My 4th Blogiversary Thoughts and Hopes for the Future!

Personal 2019 Thoughts and Talk

I’m just going to say it right now, 2019 was a major dumpster fire of a year for me. It’s like 2019 looked at the optimism that I had coming out of 2018 and decided “nope, none of that”. For instance, you know that I got a degree Aerospace Engineering right? Well, Boeing had to pull some stupid things with their 737 Max and cause the aerospace industry to collapse quite a bit. It really hurts that they are stopping production of some of their airplanes next year in my general area. All of which means there isn’t going to be as many jobs in that field in my general area to apply for in the future. That means I need to try to be creative in what I do next and I’m not sure what that is yet. You ever feel like you got a degree in the wrong field? Gah. I Need to get out of this part time job and do something else exciting and innovative.

That’s not where things stop though because the health problems of my parents and the death of my family dog have really played into the bad mood of 2019 as well. I love our new dog Nala because she’s cute and so smart, but I miss Anna a lot. My dad is generally fine now, but he’s taking medication for his heart because he wasn’t able to breathe as well due to some heart value problems this year. At least he’s doing ok now. The main problem is mom though. She came in this year with a knee replacement at the same time as dad’s problems. She had her knee replacement surgery, it went fine for a while, then it got infected leading to a doctor’s office visit where many other medical problems were discovered. Mom is at home and is doing a lot better now, but she hasn’t had her knee re-replacement surgery yet. Don’t know when that will be at the moment.

If you are wondering why I’ve been spending more and more time writing and reading blog posts this year then I have in the past, I feel like this is one of my few escape routes that from reality that exist for me. I’ve been spending all this time here doing all these things because I need it. Maybe that’s a superficial reason for having an obsession with blogging and maybe it isn’t, but I honestly have had some days where I wouldn’t feel like me if I didn’t have somewhere to vent some positivity in the world somewhere. All very melodramatic right? Probably. Do I care? Not really. If anything, at least I am doing something constructive with my time. Ok, let’s get out of the big depression thing ok?

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Blogging Achievements

I’m pretty happy with how my blog has grown this year. I know it’s not as huge of a growth as the years before, but that’s ok. I’ve learned to change things up in ways that I wouldn’t before and get somewhat interesting results while being decently innovative at the same time. I know that I have said a few times that I don’t care how far my blog grows and that’s not always true. I like knowing that I have some sense of forward momentum on this platform and I’ve gotten to the point where it’s getting harder to do that. Just means I need to keep trucking.

While I’ve had a decent dip in views in the early part of 2019 after end of the year things which is whyI’m glad that I’ve been build up some momentum in the later half. I hope that I haven’t been pushing things too hard in those posts where everything feels more robotic. I’m always trying to be me. Somehow that person managed to hit the four digits of followers on this blog? Holy crap. That’s huge for me. I know it’s nothing compared to youtubers because they can get that amount in a shorter amount of time, but it means a lot to me. I barely know how to celebrate that here.

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Reaching The Goals From Last Year And Other Surprises

I feel like I was able to do everything that I wanted to do and a little more. I said I would do Anno August last year and I was able to do it somehow. With that expectation in hand, I am going to try doing it again for another famous anime director. Something that I’ve talked a little bit about in some other posts, but will cover in more detail in this post later on.

One major thing I did this year, which came out of nowhere, was my Space Tour thing that somehow blew up the blogosphere for a while. Holy crap man. I almost had to delay my event for Anno August for a week in order to achieve everything I wanted to. I’m going to try doing something like that again this following year in 2020, so I doubt that I will see anything that big but I want to do it again if that’s ok. Once again, future details will appear later in this post.

I also did Mecha March again even if that didn’t result in a lot of views and such. I think I pulled out some way too obscure titles in a shorter amount of time for this thing. Oops. That is something I’ve learned a little bit about from this experiment and hope to at least somewhat course correct with some more popular older shows alongside obscure. We will see how it goes.

And of course, I’m still working with OWLS and I’ve posted once a month this year except for December where I got caught in something else. I hosted #TheJCS in December (and May) and in December I got so much installments that it took a lot more of my time then I expected. That’s ok. I also was one of the judges for the 2019 WordPress Anime Blogger Awards too. Minor role, but oh well.

