Tag: Blogging

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2018: Changing my career path and watching mostly slice of life anime

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Advice from Michiru's co-worker Hanamori in Takunomi: "So quit worrying about how fast you get things done, and let's just focus on getting it done!"
Advice from Michiru’s co-worker Hanamori in Takunomi.

2018 was a long year for me. I moved to another city and started law school. The Winter Olympics happened in South Korea and the FIFA (men’s) World Cup happened in Russia, but unfortunately, I don’t recall much of what transpired in either of those sports competitions other than the U.S. women’s hockey team winning an Olympic gold medal over Canada and France winning the World Cup.

New anime series I watched most during the year included Pop Team Epic, gdgd Men’s Party, Takunomi., Laid-Back Camp, Crossing Time, Ms. Vampire who lives in my neighborhood., and Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san. You might notice the majority of those are slice-of-life comedies or series with short episodes.

I also watched many older anime series and movies with a group that I likely would not have watched on my own: Genesis of Aquarion, Simoun, Crest of the Stars, Mononoke, the first season of Minami-ke, the 1985 Night on the Galactic Railroad movie, the 1979 Galaxy Express 999 movie, and the Birdy the Mighty OVA series as well as re-watching Beck, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and Ouran High School Host Club. (You can read more about some of these in the “Check-In” posts I wrote earlier in the year.)

There were many buzzy new series I didn’t get to last year that I’d like to sample this month, particularly A place further than the universe, Cells at Work!, Darling in the FRANXX, FLCL: Progressive and FLCL: Alternative, Golden Kamuy, Hinamatsuri, Planet With, Wotakoi, and Zombie Land Saga. Add that to the unwatched and unfinished series carried over from 2017 & earlier and I suppose I don’t have an excuse if I claim I’ve got nothing to watch.

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Trying To Stay Motivated As A Thirty-Something

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Mitsune’s shirt: “Don’t trust anyone over 30” (front cover of Love Hina manga volume 4)

Today is my 31st birthday and I’m in a contemplative mood.

Right now, I feel both connected to contemporary goings-on and disconnected from them: interacting with friends and other enthusiasts through Twitter and blogs but still not very familiar with video bloggers popular with younger groups of fans. In the past two years, I have lost interest in attending many convention events, given up on keeping pace with new anime simulcasts, and reminisced about bygone and still active anime bloggers. There are hundreds of things I want to watch and read but I often succumb to indecision about which things to start watching or reading next. I experience moments of self-doubt where I ask myself “why am I still doing this?” and “what do I have to offer?” Continue reading

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Taking Some Advice from “Build Your Anime Blog”

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I’ve been blogging about anime, manga and related subjects for about nine years this month. I started on Wordpress.com and then moved to my own domain after seven months. At first, I wrote about news happenings and weekly episodes of Haruhi and Welcome to the NHK but then transitioned to more analytical posts at a less frequent update rate.

Despite how long I’ve been writing and occasionally getting review or press inquiries through emails, I don’t consider myself to be a big-name blogger. I’m not sure if I would want that distinction but I would like to interact more with my readers and other bloggers (a thought I expressed in a post looking back at older anime blogs) since I have sometimes felt like I’m writing into a void.

So I was interested in reading Lauren Orsini‘s new digital book Build Your Anime Blog (currently US $5.99 on Kindle Store), partly to get some advice on how to improve as a blogger but also to learn more about how fellow bloggers got started and continue to write.
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So I started a side blog this week

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On Sunday, I began writing on a side blog that will focus on sports fiction (anime, manga, films, comics, etc.) and I’ve made a couple news-related posts on it so far. My intention is to cover smaller items that I likely wouldn’t bother fleshing out on here as well as profiling various sports series and other media. I also created a preliminary page to keep track of sports-related panels that have been presented at fandom conventions over the years since there’s been a growth in those, paralleling the popularity of simulcasted sports anime.

I’m still early on in this project so feel free to make suggestions on possible improvements.

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Before Twitter and Tumblr: Thinking about older anime blogs

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Seeing the above tweet by Spiritsnare last night sent me into a whirlwind of thinking about bygone and still surviving aniblogs that started in the previous decade (2000-2009). While memories were swirling around in my head, I realized that this May will be my ninth anniversary of blogging on a semi-regular basis – not as long as AWO has been podcasting (December 2005) but it feels like long in Internet time.

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