Something about the duality of anime, 2010 edition.
On this day last year I started blogging and entered into the fan community in an entirely new way. Those of you who saw that first post might remember the picture I took of a Zaku II and Miyuki that I used as a representation of the variety of my tastes in anime, to which the opening image here is referring. It’s been an incredibly fun and rewarding year, and now I’m taking a moment to think back on it, on what it’s shown me as a blogger, and on all the friends and readers who have made it all worth it. It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year already.
Initial goals
When I made that first post I set down four goals for myself as I joined the THAT team:
-Regular content: I promise to be timely in my updates of the show(s) I have chosen to cover.
For the most part I think I’ve managed to meet this. While I’ve had occasional delays due to school or travel or scheduling conflicts, I’ve tried to get out episodics fairly quickly after the episode’s subs were released. Though there have been issues with the subs for Sora no Manimani and House of Five Leaves that caused me to have to wait a fair amount of time after the episodes originally aired in Japan. For retroblogging I’ve mostly kept to my post every Wednesday schedule. While this is the easiest goal to meet, and while I’ll never be the speediest with posts, I’m fairly satisfied here.
-Occasional editorials or thoughts on different aspects of anime and the anime community as I experience it.
I’ve done the occasional editorial or special feature in line with this statement, and as I’ve gone on in time as a blogger I’ve found myself getting more ideas for editorials than when I started. Maybe this is why the bloggers who have been around the longest tend to be editorial writers? Maybe it’s something that comes with time? But my main focus remains, and I suspect will always be, episodic entries.
-Developing my own style with your input.
Initially I modeled my posts a lot after Crusader’s, since he’s kind of my blogging role model, heh. Though I broke up the captioned images with a running recap-commentary, and that has remained the core of my episodic writing style. I realize that I write fairly lengthy posts compared to many bloggers out there, and while I’ve tried to reign in my wordiness somewhat, I’ve come to accept that taking lots of text and images to describe and comment on anime is just a part of how I write. Part of that might come from the way I speak, where I like to be precise and supply the full context of whatever I’m talking about (and writing about), part of it might just be the way that I like to explore what I write about. But after worrying about it for a time and still having a words per post average that dwarfs the other bloggers here, I’ve made my peace with it.
Of note on this goal is that I will be attempting to give some other post formats a go with Amagami SS, trying a different one for each arc. Hoping that works out.
-Have fun and try new things.
I’ve certainly had a lot of fun blogging. But not only in the writing. Getting to know readers and other bloggers through comments, other blogs, Twitter, and other interactions has brought me into the online fan community in a way that I scarcely imagined back when all I did was lurk on THAT. And it’s let me try new things like writing collaboratively with Crusader on Kimi ni Todoke as well as the faux-intelligence report intros for that series. Or when I contacted several veteran writers to ask for their advice to new bloggers. I’ve also done a favorite moments post (a result of a comments discussion with Scamp), some historical and military looks at anime series, carved a Sawako jack-o-lantern for Kimi ni Todoke, made a favorite ships post of which I intend to make a sequel, been inspired to get back into astronomy by Sora no Manimani, as well as many other fun episodic and editorial posts. It’s been a blast and I can’t thank the readers, my THAT comrades, and other readers enough for the experience.
They had me put my hand to this metal plate and state my name when I joined THAT, not sure what that was all about…
Being part of THAT
Also during the last year THAT completed our arduous and difficult move from Animeblogger.net to our own hosting. It was not easy, and I did not possess the technical skills to meaningfully contribute, but I do have something of a sense of accomplishment from helping to coordinate those who did. Crusader set up the purchasing and found the hosting service for us, and Kabitzin helped us greatly with the technical side as well as with the site redesign. But when even his considerable skills were not enough I had to bring in a friend of mine and she was finally able to slay the demons that existed during the transfer of our content to the new site.
