Anime Journal Ideas: 9 Spreads I Actually Use

Anime journal ideas are basically what happens when my commonplace book meets my ever-growing anime backlog. I’ve been journaling since 2018, and somewhere along the way, my commonplace book turned into a mash-up of character doodles, watch trackers, and way too many feelings about season finales.

This post isn’t a tutorial — it’s just me flipping through the actual pages of my anime journal and showing you what ended up there.

If you’ve ever rewatched an ending three times before accepting it was over, you’ll probably feel right at home. So pull up a chair, and let’s get into my pages.

I won’t bore you with my stories and my journey toward loving anime, but let’s just say I’ve been doing it since my college days. The new part is that I’m actually deciding to bring my love for anime into my commonplace book.

I come back to each of these pages often and update them constantly, at least since I started this journal in 2026. And I’m sure you’ll find here some ideas that will make your inner otaku happy as well.

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My Favorite Anime Journal Supplies

First, let me share some of the supplies I love using when creating my anime pages.

You definitely can use whatever you like, but here are my personal favorites:

Archer & Olive Journal – their journals are top quality, and they have so many cute designs! For my commonplace book, I use a pink one. You can also get 10% OFF your order with my code MASHA10.
Atlenew Fineliner Pen – these are the fineliners I’ve been using a lot lately, and I quite like them, so I definitely recommend them.
HP Sprocket – I like adding posters from anime, and this is a printer I use. It’s small and doesn’t require ink. And even more so – the photo paper is a sticker, so it’s perfect for journaling.
Rating stamp – this became my most-used item in both my anime pages and my reading pages. Can’t recommend enough!
Zebra Mildliners – I love the color, and of course I use these pens 90% of the time.

Here they are: my go-to anime journal supplies. Now let’s take a look inside.

Anime Journal Ideas

A wonderful thing about journaling is that anything can become a page, and this is how I chose my ideas. I’m sharing because I think it might help you choose what to do in your anime journal.

I thought about what things I notice or want to know. First, I thought in terms of tracking – I want to remember what I watched and how I liked it, and what I stopped watching altogether.

Then I thought about how I track and notice when some characters share the same voice actors, or how a lot of my favorite anime are from the same studios, so I wanted to track that too.

Basically, think of the things you want to remember about your anime-watching journey and create a page for it. Here is what I made.

My Favorite Voice Actors

This was the first page I’ve created in my anime journal, and this is kind of where it all started.

I’ve been watching a lot of things and started noticing several more voices from some of the big characters, and I decided that I’ll choose a few voice actors who have very distinct voices I like (or at least they’re distinct in my opinion), and I check every new anime I watch to see if any of the actors voice characters there. It’s kind of like a fun puzzle – to see if I recognize them correctly.

Anime Watched

Of course, you can track your anime digitally, and I have an app for it as well. But I find it much more satisfying to have one layout like this. Or several in my case – this is just the first half of 2026.

I used my photo printer for this, but you can definitely use a normal printer and then just use double-sided tape to add them to your pages. The poster size is about 2.5 by 4 cm.

As you can see, I don’t have much space to add more information here, but I added how many seasons there are and which month I saw it.

Anime Review Page

I don’t always have time or energy to write reviews, so I don’t create these layouts for everything I watch, but some shows just stay with you in a special way.

As you can see, I don’t go into much detail, but for each show I saw, I give a rating, my personal notes, my favorite character, and a mini review that focuses on what I enjoyed about the show.

Rating Meaning

I’ve always had trouble rating things, and since I am rating some shows here, I wanted to create a system for what each rating means so I understand how I am rating.

To be honest, in the end I do not follow this rating – I rate based on my own inner feeling more than the quality of the anime.

Anime Studios

These are some of the studios I chose to follow based on the anime I’ve been watching lately, but I must say I’m not really happy with my choices.

In the end, there are so many more amazing studios, and so many of the shows I watched that year aren’t here because their studios weren’t on the list. So ultimately, this page was a failure.

I think I needed to give it more time to pick the studios, and maybe use two pages to track more different studios.

Anime Watch List

This is where all the things I get recommended go. I find that it is such a special bond when you watch the same thing your friend recommended. It definitely improves the experience, because you don’t just enjoy it; you get to share and discuss it with your loved one.

I don’t have many recommendations here because, in my friend group, I’m usually the one who recommends things. So if you have some things you want to recommend, leave them in the comments!

Anime Drop List

Another thing I wanted to note in my journal is the shows that I watched but dropped. I think this is also important data, and it will remind me in the future, when, in 5 years, I forget it altogether and want to watch it again.

The list is simple – the shows I dropped, how much of it I watched, and why I stopped watching. I thought it was important to note how much I watched, because maybe I haven’t given some of these enough of a chance, and I might consider coming back later.

Upcoming Releases

Now that I committed to several shows that are still running, I have so much to look forward to, so I decided to create a little layout with the upcoming releases.

To follow a similar format to my recommendations list, I included a checkbox for when I finish the anime, a rating so I can mark how much I like it, and a last column for when the anime will be released.

My actual list is longer, but I decided to add only the ones that are already confirmed, even if some don’t have an exact release date yet.

And in case you’re wondering, the stickers are from this sticker shop, which is one of my all-time favorites – so much so I barely use the stickers because once I do, they are gone, and they are so pretty!

Manga Review Page

This is technically my review of JJK manga, but I thought it had a space here, sicne I love the anime as well. Actually, I loved the anime so much that I got my first-ever manga books and read all the volumes.

If you haven’t read it, I’d recommend you not to check my writing since it might have spoilers. But I wanted to note here which sections I included. I think it can be helpful if you decide to write a more detailed review of any shows you watch or manga /books you read.

Here are the sections I have in this text (they are only divided by thick black dots; I wanted a minimalist black-and-white aesthetic for this): the world it is set in, the power system, the character design, the storytelling style, the characters, heroes’ and villains’ stance and principles, the main theme, and the ending (since I believe a good ending is a very hard thing to do).

This is my favorite layout, and I’m happy with how Nanami and Higuruma came out. I just started learning how to draw anime characters a few months ago, and I wasn’t very confident in my skills.

And no, I don’t have special talent – these two men I’ve been practicing drawing for the last two months, and this is not original work, but rather a recreation of the original art, so it’s not like I can freely draw any characters from my head now.

If you want my tip, I used a book on drawing manga and a separate book on drawing manga faces – they are very beginner-friendly and helped me at least understand the basics.

And that’s it; here are all the pages I have in my anime journal so far.

More Resources

Even though I don’t have more posts about anime journal (since these are the only pages I have at the moment), there are still plenty of journal ideas for you to explore.

Check out these posts next:

>>> What pages are you thinking of including in your anime journal? Share with us in the comments!

And leave your best anime recommendations as well!

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And remember: Keep Journaling, and Don’t Be A Blob!