Assessing 2007 Predictions and Resolutions

The new year always seems to sneak up on me and I don’t really realize it until I have to start writing the next year on checks, papers, and whatnot. Around this time last year, I made my first annual set of predictions and resolutions and now I’ll see how well or poorly I did. Short answer: I performed averagely on both accounts.

2007 Predictions:

1) Harima will be given a Hispanic accent in the School Rumble dub.

WRONG: This one turned out to be inaccurate; it was kind of a silly prediction to begin with but sure enough, Harima’s voice sounds like it has no real accent to it except for that of a tough guy.

2) At least one anime title will be released on a high-definition format, such as Blu-ray or HD-DVD, in the United States.

RIGHT: This prediction was inspired by the release of AIR on Blu-Ray in Japan on 12/22/2006 and it turned out to be a slam dunk. Bandai Visual USA released the Freedom OVA on June 26th, making it the first high-definition anime release in North America, and also re-released Wings of Honneamise as HD-DVD/DVD and BD/DVD combo packs on September 11th. Funimation also got in the game by putting out two Dragon Ball Z Broly movies on a single Blu-Ray disc.

3) More bookstores in the United States will wrap their shelved manga.

LIKELY WRONG: There wasn’t really a way to determine whether this actually became a growing trend but based on my experience in the past year, I’d have to say this one flopped.

4) Incidences of overcrowding will become reported more often at anime conventions.

HALF-RIGHT: There were management complaints at AX this year and NYAF also seemed to get some bad feedback from blogger attendees but those managed to be the major ones. I’m reluctant to declare this one fully true because it wasn’t the crowds seemed to be the contributing factors to the above problems but there were those issues so this one gets half credit.

5) Individual anime episodes will be sold through the iTunes Store for US$2 apiece.

RIGHT: Funimation made this one true in mid-February and now has 12 series on iTunes, most of which are their mature action series like Basilisk and Speed Grapher but also up there are Rumbling Hearts, Gunslinger Girl, and Galaxy Railways. ADV followed their example in a way when they introduced episodes at $2 and $4 each with the sole difference in pricing due to the resolution (320×240 vs. 640×480).

So it seems I got about 50% correct which is fine but hopefully I’ll do better with my 2008 predictions. Next is a look back at my resolutions for the past year, some of which I majorly failed.

2007 Resolutions:

1) Leave reviews for all the videos I have downloaded from AMV.org.

MAJOR FAIL: I remembered this a few times during the year but sadly I never actually sat down and left a review in 2007.

2) Finish at least two AMV’s in 2007.

FAIL: Not only did fail to start , I’ve probably gone backwards since then because I lost my notes. However I am hopeful I can get around to making one in 2008 with my more robust Vista notebook, Sony Vegas, and a

3) Attend my first anime convention.

MAJOR WIN: I attended Sac-Anime in January, Fanime in May, and Yaoi-Con in October so that’s three conventions went to in 2007. As for the coming year I currently plan on going to Sac-Anime again next month, Animation on Display in February, and maybe Yaoi-Con again in October.

4) Achieve some semblance of being able to read and write in Japanese.

MINOR FAIL: I think I improved my katakana and hiragana recognition and have recently begun to utilize the Japanese IME in typing search queries into Nico Nico Douga. As far as learning actual words and phrases, I bought for cheap a 3-CD set where you’re supposed to repeat what the speaker said but I haven’t listened to it yet. Same goes for the 3-CD “learn Russian” set…

4.5) Finish more anime that I have started and abandoned.

FAIL: This one is a bit harder to evaluate than the other ones but let’s see…I began but have not yet finished Asatte no Houkou, Bokurano, Darker than Black, Claymore, Dennou Coil, Doujin Work, El Cazador, Gurren Lagann, Hitohira, Manabi Straight, sola, Zetsubou Sensei, etc. By contrast, I finished Zombie-Loan, Black Heaven, Genshiken, Honey and Clover II, and Lucky Star. So I’m currently more behind now than when I started the year so this resolution might be repeated for 2008 and hopefully fulfilled with an increased determination.

5) Compose more “original” content and stray away from episode summaries.

WIN: This was a easy one since I was already moving that direction in late 2006. This past year I wrote about trips to the conventions I previously mentioned, went to a Bleach cosplay meetup in Germany and interviewed a German manga-ka (but temporarily lost the audio) as well as participating in a Collective project.

Two out of six is not that good so some of the above failures may be adopted as informal 2008 resolutions. Well, you can expect my predictions and resolutions for the next year either later tonight or tomorrow.

Related posts based on tags:

• Predictions and Resolutions: 2008 Edition (2)
• Predictions and Resolutions for 2007 (1)
• Predictions & Resolutions: 2K10 Edition (4)
• Evaluating 2008 Predictions and Resolutions (2)
• 2009 Predictions and Resolutions: A Week Late Like 2008 (1)