I also brought the call for new writers to my comrades, and together with Impz we sorted through the plethora of wonderful candidates to make the tough choices required before bringing onboard our three newest members. Impz and I disagree a fair bit on meta/site-building things, but those differences of opinion definitely helped us in the end and he’s a great boss and Green Haired Trap Emperor to have. Even if he tried to pimp me to the internet community as a tsundere trap for a while there. (What is this?! I don’t even-) And in bringing in new writers I could officially start to feel old as I’m nowhere near the newest writer on here now. I’ll never be the newbie THAT writer again, feels bad man sadfrog.jpg. It still feels weird to think of myself as a semi-veteran blogger now.
The numbers
Anime blogged to completion: 5 series (Sora no Manimani, SDF Macross, Kimi ni Todoke, Now and Then Here and There, House of Five Leaves), 2 OVAs (Macross Zero, Macross Plus), 1 movie (Macross: Do You Remember Love?)
Series dropped: 1 (Inuyasha Kanketsuhen due to time issues resulting from taking over primary role on Kimi ni Todoke. Figured I’d go with the newer series, as much as I do love Inuyasha.)
Total posts: 123.
Total comments: 1750.
Total word count: 489,164.
Average words per post: 3977.
Do I get to be a grizzled veteran now?
A final word
Now I’m hoping that I’m not sounding like I’m congratulating myself with this post. It’s pretty easy to meet your goals when you set them fairly vague and low like I have, hehe. But this is meant to reflect on the past year and hopefully have some value in understanding how this blogger has thought about that year. And for a final word, I guess now that I’m a year-old blogger I’ll venture to put out there my little bit of wisdom that I’ve hopefully accumulated from a year of blogging and interacting with more senior bloggers.
-Fun first: to paraphrase Party Hard, “do what you like, and like what you do.” Don’t pay a moment’s notice to thinking about blogging what’s popular just because it is. Cover the show or topics that you enjoy and the rest will follow. Forget over-coverage of a series, or conversely, that the show you like one season isn’t the talk of the intarwebs. (Man I should know, I blogged House of Five Leaves!) Keep your writing clear and readable, but use the format that you have the most fun with. Pierce the heavens with your drill, put your guns on, and blog how you want!
-Respond to all your comments: engaging with and getting to know readers and other bloggers is one of the most satisfying parts of blogging, and by keeping up the conversation you’ll have better exchanges of ideas, more recurring commenters, and make friends with other bloggers out there. Obvious exceptions for comments that are too short or obviously don’t warrant responses like a final word on a matter.
-The veterans won’t bite: I was really nervous at first when I applied to THAT and when I first started trading comments and tweets with some of the big name bloggers, but really there was no need to. They’re all quite friendly and willing to talk to you, so don’t hesitate to interact with them. Get to know them a little bit and you might have a post or series or project that you’ll both want to collaborate on.
-Everyone makes technical mistakes at first, don’t be discouraged: dear god, did I ever. My first two or three posts had the html link from images on my photobucket account. Since my posting experience beforehand consisted only of a friends-locked livejournal I never thought about traffic and bandwidth limits on my Photobucket account. Oops! And then I started uploading all .png files, which slowed the loading time of my posts. Oops again! But luckily my fellow bloggers and commenters pointed these mistakes out and told me how to fix them. Do your best to avoid mistakes, but don’t worry too much about them.
67 Comments
Congratulations! It’s definitely a lot more fun to have you around even with your retarded hate for Minmay and Basara. It’s just wonderful to have someone around who — cares — enough to hate. It’s all remembering love for Macross to me.
I’ve enjoyed your editorials, and though I find navigating your posting style very difficult I’m still wholeheartedly glad you do make them, since you do provide lots of interesting insight and make me feel glad that I’ve watched the shows you write about.
More power, my friend.
Haha, if I can hate characters and not the show then it’s a sign that I’m really enjoying it. Covering the Macross canon up to Frontier has been a lot of fun and something I probably wouldn’t have gotten to anytime soon if it weren’t for blogging.
I realize that my posting style for episodics might not be for everyone, but that’s part of having made my peace with the lengthiness of my posts. Some people like them, some don’t, but it’s how I like to write. Before I started blogging I always preferred the longer and more image heavy episodic posts (if the images have captions or comments, if they don’t then I don’t see the point), so I modeled my posts after what I like to read.
