What Makes A Post or An Anime A Hit?

I think the biggest question that we as bloggers ponder is how one becomes successful at this hobby. Does subscriber count measure success? Is it because one of us wrote a quality post that everyone fell in love and agreed with? What about all the effort and passion one put into a certain set or singular post because they want it to be successful. Or maybe Is it because one’s post that one wrote appeared at the right time and had relevant information for that time period in media. Or what about other questions that I didn’t think about asking?

Its all of those sorts of things, but I think success in this field mostly has to do with luck. If a post hits some luck and was passionate and well thought out, excellent. If there is the same situation but no luck at all, then that be considered a failure in some people’s eyes. That doesn’t just have to do with blogging, it has to do with everything that becomes popular and has staying power somehow. Like anime. This is an anime blog after all, so I’m sticking with that. Any piece of content produced is always similar in some ways even if the medium itself is completely different.

Making a Popular Anime?

When thinking up what to write for this post, I couldn’t help but think about certain anime that had tons of effort and heart put into them but never became successful. Especially in the early 2010’s. I’m not going to say that all shows in that time period were bad because they weren’t. (Yes, my opinion has changed on that.) There were some obvious successes and hits from that time period that we all still think about like Hunter x Hunter, Madoka Magica, and a few others. No, with this post I’m thinking about Space Dandy and Tiger and Bunny. Two shows that had their production staff and voice actors put so much passion and thought it their products and yet aren’t remembered that well. Shinichiro Watanabe really put his all into making Space Dandy something special and the general public almost completely forgot about it and I almost feel the same happened to Tiger and Bunny. I remember going to Sakuracon seeing tons of Tiger and Bunny cosplay but years later, they weren’t there. What happened?

I think the largest thing that affected them was impact and luck. Tiger and Bunny was a super hero show that came out during the early period of the MCU so it sounded like it would be a hit right? Yet, it came out too early to get My Hero Academia’s numbers. Super Hero fever wasn’t as strong yet and anime wasn’t as streamable yet, so those things held it back. The answer to what happened is obvious. I’m still shocked about Space Dandy though. It had the director fromCowboy Bebop and other anime, Shinichiro Watanabe, behind it and even aired on Toonami dubbed at the same time the sub came out. Why didn’t it take off? Is it because Shinichiro wanted it too much and just thought it would be massive? Did it not have that one episode or moment that kept it in cultural consciousness? What about having his name not out there as well as it could be because Cowboy Bebop is “old” now? So many questions to answer here and I can’t stop thinking about them.

I always try to think about the successes as well. Like K-On for instance. How did that show change the anime sphere like it did? How did it spawn tons of copies from other studios that never found out how K-On really worked. (I’m not the largest fan of the show, but I respect it quite a lot.) Was it timing? Did the world of anime need something different and it was K-On? Was it also Kyoto Animation’s passion and production prowess behind it that made it special? Could there be another anime that aired around the same time just as good that was over looked because of this one? So many questions to think about really. Sometimes the world wants something with a lot of passion and heart behind it. Whatever the answer is, you know you made it when other people want to take the idea that came out and try to replicate them.

Making A Successful Blog?

With that, we move to back to blogging. So many bloggers just starting out always ask the question of how does one develop a more popular blog with more followers or how to create a blog post that gets a lot of likes. The only solid answers I can say is make sure your posts have a sense of personality behind them so the reader can feel the real you and publish as many posts as you can on a schedule. Make sure you find that balance between posting often and writing quality posts while you are at it. Plus, become friends with a few bloggers too so you are apart of a community, and find your own blogging niche so your posts are different from other peoples. Those things will at least allow you gain some readership and followers as you blog more and more. Just like how an anime can’t become popular without people watching and loving it, a blog wouldn’t take off unless you start out with a reliable amount of people to read your posts.

Other then that, it’s all about luck. A post that you write for days on end to perfect might never take off while a post that you spent a couple minutes on might explode. Or the opposite happens. It’s honestly like a game of roulette. The more times you publish a post, the larger the chance that your post will become a success. This is honestly something that I am always stymied by even if it happened time after time again. How did a post that only took five minutes to write get so much love? Is it because it’s not a curated and has more personality then usual? Is it because it’s actually good when it doesn’t take very long? Is the more un-distilled me content what people prefer compared to the more logical thinking ones? It’s just so hard to tell because there is no clear answer. That is why blogging is so hard.

With all of that out of the way, the biggest way you can call your blog a success is by your standards. You are the one judging what you write and looking at all your stats as you write posts. What do you consider a success? A growing blog? The fact that you wrote a post out that you really love? Viewers? The goal posts you set for yourself are the hardest things to deal with. For me, I always have a voice in my head going “this isn’t good enough, you aren’t catching up to (insert blogger) this way.” I do my best to avoid that voice and just write my posts the way I want to, but it’s always there looking at me. If you ever appease your inner judge, then I think you can call your blog a success.

Conclusions and Thanks

So this post is a stealth 900 subscriber celebration post. I think I’ve found my own little success somehow on the anime blogosphere, so thank you for following me. You know, despite my focus of mostly older and mecha anime these days. How did those get any interest? I’m honestly shocked. I know that I am not the largest aniblog out there because there are quite a few larger ones that I always look forward to, but do I have to have the largest one? It Does is matter as long as I am passionate about what I’m writing about? No, no it doesn’t. Thank you for reading my posts, everyone. I’ve been lucky to have all of you following me around. I hope the quality of my posts have been pretty good. I’ve been trying to improve and change over time and hopefully you have all noticed. I want to stay around longer and write quite a few more posts if I can. Please look forward to more content in the future.

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