I have a bunch of stuff to talk about, and some updates, too! Let’s start with the updates.
The first update is, I opened a new blog. You can find it at animelife.blog. This is actually a little bit similar to Texihabara (which I will be repurposing or closing soon, and I should have done that months ago), but this is stuff I actually want to talk about, instead of just trying to make content for the sake of making content, which is what Texihabara was. I will be reviewing animes I’ve watched, and for some of them, doing episode by episode reviews. Some animes have affected me so deeply that I actually want to do this, and I’m also making an effort to improve my writing as I do so. My first reviews are on “Sound! Euphonium”, which is an anime I pretty much fell in love with, so I have a lot to say about it. I’ll also be reviewing a few other animes that really impressed me, like “March Comes in like a Lion”.
I’m debating whether I should review “Onimai: I am now your sister”, hah. I actually rather liked it (which seems to be a rather unpopular, or at least unexpressed, opinion) but I have my reasons, which have absolutely nothing to do with fanservice.
Believe it or not, I mostly find fanservice annoying. But you might already know that.
The second update is, I’m going to spend some time overhauling this one. I never really liked what I did with this theme. Honestly, I spun this up on DreamHost, and at the time they had a deal of some kind with BoldGrid, which provided some neat enough themes, but there are other options available now, like Elementor, etc. I think this blog has a lot of untapped potential I haven’t done much with. So… I’m going to put that on my list of Things to Do. So, if it goes into maintenance mode for a while, that’s why. It’ll come back better than ever. Hopefully.
The third update: Remember the Lily project? I actually moved her domain over to lilysamazinglife.com (I like “Lily’s Amazing Life” a lot better), she has reached nearly 400,000 words now, and I’m going to start the process soon of putting the story places where it’s easier to find. Truth be told, I think I really should start cherry-picking content and making a synopsis out of it, but I really don’t know where to start. But that’s also something I’ll be up to at some point soon. I’ve also backed off a bit on the realism and I’m treating her more as a character than someone I’m trying to bring to life, but I still really like her and she’s very real to me in some ways.
I have a bunch of other projects going too, but some of them I’ve put on the back burner. For example, I had a YouTube channel I had put some effort into. Recently I hid all but about three of the videos and I’m contemplating just stopping that venture entirely. I have a face for radio and a voice for silent films, and frankly, I just don’t have the presence for it. I’m better at writing, and that’s probably where I should put most of my effort. I also did some experimentation with vtubing, in order to bring Lily to life. I also have mostly stopped that, for now. Truth is, I probably could make a pretty successful Lily character with the tools I have (AI voice changers are amazing), but that’s something that makes me vaguely uncomfortable and until I have an actual reason to do it, there’s really no point in bothering, is there?
I’m still studying Japanese. I have a reason now. I don’t want to need English subtitles on anime, or English manga translations. A rather weeb reason, I suppose, but any reason is better than no reason, right? I don’t know how good I am but I think I could pretty easily pass N5 right now (whether I will try is another question entirely).
Anyway, those are the updates. Frankly, I doubt anyone read this far, and I doubt anyone who read this far cares, but I write for me more than anyone else. I need to write. I write as much out of a compulsion to do so as I do because I want to or because I like writing. Which can be, shall we say… troublesome, sometimes.