Behind the Scenes of Mechanical Anime Reviews

It’s been a while since I’ve done a post like this. I think that means that it’s time for another one. I suppose this is another Wizard of Oz sort of reveal where the screen is removed and all you see is just one person speaking into a microphone. The wizard comes from kind of magical projection system pushes the look of a powerful, other worldly being. It looks cool, but it’s fake. This time, it’s only a guy behind. With that being said, the Wizard of Oz thing may or may not be the approach I am using when writing content for this blog in some way. I may seem like a person that may have some knowledge in some departments. Fair, that may be true because I’ve been an anime fan for a long time. At the same time, there always seems to be a lot more things that I don’t know. Therefore, I feel like a fake a lot of the time.

I also really like Wizard of OZ. Can you tell? In some way, all bloggers are like the Wizard from the Wizard of Oz in my mind. He’s a very relatable character in that way. Maybe he was the first online persona. How is that for a new interpretation of this classic movie musical?

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What Has Stayed the Same

Ever since my latest update, not much has changed in the watching department for me. I still keep a somewhat day to day schedule in how I watch anime. On weekdays, I usually have a max of four to five episodes of different anime a day. There is no changing that for me. There was once a time where I could finish a fifty-episode anime in a week. Now, I don’t have the same sort of doe eyed look at anime as I used to so I can’t. Maybe that’s what it means to be an older fan. Having the ability to still watch anime, but not in the same way anymore. That relationship is there in ways, but the grandeur is gone. I suppose that happens with anyone that’s been attached to an art form or medium for a while.

Weekends are a little different and could be wild if they want to be. For the most part, I do keep to my standard sort of rules that I use for myself for a week day, but very loosely. I have at least two watching sessions instead of one. Usually, I watch all the seasonal anime that airs on a weekend day early in the morning. Other anime watching happens later at night. That usually means two episodes of one series and then two episodes of another. A few weeks from now, I plan on using that same sort of time slot to watch movies so my focus will shift towards the end of this year a little bit. Weekends are where I maintain the old way of watching anime alone at night just to maintain what it used to be like in the day. I have no reason why other than some nostalgia for that.

There is a little bit of a random factor to what I watch as well. Since I am stuck at home for an extended time due to some economic issues and such, I also have some anime watching sessions with dad as well. That usually means watching four episodes of anime at least twice a week depending on how we are feeling. I’ve been trying my hardest to come up with something for both of us to watch and it’s been an interesting time. Dad is an anime watcher by himself. Believe me, I didn’t even have to try and get him into Haikyuu. He did that himself. I think I might try Chihayafuru with him next and see if it sticks. Though, Eureka 7 has been calling my name recently. (We picked Eureka 7).

With all of that in mind, every post I write about an anime is something that I’ve watched recently. I don’t binge watch anime anymore, but I still want to watch a lot of it. Plus, it helps that a lot of what I’ve watched recently have been shorter in length. Not just them being one cour in length, but less then then or a movie with a short length. I may not get to everything as fast as I can due to me not wanting to burn out from writing either, but everything I write has been watched decently recent enough for me to write something on them. That is something that I can guarantee.

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What Has Changed

Mecha March is usually my slow down period for blogging. It’s usually what I consider my break period because most of the content I’ve written for it are either well prepared in advanced or very easy to put together. This time while I took that break, I wanted to create a plan in how I would approach my blogging now. Until that point, I was pretty much stumbling in the dark and posting what came to my mind and talk about more recent and relevant things later on. I still do that, but I don’t do that without a plan at least. Everything is a lot more intentional in how I approach everything now. I wanted more control and I got it.

The first thing I tried doing is scheduling what I post when I post it and also build up a list of ideas for posts that I want to write later. If I can’t handle it now, it can sit in that google doc for a while. That’s all in the same document so I can move an idea into a weekly spot somewhere when I can or just move around thing as much as I wanted too. The whole concept I was going for is controllable flexibility. How is that for some kind of engineering term that I maybe, sort of made up. Ok, I didn’t but it makes me feel smarter for coming up with a bad term.

Another way I wanted to work on this flexibility was in the time scale between when I wrote a post, and how long I let posts sit in a folder for a while before being edited to release. I decided that I wanted to let files sit in a file for at least a week longer then I used to. My process is something like this. Write a few posts during the weekend and then edit those posts the Thursday after I wrote them. The process is layered on top of each other so it keeps going on and on and on. That gives me flexibility to change things around if I’ve watched an anime movie in a movie theater and immediately want to post about it. I can move when posts are scheduled around regardless, but I can keep track of it better now. It’s like accounting in some ways.

I also added in some attempted photo editing for my featured images too. I still don’t think I am very good at it, but there are some featured images which are major experiments in me learning something or I study some color design from time to time. Whatever the case is, I am attempting to push my brand a little further in a visual sort of direction too. Still have a lot to learn about editing, writing, blogging, anime, and visual things in general. Everything is always a consistent working progress and I only have a general direction in how I want to do things.

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Concluding Thoughts

So yeah, this is my process. The hidden machine parts and processes behind Mechanical Anime Reviews. I feel like I mentally engineered this process a little too much, but I feel better about having a consistent thing then having the older days when I would just post when the post is finished. I’m attempting to have a little more quality control despite running everything by myself. It can be a little hard, but I’m still having the time of my life four and half years into this blogging gig. I’m still posting whatever I want to post and everything seems to be working for the most part. Well, at least in ways that I am happy about.

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