Good job, and I’d say this was a successful first year. You seem to have your head on straight and solid consistency with things; that’s a lot of content (:
Congrats!
Thanks, I’m hoping for another fun year ahead. And even if I’ll be transitioning into the working world following graduation, I think I’m comfortable enough with my current pace to continue it even with a change in schedule.
Happy Blog brithday comrade I hope you will have many more, most people don’t last a year so you made it over the hump. I look forward to a more fruitful collaboration when I get back nad have internet with some regularity.
Looking forward to having you back in the Land of Beer and Uncensored Internet, I’m sure the next season or two will give us something to work on again. Thanks for the encouragement!
Congratulations! Always nice to see these sort of posts since the About page never really does provide enough information about authors.
Thanks! Yeah, the About page by its nature can’t be too in-depth for all our writers, but I figured that something like this might facilitate more detailed interaction. Looking forward to the year to come blogging and being part of the community.
*pfft* You can’t call yourself a grizzled veteran for another 2 years yet. Her’s to those 2 and another bizzilion years to follow
Many thanks my man. It’s been a fun year, and you in particular have given me a lot of ideas for posts and comments and thinking about my writing. We agree and disagree, and I think we’re pretty good at bouncing ideas off of each other. To another year of the same, and many more for both of us!
Congrats on the milestone~ Love the top pic – it definitely shows the duality of anime XD
And I appreciate your comments on my blog. Keep up the good work ^^
Thank you, and I’m glad you like the pic. Blogging seems to strike that silly chord in me sometimes, producing things like that and the image from the Aniblog Tournament video.
How were the responses to your survey, btw? Also, I’d have added something to the generations post you had made but being out of town the last few days I’m pretty sure what I would have said was already covered by other commenters, heh.
I have about 200 responses to the survey so far. I’m hoping for more before I post the results though =)
So, it’s been a year already. Before the addition of the three musketeers to THAT, most of the blog posts I read (or were written down), were written by EO or Crusader, so, I got pretty used to your writing style Mr. Executive. I like it, your posts have always been fun to read:P
I don’t know the blogging community nearly as well as most people, but I think you have crafted yourself a relatively unique niche of your own. You are a man, who is trap enough to love Shoujo, but at the same time manly enough to love Gundam. A manly trap? (What have I done!)
Anyways take care, I look forward to reading your 20 year anniversary post.
At one point during the first half of the last year I recall someone on Twitter teasing Extrange when he said he was writing a post again (still hasn’t materialized) by saying “THAT has other authors? I thought it was called the Crusader and EO blog” lol. Had a bit of a slowdown there as some authors transitioned away from writing, but I’m very happy to have our new additions with us and older bloggers returning to active status like Impz and RV. Both for the sake of the variety we take pride in and to just to the pressure off, hehe.
Glad to hear that you’ve enjoyed my posts
As for carving a niche, I think oddly enough it seems I’ve found one by being a ‘specialized generalist’ that likes a broad variety of genres. As it was in my first introductory post, I guess I was trying to suggest something about the duality of my tastes in anime, sir!
Congrats on your 1st Anni(me) (<–yeah!!!) It's almost my first year, too! Or maybe it passed already… Well, it doesn't really matter!
Btw, sent you an email. Hope I'm not too late, haha!
The fan art looks really cool, and thanks for the signature on the one copy too. Looking forward to seeing you around the community for another year too, us Class of 2009 blogger have to stick together!
Thanks also for getting me into Hidamari Sketch, I’m going to start the first season once I finish Legend of the Galactic Heroes or Bokurano, whichever comes first.
Aww, wittle Otaku’s all grown up. Now for the rebellious teenage years.
Lol, I’m not quite sure I have the angsty spirit in me, but I’ll try to meet your expectations
Who knows, it might help me attract a mecha and have it land outside my door with an open cockpit. It worked for Amuro!
