Upcoming Features and Blogging Plans

With my 2016 Anime viewing/reviewing Challenge (and 2016 itself for that matter) behind us, I’ve been wondering how I can keep making this “Simply One Hell of a Blog.” To that end, I’ve been thinking of a number of new features and some blogging items I’ve been meaning to catch up on to add a little variety from the regular content.

Review writing completely dominated my time in the last few months of the year, and considering I’ve only had this blog since July it dominated my content as well. I’ve seen plenty of praise for my review style but there must be some of you who are tired of 4000+ word reviews. It’s okay, you can say it. I did add nice TL;DR summaries though 😦

If you like the reviews, don’t worry. They’re not going away, but they won’t be as frequent as what I did in the final weeks of my challenge. There’s no way I can sustain that pace, but it is something I think I and the blog have come to be known for, so I won’t be dropping them.

Still, I had plenty of ideas for content that I couldn’t fit into my schedule until my challenge ended. A lot of these should be shorter or more engaging than the reviews, and will hopefully appeal to those of you who have a long list of blogs to follow up on each day or want a quicker read.

Here are some previews of what I had in mind:

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Blogging Awards

A lot of you have been including me in your nominations for awards you received. I haven’t yet been able to respond to any, but I want to state once more that I’m very thankful you decided to consider me. I promised I would get to these in January, so I’ll see to it that I get through some of them this month at least. Many of these awards have questionnaires involved, though it’s probably been so long that you forgot what you wanted to know about me! Still, I’ll do my best to answer your curiosities with some entertaining facts about your favorite casual otaku (maybe I’m not your favorite, but humor me).

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Perspectives

Some of my favorite posts to read aren’t about a specific anime, but rather trends and meta discussions about the medium. Everyone has different experiences when it comes to watching anime, and I would like to share my insights about a great variety of things.

Topics might include things like “watching anime with your spouse,” which will explore my experiences in sharing anime with KimmieKawaii. There will be no set format for these posts, and they will likely be free form discussions – something that will be new for me on this blog. These will be meant to spark discussion and debate, so please feel free to speak your mind so we can get some lively interaction going.

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New Feature: Who Did it Better?

An idea that’s been going through my head for some time now. I’ll take a look at some theme or premise used in anime and look at some series that use it or feature it to some degree, then explore the question of “who did it better?”

For example, a topic could be “My Servant is Secretly a Badass.” This theme would apply to several anime, like Black Butler, Hellsing, and Black Lagoon (Sebastian, Walter, Roberta, respectively). I would then look at several arbitrary criteria like: “How good a butler is he/she?”, “How well kept is the secret?”, and “Is their job as a butler important to the anime?” Ultimately I’ll arrive at an answer to “Who did it better?” I’ll probably not do this specific one, but you get the idea.

I guess I’m not the first to compare these two?

These posts will be a mix of analysis and entertainment that will also hopefully foster some good natured debates. I have a few topics in mind, but I’m open to any ideas you want me to write about. I can only properly discuss shows that I have seen, though. If you have a great topic idea and can help me out with an anime I haven’t seen, I would love to do a collaboration or guest posts.

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New Feature: What’s in a Scene?

You remember that scene in your favorite anime, right? Where something dramatic happens that either changes the course of the story or signals the culmination of the anime’s development up until that point?

Or even starts it?

I’m going to be taking a look at some scenes in anime that really captured my attention. I’ll analyze the parts of each one, searching for symbolism and discussing why the scene is an especially important part of the series. I plan to include a lot of detail, but they should still be shorter than my reviews. I can’t guarantee that these will be spoiler free, but if you watched the shows I reviewed last year you’ll be mostly safe.

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Episodic Anime Discussion

A lot of people do these, but what I had in mind is a little different. The idea came from KimmieKawaii, who thought it would be fun to do episodic discussion of several titles from this upcoming Winter 2017 season. Being the confrontational jerk I am, I added a couple of added twists to make things interesting

Because we have different taste in what we like, we decided to pick our favorites for the season and force each other to watch. Each week we’ll give our individual thoughts on that week’s episode for each show. So long as one of us is still watching the show, both of us have to weigh in.

Expect some clashes between the Super Otaku Busters, for the sake of your enjoyment. As the season is starting soon (today?), expect this to be the first new feature added with a separate introductory post coming soon.

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Special Events

Throughout the year I plan to do some events to help get people reading and interacting with each other here. The first of these is something I have planned for the month of April, during which I have been asking fans of a certain show to keep their calendars free.

Hint

Of all the shows I lament not being able to watch alongside the anime community, the foremost is probably Your lie in April. To  remedy that, I’ll be scheduling a re-watch event this April to talk about it on an episode by episode basis and try to recapture some of the magic. Whether you’ve already seen the series or have yet to do so, I encourage everyone to participate. There will also be a prize giveaway, so do keep a lookout for more on this as we get closer to that month.

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That’s all I had for now, but if inspiration strikes me, I may very well add more. What do you all think of the upcoming content? Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Is there anything you are looking forward to the most?