Category Archives: Meta

aniblogs and aniblogging

Koji Oe ragequits fansub watching

Good grief, if ever there was a thankless job, fansubbing would be it. The trigger was:

I’ve gotten so tired of fan sub groups and their shitty subs and fitting in over 9000 internet memes into one episode. So f*ck fan subs. [Doh, forgot about the AnimeNano filter.]

I have my pet gripes wrt some fansub groups re: timeliness, (lack of) completion, (adaptation of) honorifics, (lack of xdcc/weak seeding) distro, (retreat of AVI) encoding blah blah blah but, at the end of the day, hey it’s free (as in beer), thanks guys and gals for all your hard work!  Well at least one positive is that Koji Oe will be using his aggressive feelings to become a Dark Lord of Badass Raw Watching (BRW) and Watching Anime for Enjoyment. All the best!

The feasibility of BRW varies from series to series though. As absolute0 observed:

When Mouryou no Hako came out, I attempted to blog from the raws but the show proved too difficult for my Nihongo skills. In the end, I stopped blogging about it.

I can’t help but fantasize about how Japan Foundation, JESS and JAM will put together some kind of certification scheme around a Japanese Anime Language Proficiency Test where JALPT N1 means you are officially recognized to be able to go forth and BRW Ghost in the Shell, GA:GADC, Yuki Nagato’s explanations etc. without any problems. No guarantees about its usability outside  outside of Akiba, Otome Road and Nakano Broadway though.

Still grappling with Google Reader

The AniBlog Tourney (where I completely approve of blatant bribery) gave me the impetus to start an updating exercise of my AniBlog Google Reader subscriptions and to review the way I have been using Google Reader. (BTW I used to use Bloglines but having one less sign-in was too big a draw.)  I am also belatedly trying to recall and reflect on the advice of an audio book (title: Blogging for business? author: Chris Andersen??) about using feedreaders as well as to do some wish-listing: Continue reading →

21stcenturydigitalboy on progression of favourite anime

A nice retrospective about how his favourites have changed over time but, given my corruption by methodology lectures, I tend to be somewhat sceptical of lists as a record (or even report) of what one actually liked (likes) [cf. long list of possible biases involved]; some sort of longitudinal double-blind non-participant observation to collect data on number of rewatches, money-where-mouth-is etc might yield a more accurate picture.

Having said that, such lists could be still be highly informative about how the lister would, at the time of writing, like the reader to perceive him. And comparing the gap is likely to be entertaining. Back in 2007, tj_han wrote a witty caption that, even after all this time, brings across the point mercilessly:

Wildarmsheero is a kid who pretends to be really old and thus an orthodox fan. But he really loves Gundam Wing. This is like someone writing “I like alternative rock” in his facebook and then attending Britney Spears concerts.

To Claim The Throne

Author rubbished my attempt to crown Aroduc (and mentioned the succession again):

But did they even notice that Aroduc did not blog Kimi ni Todoke, one of the best shows of the season? Will all due respect, he (a) has specific interests, (b) works alone (*). The truth is, we do not have a ready replacement for Omni.

Touché though I think he meant “most widely watched” rather than “best” since though it is more likely the case than not that a “best” series is also a popular one, there is no necessary relationship between the perceived QUALITY of a show and its popularity (cf. K-ON!).

I’m giving popularity a higher weight in my non-mathematical calculations because I get the feeling that  the succession will be decided by the readership via popular acclamation. Thus the scope of coverage to include the most popular series of a season will also play an important role. It also got me thinking as to which Spring series a blog would have to cover in order to gain the right of succession. Continue reading →

Aniblogging for Fun

super rats metablogs about his current state of Zen

I have 1/5th the daily traffic today as I did from 2007-2009 and I’m not bothered by it… While I miss the money, it feels great to not care about traffic. Really, amazingly great.

It’s always a drag when your hobby becomes work (though even at 20% of peak, happy soda still enjoys relatively high traffic as well as regular aggregation by foobarbaz) so getting back to blogging for its own sake must be a relief and, for readers, a welcome sign of continued blog health and longevity.

The importance of having fun was an explicit assumption in the SS!AB Spring 2010 draft; Kabitzin said something along the lines of: “Pick a series that you will enjoy blogging most.” Certainly that takes care of intrinsic motivation though I reckon how effective it is in the medium to long term depends on the consistency of the anime series being blogged and the personality type of the blogger.

I have trouble with this sometimes so I can see the usefulness of extrinsic motivators like comments, links, traffic, ad revenue,reputation etc. Personally my strongest motivator is playing for the team (but also expecting the team to play well together) – probably something to do with consistently being scored as an ISTJ.

ADD: Author snipes me for absolutism. He’s right on target; what I meant was the danger of the joy getting sucked out of blogging.