My favorite moments of the year
Auld Lang Mnemosyne.
With the exception of a brief period on Blogger and an even briefer period on wordpress.com (where I thought I could grab some inherent traffic but ultimately got too pissed off that I couldn’t make my own theme), this blog has been running more or less since the beginning of the year. So my end-of-year retrospective is really a retrospective about my first year of anime blogging. Let’s stroll down memory lane, in some cases to a place most of you haven’t been.
1. True Tears, ep. 9
Clannad was my first episodically blogged show, and ironically one of the last as well. Then came Shakugan No Shana, because I knew I would be forced to watch it until the end anyway. True Tears brought out the grossest in me, though, since I couldn’t be smarmy about something I liked so much. But it did net me my first real comment, which was from Kabitzin and was about hot pockets or something. I’m also particularly proud of this paragraph:
It isn’t long before Hiromi is the talk of the town, and soon she and Jun are both suspended from their respective schools. Damn, Japan is hard core. Here in this country, if you put a girl on the back of your bike and try to kill her by riding off into the sunset in the middle of winter, they give you a medal. I’ve seen it. It’s got James Dean punching kittens on it, and if you look real close Sinatra is fucking a bald eagle in the background.
God bless us, every one.
2. The H2O drinking game
CCY was probably the second guy who ever stopped by the blog, mostly to disagree with me about H2O ~Footprints in the Sand, which, bless his heart, he seemed to like. You want to talk about trainwrecks — at least Geass had some semblance of Just as Planned to it, while H2O was just all over the fucking place. At one point I drank my way through an episode and tried to pass the experience on to you. My favorite H2O moment, though, comes from the ridiculous pseudo-parody episode, #8:
Like a trip to visit your dying Uncle Bobo in the clown hospital, a bittersweet end to a random-ass experience.
Ultimately, blogging the adventures of Blindy, Platform Shoes, Uncle Dragonball, and the rest of the gang was the most fun I had episodic blogging before pretty much giving it up. I had hoped to pick something equally awful every season, but it just caught me by such wild surprise that the experience may never repeat itself. Sad.
3. I fixed the fucking industry.
I don’t know shit about any industry but my own, which happens to be publishing worthless content on the stupid internet. Hey, otou-san, isn’t it sad, that’s your hobby too? Yes.
I do know that what we predicted has come to pass, not that it was a really hard call since Gonzo had already started it. I didn’t expect licensing companies like Funimation to stream current series quite so soon, but I’m glad it’s happening. That’s not important though. What is important is that I went through that blogger rite of passage, to be ignored, dropped, twitter-blocked, and left for dead by Scott Von Schilling. It all happened because I might have sort of implied that he thinks he’s better than other bloggers.
It all ended with a simple emoticon. For the record, that was (-_-)
4. The Yukan podcast
I’m not saying it was good. I’m not saying it deserved the sequel that it so far has not gotten. I’m just saying that it happened. Turned out it was mostly about Kurenai, which I’d barely give the time of day to a few months later. I’m trying really hard to find the outtake reel I put together, which is even more fun.
5. The reign of Oi, Hayaku! begins
I hope we take over the world, or whatever it is we plan on doing. I don’t know when or even quite how, but I do know I wrote a couple posts I am most proud of for that site. The first is my site debut, “It takes a fanboy,” thanks to which I take at least partial credit for creating the Frankenstein’s Monster of Love, ghostlightning (call me Igor to Lbrevis’s Dr. F). The second is “DMC: True?,” in which, for the first time, I successfully combined my love of anime and music to validate the best fucking show of the year.
6. Clannad Sucks.
This one’s still part of recent memory, so let’s not get too into it. I’m sure the show still sucks though.
Anyhoo, thanks to everyone who’s commented or even lurked over the past year, it’s been fun so far for this late bloomer and I look forward to the next year of rocking socks.
I was hoping to be a monster as cool as Johann from Urasawa’s manga (and Madhouse anime), but I’ll take what I can!
Seriously OH! made so many things happen for me – just the quality of comments that WRL got from its authors back when practically no one was reading were/are the kind of spiral energy that allows me to kick reason to the curb, and love this otaku obsession without shame and without prejudice.
And you sir, are a big part of this. More and more I’ll build my thoughts on what it is to be the kind of fanboy that I am, similar to Digiboy’s epic journey, and the seed of this was planted in that awesome post of yours that made me remember my love for GAINAX.
I keep hoping there will be a sequel podcast… the first one helped me pass some time during an eighteen hour car ride after I finished blitzing through Tenchi Muyo TV and needed to let my eyes rest.
Almost wish I could have been around for the True Tears and H2O episodic posts based on those little blurbs. Might have actually made them entertaining for me in a way.