I think it’s a testament to your skill that you’re around this long, not to mention now have a fanbase of your own. Not to knock the other THAT members, but I basically only came to this site for Cursader’s posts back in the day for his glorious depiction of mech and all things manly. When you came on board and started to retro blog the original Macross I figured I’d give you a shot. As a Macross Lifer I figure it’s part of my duty to help any one trying it out for the 1st time.
You went on to go through, perhaps hardest, anime blog trial by fire; Blogging M7. That series has left a trail of broken less fans and streams of raging viewers. But you made it through, found the “love” where you could and complete the epic quest for the Macross Lifer Cross.
Since then I’ve enjoyed your other series posts, even for series I’ve never watched.
So my komrades, lets raise our glasses to EO one year anniversary and the hope of good series to blog in the future!
Crusader was the biggest draw for me too when I first happened to find my way to THAT two and a half or three-ish years ago, so I understand where you’re coming from. Oh Macross 7, it really tested me as a fan of the franchise. And I say that having an immense love for the franchise, one I consider better than my beloved Gundam when looked at as a whole (even if Gundam is still my favorite on a best of vs best of basis.) But I was determined to see it all, and Gamlin, Max, Millia, and Mylene managed to soothe enough of my Basara rage to keep me going.
Glad that you checked out some of my non-Macross series too. It always makes me happy to bring readers to a series that they might not have considered otherwise.
Thank you for the toast, fellow Lifer, and to you as well.
Congrats EO – love reading your posts – keep up the great work with THAT!
Thank you, I’m glad your enjoying the posts. Looking forward to the next year to come!
Congratulations EO! Thanks for bringing the noble call and for all of your posts and communications, which I’ve always found interesting, sincere and inspiring
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Many thanks, comrade. It’s great to have such fun and interesting teammates as yourself here, I’m looking forward to more fun times ahead with the THAT team.
Congrats on a Year! Your posts have been great and I hope you keep your motivation to write for many posts to come.
Thanks, it’s always great to know that my posts are fun to read. Looking ahead I’m just as enthusiastic for writing as when I started. Cheers!
Isaraaaaaaaaaaa!
Grats on the year, and THAT is doing great! There were times during that site port that I thought the move would never get done, lol =3.
Isara will always live on in our hearts :*(
Haha, thank you again for your help there. I was really serious when I suggested just leaving all the old content and starting the new here, that’s how frustrated I was. But thanks to you and Susan we managed to make it somehow. And it’s great to be hosted on a fully functional server, hehe.
what!? a Gundam and Isara havin good quality time? oooohhhh…..
hey, hope to read more of your explosive articles here @ THAT, ExecOta.
It’s a traditional imouto-mecha courtship, complete with clover flower bouquet, hehe.
Thanks, I’m glad to have you onboard as a reader and commenter here! Who knows what fun the next year will hold?
@the bokurano pic
Oh, you’ll know soon enough, EO.
You’ll know soon enough…
I could have sworn I heard this voice in my head, and I don’t remember ever getting a tattoo….
Oh, don’t worry. It’s just a temporary.
Heheheheheheheh…
And congrats on making it a year blogging animu!
Thanks, I’ll do my best to continue blogging at least until my turn as pilot comes up.
A year! and look at that stats! Congrats… you’ve done good.
The opening picture is made of win btw.
Thank you, I hope to keep up my episodic pace and implement some more of those editorial ideas I’ve been getting in the year ahead. Which should mean my word count will exceed several of the long time authors combined, lol.
The pic was a lot of fun to pose. A Master Grade RGM-79 has never looked so romantic.
I’m not really an episodic fan (the irony) because they usually mean spoiler for me but yeah, more editorial entry is always welcome.
I think I’ll always be an episodic blogger at heart, but lots of ideas for editorial posts have been bouncing around in my head lately too. The next up should be a series of at least two posts about Legend of the Galactic Heroes since I just finished that and there is much to discuss, then the second EO’s Fighting Ships post. Beyond that is whatever I decide to pull out of my ideas .txt file and start writing up, hehe.
