12 Days of Reminiscence #1 – Off to a good start

(This is a part of the series of posts, 12 Days of Christmas, done in my own way.)

Eh, this is basically the last 12 Days post, which is several days late but, anyway, I’m publishing this because I don’t want to owe my future self any debt. And since I started this series, I should properly end it, right?

Darou?

First of all, I wanna thank the people I met and knew from the past year for making it a memorable first year of my solo anime blogging! You know who you are–or, at least, I trust that you know I’m referring to you, reader! 😀

I immediately dived into this tiny world without knowing the first to-do’s, like an introductory post or blog goals post, but this blog nonetheless managed to have some readers and people who regularly like and comment on my posts. Please take my simple words of gratitude for making me happy!

Arigatou from the bottom of my kokoro

Although it hasn’t been a year that I’ve run this blog, nostalgia is bugging me to look back at what meaningless and meaningful things I threw at my readers. Let’s begin at, well, the beginning!

June ~ July 2014

Silence filled my blog back then, when I was still starting to settle on this tiny world and have my own place. Only the souls who got lost on the internet happened to stumble upon this tiny space. Did they find what they wanted here? I doubt they did–there was hardly anything at all. But there were some things I wish they appreciated, even if they found them by accident.

• Ojii-san no Lamp and how jobs back then are now obsolete
• And when I was so filled with ‘genki!‘, trying to cheer up just anyone
• Barakamon just established its own kingdom in my blog for its talks about talent and whatnot—I’m kinda sad how unappreciated this post is even though I’m very happy with how it turned out
• and I wrote a lot of random stuff, which are just the result of my experiment to see which posts would actually be important to me in the long run

August ~ September 2014

I was still lost in my own blog at this time and the content was all over the place. Though it doesn’t mean I already have a very definite sense of where this blog will head from now on. Still, I had fun writing most of the posts I published within this period.

• Like how I kinda called for help for the Under The Dog project at Kickstarter? –but I didn’t pledge even a cent! Teehee.
• Fujinsei’s ArriaCross’ translation prowess inspired me to, uhh, try translating(?) a couple of videos about animation in the Philippines! —Though I only got the most important details, thanks to the big Japanese texts throughout the segment, I did’t bother writing the roughest parts. Japanese talk real fast I couldn’t catch up and had to rewind some parts. So I salute you, Arria-chan!
• Sakura Namikaze nominated me for the Liebster Blog Award! I was really looking forward to this, even before I started this blog and was only imagining running one. This wasn’t a productive chain, though.
• I hate the phrase YOLO, and I had a valid reason to do so. Carpe diem is the right (and more beautiful) phrase (of the two).
• Here I was a little too excited with GooglePH’s live action version of a game which we anime fans would recognize as a VN. Don’t worry, it’s in English so you can play it live if you want to (thankfully, it’s still there)! You might get more than a glimpse of Filipino lifestyle.
• I wrote some rants, too. Ugh, the tone of this post is just so unfriendly. Sorrymasen, but I truly meant what I said here.

October ~ November 2014

This was fairly the revolutionary phase of my baby steps in blogging. I actually worked up some courage to try and talk to fellow bloggers out there. And since then, my world view has been expanding. It was getting more fun, and it still is!

• The sudden rise of Princess Sara potato memes here in the PH, caused the local TV channel to make an ultra-throwback by rerunning the 1980s anime, which was a part of the childhood years of virtually every ’90 liner adult in the country.
• Jumping on the wagon isn’t always welcome, but I felt it was okay with the 30 day anime challenge, which I made into a 30-week anime challenge. Mind you, I’m not even doing it weekly now. *Facepalm* I’ll get to it again, eventually, because it was fun meeting other anime bloggers through the contagious challenge.
• I figured I should start doing my own projects, too, so that this blog will have some real content, no matter how boring that would be for some. Characters resembling me in one trait or two sounded like a plan, so I went with the idea starting with KamiAso’s Hades.
• Guess what my most read/visited post is? It’s the random and seemingly senseless post about bouncing anime boobs, i.e. Kill la Kill style! It kind of flatters me that my lame attempt at being sarcastic would draw in more readers than I thought, but it’s rather disturbing that some people looking for NSFW material would find their way to my blog. *Squints eyes at the most common search key words*
• Oh yeah, I made a page for my blogroll! And the list is steadily growing with lots of senpai being added. If you’re interested to exchange links with me, just let me know here or at twitter.

December 2014

• Well, quite a lot of things happened so I wasn’t able to publish anything on the early days of this month. And while I was away, I managed to write drafts for my thoughts on Zaregoto books 1 (Kubikiri Cycle) & 2 (Kubishime Romanticist), which were later published.
• Heh, I even got to publish my first attempt at reviewing, the subject being All You Need is Kill manga and novel. I still got a lot more to polish on my style and analysis, but I really enjoyed writing this one.
• Site changes here and there. First, with the new mascot, Sun-chan! Then days later, an overall change in how my blog looks. I also tried fixing my naming sense. Phew.
• Joined the masses a bit too late with the 12 Days posts, but I took this as a chance to just let people know why I was absent for a few days. Then I realized that the world is filled with nice people. To all those who tried to cheer me up here and on twitter, thanks again.

2014 IRL was also full of good memories, despite how it closed with painful ones which made New Year’s too bland and too silent. From here on, things are going to be a lot more difficult, but I don’t want to lose hope nor I am losing hope! Everything happens and even if we can’t comprehend today for which purpose it takes place, there will come a time we will learn to know and accept why it happened.

And with that, I officially say goodbye to 2014 and hello to 2015! Cheesy, I know. Looking forward to writing more, publishing more, meeting more people, and everything more!