whatever you want, or even ditch criteria entirely.

5. Watch whatever that media is. This will be the opening to your rabbit hole.

6. After you're done, check the credits and contribute any missing cast or crew members to IMDB.

7. Go to the full cast/crew page and click on the first person listed.

8. Check their full filmography.

9. Sort by date (ascending, from oldest to newest).

10. Watch each piece of media on that list (as long as it fits your criteria.)

11. When you're done, return to the cast/crew list of the first media you watched in step 5, click on the second person.

12. Repeat.

13. When/if you complete the filmographies of the entire cast and crew of the media that opened your rabbit hole, do the same thing with the second piece of media you watched (the first piece of media on the first person's filmography in the original show's cast/crew list).

14. And so on and so forth. Keep a list of everything you've watched, and when you exhaust the cast/crew of one, move onto the next.

15. If at any point you exhaust all of the people and media found this way (as with, for instance, indie YouTube music videos that only have a few people on the cast and crew who have not worked on much else), go back to step 1 and do a search for the current day, whatever that is.

It sounds much more complicated than it is in practice when all the details are enumerated upon. There are more details that are obvious but perhaps should be stated for a comprehensive understanding:

• If what you encounter is a sequel or spin-off, watch any original media first, and, if you'd like, any following media after. Whether you need to watch original media if it does not fit your criteria is up to you, or can be decided on a case-by-case basis.

• Don't watch the same thing repeatedly if it comes up more than once in your journey.

• The advent of incredible automated tools for transcription and translation means that language needs not be a barrier for you. I'll probably make a post with tips on how to locate and translate media next.

• If you can't find a piece of media, or need to order a DVD that will take a while to come, list it in your list but mark it off as something to come back to and move on to the next piece of media.

  • When you're done with any piece of media, check back on all previous media you marked this way, and if you can find any of it, watch that.

• It's good practice to regularly check back and see if anyone whose filmography you've already watched has worked on anything new.

• If you discover in your research that IMDB's information (on filmographies, for instance) is incomplete, feel free to contribute the correct information to the site. I've found IMDB has a much lower barrier to entry than something like Wikipedia, and its standards for sourcing are much laxer.

My entry show when I first started this process was Rabbit Academy: The Series. As such, I'll call this entire blogging adventure- which will eventually catch up to what I'm currently watching- the IMDB Rabbit Hole. Will you take up the challenge yourself? (probably not, but if you do, send a message my way, I'd love to hear about it).