Wow, has it been a year already? Congrats! I feel like there’s a handful of people that act as the glue for aniblogosphere, not just blog posting, but responding to comments, checking out other blogs, twittering, etc., and you’re definitely one of them, IMO. Cheers to the first year, cheers to the next!
Yeah, it’s hard to believe that it’s been that long since we each started blogging Sora no Manimani back then. Looking forward to continuing our shipping wars when season 2 of Nyan-Koi comes out, hehe. Or perhaps a second season of SoraMani one day
I do try to ‘get out’ often in the community and keep up with the blogs I like (which can be a task sometimes because I like so many blogs!) It’s a lot of fun in and of itself, and like you say it also helps hold together and grow the community. And in a way I sort of think of it as being an ambassador for THAT out in the community, trading comments and ideas that make their way around the sphere. I’ve gotten more than a few ideas for posts from interacting with all my colleagues that way.
Congratulations! I haven’t seen the best side of your posting recently since it’s mostly been (late due to subs) episodics and retroblogging, but I read through the posts that you linked in the middle of your post and you certainly have a much more varied posting style than what I’ve seen from you recently! It’s also interesting to see a complete lack of pictures in your editorials, as it’s just so different from the image spam in your episodics. Here’s to many more years!
Thank you comrade. At my core I’m an episodic blogger, and while I have fun with occassional editorials or special features they’re definitely in the minority of my posts (linking to some of those just made it seem like I write more than I do since linking to episodics isn’t as varied in terms of showing examples of what I’ve written) I plan on more in the future, but I enjoy episodics for the direct engagement with and reaction to the shows, as opposed to the broader, more analytical sweep of editorials. I enjoy reading and writing both, but episodics will always be my focus even if they’re less ‘glamorous’ among the community of other bloggers.
On images, in my view there’s more of a place for lots of images in episodics since it’s a direct reaction to one or two episodes. When I write editorials I’m generally not pointing out specific lines of dialogue or frames for shot analysis since editorials tend to cover a much wider scope of topics. But for episodics I like to use lots of them for direct commentary or jokes since the smaller scope of an episodic entry means that the little details matter more and are fresher in the reader’s mind. That’s how I look at it anyhow.
Congratulations once again on your year of blogging! Pretty weird to think about this, because my one-year anniversary is just around the corner . . . a year flies by pretty damn quick these days. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we’re celebrating the two-year, three-year, four-year and so on.
Cheers to both of us
Seems a fair bit of bloggers started out around the time we did. Summer seems like a natural time for people to pick up blogging. And yeah, the year did go incredibly fast.
Congrats!!!
I hope you can even make more sensible posts and watch good and decent shows in the future.
Let’s say for the next 10 years…hahahah, who can tell.
Thanks. While that’s far, far into the future, it would certainly be interesting to have blogged for ten years, longer than the aniblogging community has even existed. Thanks for your support, I’m looking forward to many more posts written.
Thanks for being consistent, EO! Congrats on the year! I actually just started following THAT a few months ago, but I really love how you, and the other bloggers, are so diligent in responding to comments. Divine, Prooof, and Kiragi do a good job of it at Random Curiosity, but I gotta say, you guys are one step above.
Glad to have you with us so recently, and thank you for the wishes. Responding to comments is so much fun, it’s a really rewarding part of the blogging experience. I definitely encourage responding to all comments in a timely manner, it really gives the blog that feeling of community interaction.
Hi there.
I have only recently started to read That Anime Blog and I have been really enjoying it so far. So while I can’t really comment on your past achievements other than the past few weeks I sincerely hope that I’ll be able to congratulate you in 12 months to another year of awesome content.
Glad to know that you’re enjoying our blog, and welcome! Looking forward to seeing you around here in the next year, I think I can safely say that I’ll be around then. Cheers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85g62zQ_PYs
My link tribute for you, I became your regular reader because of this series and your months dedication. Let there be more years for you here.
if don’t like Japanese, then this song will suffice =.=;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMAJk76oX-s&hd=1
I heartily approve of a Minmay song being hijacked in service of showing how superior Misa is in all respects!