My one massive failure that I tried was a solo podcast. I did a couple episodes that I am not going to link to and I just could never get the rhythm down as much as I could have. Not going to attempt that in the future anytime soon. I don’t think I have the personality for it honestly. I have a better one for blogging. That’s why I did a small amount of rebranding this year which I like a lot better then I had.

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Some of my Favorite Posts I Wrote This Year

Martian Successor Nadesico Review
Tiger and Bunny Review
Crest/Banner of the Stars Review
G Gundam Review
Vinland Saga and Christianity
My Post About Fanservice
What Counts As Older Anime
Freiza in Late Dragon Ball Super

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Collabs I Worked On This Year

Not as many as last year, but that’s ok. I would love to do more in the future, so please contact me if you are interested in doing so. With that, here’s the few that I did.

–Noah and Scott Top Five Anime with Noah
-Clue Collab: Fan-Favorite Froppy Found Frigid with Mel, Auri, Ayano, Alexie, and Bodell from KawaiiPaperPandas.
-Mind Game: Mind Bending Collab W/Irina
-Scott and Karandi Discuss Attack on Titan with Karandi

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Future Goals

-Besides watch more anime and talking about anime in general, it feel like it’s a given that Mecha March will appear again this year too. It’s a yearly event on this blog from when I started it in the first place and I will keep it going until this blog ends or the world destroys itself. The major changes that I am going for are much more anime reviews and trying to get some more audience involvement somehow. Still working on that. Those announcements about that will happen in the next month or so. It’s mostly done, I just need to work on some visual things and some plans.

-With some other successes comes more too. That Space Tour Worked well in July and I am thinking about doing a time travel sort of tour in the same vein earlier in the same month. Only difference will be that it will focus on time travel. Keep an eye out for an announcement in late May, early June to give people enough time to work on posts for it. That’s my attempt in being fair.

-The episodic reviews that I’ve posted on Sundays recently have done better then I expected them to do. I was playing around with weekend content for a long time this year and doing those Chihayafuru reviews was far more successful then I thought I would be. I’m not kidding you. I’ve done some Chihayafuru google searches and some of my posts have appeared earlier in searches then anime news networks reviews. What the hell, how is that possible? This is a small, personal anime blog after all. I suppose this means that I will choose one series a season to an episodic review of in the future when Chihayafuru is done. I think. We shall see how that goes too.

-Anno August was a decent success from last year, so I am going to attempt doing an Oshii October to celebrate Halloween? Ok, maybe not that. I just like rhyming things together and this just works off a lot better. I will attempt talking about Oshii works like his Ghost in the Shell films, Patlabor films, and more this coming October. Unless Angel’s Egg appears in some legal form in the near future, it will be replaced with the first ever anime OVA Dallos that you can find on Crunchyroll. Yes, I’m a big stickler for legality. Bite me if you aren’t.

-Next to last, I want to talk about more Gundam this year. I know that I said that already, but I want it to have a more of presence this year. The vanguard post for Mecha March will come with a Gundam F91 review (laugh if you get the joke), there is a Gundam series review that I think needs more attention in Mecha March this year, I want to talk about Gundam 0080: War in a Pocket for Christmas this year which means I need to talk about the original Gundam series and maybe 08th MS Team before then for it to make more sense, and also Gundam Build Fighters exists and I have a blu-ray for it. There you go, my current plans for Gundam appearing on my blog this year. I’m sure this sounds very well thought out. cough

-Finally, I want to do more Tomino and general mecha things too. I want to finally talk about Xabungle, which I haven’t watched yet but own on blu-ray, and Ideon too. What other mecha shows will I watch besides those? I don’t know yet, so be prepared for some more retro mecha titles for no reason for my own delight though. Muahahahahaha. Oh, and other anime along the way. Yeah, going to watch other anime of different types. Just don’t know what those will be yet. That’s the fun part of this journey where I just choose things to watch and watch them. It’ll be a surprise for both me and you!

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There you go. My last year summed up in a small post with some collab projects and everything. Despite a lot of personal things, 2019 was a great blogging year for Mechanical Anime Reviews. Let’s make 2020 another good blogging year too. Yes! Hope you all continue to follow me in 2020 for some more of my craziness.

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