Continuing World: Year One

Note: The following post was supposed to have seen the light of day last Saturday, but tragedy struck and I lost my internets until Tuesday.

And before I knew it, this blog’s a year old.

Two or three years ago, I never thought I would be blogging about anime. I’ve maintained a personal blog for a couple of years, but interest blogging is an entirely different ballgame. The operative word here is interest–once that candle goes out, there’s no helping you.

However, I had been reading anime blogs on an intermittent basis. Most of them were stray links from forums/imageboards that I frequent, and I still remember some of them, like Shin’s Kyonko entries or the more serious and enlightening Riuva articles. I started an episodic blog months later, but I found writing episode summaries a chore (to those who do, how do you guys keep at it?).

I returned to foruming. I kept being active on AMC, and evolved from a person whom wah once called an idiot to someone wah is indifferent about (great success). I started on checking out the blogs of fellow AMC denizens (mainly digitalboy, omo and TheBigN/dm). None of these people blogged episodically, at least not using the conventional formula of screencaps + summary + commentary. I realized that I could do editorials or series reviews instead!

So I wanted to start an anime blog again. However, my first problem was what to write. Sure, I’m an inveterate mecha fan, but I can’t post entries like “The 10 Weirdest Gundam Weapons” or “Moustache > V-Fin” all the time. I was in luck, then, when a timely /m/ thread talked about anime blogs that /m/en read. The first that came up for reading was We Remember Love, which had the Voltes V entry up on its front page back then. Gold, I thought. While a fan of robots to the core, here’s a man who doesn’t limit himself to them. I decided to make my posting topics more diverse.

And so I started out. I quickly got readers after the first few posts, which was a pleasant surprise. It pressed me to keep on writing, but I soon realized that this wasn’t the way to go. I’m not a blogger who sits down to write a post on regular intervals, as my first attempt at an anime blog proved. I also want to blog about a show that’s less talked about–my aim is to get people to check out these relatively obscure shows. That’s one focus I’m gunning for, and while it keeps me from getting many hits, the awesome comments are worth the damn trouble.

Thanks to this mindset of taking it easy, I’ve never experienced burnout. Based on my past mistakes, I’ve learned that I should blog for fun, and not give myself hard deadlines or excuses to write. I still haven’t perfected my style as I envision it to be, but I don’t have to rush it.

Anime blogging has been a largely rewarding experience. Writing about this passion of mine is cathartic, and kept me from being clinically depressed during bad times. This is my idea of giving back to the community, so to speak. You also get to meet a lot of friends, too, online and offline.

So what’s next? I can see myself experimenting more with new topics, and writing more personal posts on anime I’ve loved (one recent example would be Planetes). As for the robot side of things, I’m slowly, slowly getting into VOTOMS, accompanied by Gasaraki. Maybe next year, I’d have my own domain! I just need to, um, find new work. /o\

PS: I’ve put a proper About page a couple of months ago, which is, as you might have guessed, way overdue.