Thanks for the link, your wishes, and your readership. It means a lot to me to know that my posts brought you in as a regular reader.
Congratulations!
I loved that part about veterans. I used to be so afraid to leave comments, especially on big sites. I’d lurk and lurk and lurk. I guess I still feel nervous often about saying something. But it was really nice to realize that major bloggers are also nice people. Well, some are. ^ ^
And I should really keep the fun first in mind.
Thank you! Ah yes, the veterans. I only ever lurked on THAT (and pretty much on every forum or site prior to starting out as a writer here) and felt super nervous when I first wrote that email asking to be considered. And then when I started I’d see all these other veterans in comments and on twitter. But they turned out to all be fun and helpful people. We’re all online blogging, commenting, and/or tweeting because we love anime, and that seems to bridge all gaps. Well except for the occassional bit of drama, but that’s easily enough avoided by abstaining from the fray.
You only get to be called a grizzled veteran if you can steal a kiss (with tongue) from a girl while she’s on a landmine (that you defused without her knowing).
Haha, not to be immodest but I’ve pulled off some good ones in my time, just not quite at the defused landmine level. But everyone needs goals to strive towards, lest we become complacent
Well, congratulations. So that was your first post, huh. Guess that was back when I didn’t pay as much attention to who was writing what.
Anyways, I must say you’re my favorite writer here on THAT. We seem to like and agree on a lot of things. This is also a little bad; it means I have difficulty writing comments (you know, not much to counter-argue
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Thank you very much, I’m happy to know that you enjoy my posts so much. Hehe, though I can see how that could make commenting hard sometimes, I have the same problem with some other bloggers that I really like.
“Average words per post: 3977.”
Even if you slice that number in half to account for recaps on episodic blog posts, that still comes out to a very impressive 2000 words on average dedicated to thoughts and impressions on every episode. Hope to see more editorials and the like in the future!
Planning some more editorials. Currently I’m writing or have in the queue a set of three Legend of the Galactic Heroes editorials. Then a week or two after that I’m going to write my second “EO’s Fighting Ships” OTP post. Might even get to include Crusader on that one since he’s back in the country.
A belated congratulations on reaching your first year milestone! I would’ve commented sooner, but I was a bit overawed by your word count, and then there’s my THAT lurker status that I really need work on shaking. Keep up the good work (and I’m looking forward to your writeup on sex hair part II… ; ).
Thank you! No worries about being a lurker, I’m just glad to have readers. Amagami continues, though I’ll be out of town for next weekend so I’m leaving the ep 07 post in the capable hands of Shinmaru from Unmei Kaihen. So lend him your ear (eyes?) while I’m away, and then I’ll be back for the Sexhair: Final Conflict the week after.
I was always late and this time, it’s no exception. Congratulations on the anniversary!
You are not just a good blogger, you are also a very good commentator. I think that part of you really contributes to your success, at least partially.
Haha, no worries. Thank you for the well wishes! Commenting, whether on other’s blogs or in replies to other’s comments on my posts, is something I really enjoy. For years I was a lurker on places like SomethingAwful, and I still lurked for the first year and a half after finding THAT since I didn’t always think I could contribute meaningfully. But since I had to come out of my shell when I started blogging, I always try my best to contribute something that (seriously or jokingly) addresses the post or comment I’m replying to with substance. Sometimes it takes me a little while to collect my thoughts or think of a way to respond, but that makes me think further about the subject matter, which is one of the things I enjoy most about the whole anime blogging experience.
Congratulations on your first year! I have really enjoyed your Macross entries. I am an older Macross fan and it is nice to see a fresh and interesting view on the saga I so love. Looking forward to year 2 and your takes on other series as well!
Covering the Macross series was really enjoyable for me, and I’m glad you liked my posts as I went through them. The comments, opinions, and support of the long time Macross fans as I blogged the older series made it so much more enjoyable. And in an interesting turn, recently I’ve had the chance to be in the older fans’ shoes and watch other bloggers watch and cover the Macross canon for the first time. Ah, the circle of
lifeMacross.