6th Blogiversary Reflection and Ambitions for 2022

Here we are with another blogiversary week huh? I am celebrating the passing of 6 years of blogging starting on January 12, 2016. Such a huge time to be blogging and I didn’t know I would be around this long. How weird huh?

2021 was another hell of a year wasn’t it? We started out with the most uncomfortable bit of this year when the Capitol was under attack and honestly, that started off this year to being yet another one of the worst possible? 2020 almost started off with another war but this really shook me to my core. Considering that the pandemic hasn’t left but has changed forms multiple times, there is just a lot of uncomfortableness to this whole year which adds so much nothing. I think that every year has been uncomfortable for its own reasons but 2021 has continued a lot of that uncomfortableness in some of the heaviest ways possible. Yeah, it just feels like it continues onward and onward for the worst reasons.

It has been a decent personal year. I have not announced this anywhere on social media, but I have completed my English degree with a focus on technical writing. This is something that I didn’t want to make a huge deal out of because its honestly my second bachelor’s degree and it doesn’t feel as heavy as the last time. Or something. I don’t know, but for a global campus person I went to my school’s university for commencement and then left home. Now, I am doing the job searching cycle again. I am also preparing some visuals and all my works of note that I’ve created for technical documents and other things for freelancing works on some websites. We shall see how this goes. It’s still the pandemic now so I think the job markets are probably not as friendly as they could be.

I have also been working part-time at a big box store the entire time. While that amount that I work every week fluctuates, the amount that I earn per hour is pretty good and has allowed me to save money and buy some interesting anime purchases as well for new and explosive things. Yeah, I am staying at home still to keep costs down, but I have my own car and I have not been weighed down to go anywhere I want to when I feel like it. The fact of the matter is that the pandemic is still happening and while movies have been allowed to those vaccinated and tested, there really aren’t a lot of physical places to go. So yeah, some good exploration and time for watching and writing and reading. A generally good experience all around here. 2021 was as good as it could be for me given the current circumstances and I think that is ok.

So from that angle, let’s talk about some blogging achievements now once again.

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Blogging Stats Growth

I don’t want to show any statistics because I know that there are other blogs that have done larger and more explosive things here. But over the years, its been very decent linear amount of growth even if some things are not believable considering some bits of spam here and there boosting stats when I don’t need it. Regardless, I am still happy, and I just want to push for more. That’s all I need to really do.

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Trying Episodic Reviews Again

Yeah, I started writing an episode review of one show per season since the beginning of the summer when working on Getter Robo Arc. Now, I am currently writing weekly episode reviews for Blade Runner: Black Lotus and working with Irina from Drunken Anime Blog on weekly episode reviews for AMAIM. I think that’s how I am going to do it for now. Choose one show a season and just write and collab with Irina or anyone else while I can do it.

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Monthly Podcast

I have taken some short cuts on the Mechanical Anime Reviews podcast by having them be short episodes. Some on mecha shows that I enjoy and others for concepts and ideas that I really want to talk about because I want other people to hear even if they don’t listen or they don’t get as much attention as they could. That’s ok. I plan on doing more in the future starting with mecha shows that aired in fall 2021 after this season ends.

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An Original Story

This was Jon Spencer’s push that did it, but I started a story on Honeyfeed called Arc Incidents if you have been reading it every month or not. I just ended the first volume and am planning on starting the next volume in February. Just need a little time to bring up concepts and other things here as well.

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Watching Older Anime

Yeah, I’ve done a lot of older anime watching in 2021 on top of watching newer anime series. I want to keep doing that and I have plans that will allow me to watch more and more older stuff at a bit faster rate as time goes on. Though yes, I am still watching seasonal shows and other things as well.

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Performing Music

I created Scott’s Muse to play recorded music once the pandemic was in full swing. So yes, some tracks were recorded and played there if you want to look here: Link. The deal was I would do that as long as I didn’t have community band. The pandemic is still in full swing, but I am also starting to go to community band practice, so I haven’t as much time to do it as much. I will record some stuff soon so please be patient.

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Urobuchi December

On top of watching mecha shows for Mecha March 2022, I also watched and rewatched a lot of Urobuchi anime for Urobuchi December and somehow everything turned out as planned. I loved doing this even if it was hard on my watching schedule. I was straining it by the end of the year until I finally got new stuff to enjoy.

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Writing for Anime News Network

Yeah, I wrote a post about this already, but this was still a massive surprise. I applied not knowing if I would even be able to do it at all and will, I did turn in my second article recently. I am also still working on a third one now. I don’t know how it happened, but I am excited that it did and will see if I can continue to do it.

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Collabs

This year, I was apart of a lot of different collabs with cool people. Some with solo collaborations. Others with groups of people and they were a lot of fun. I hope to do more this year somehow if people would like to join them. I know that some of them are still in motion, and I am excited for you to see them on other blogs when they appear. Not as many collabs this year, but that’s ok. I was just happy to be apart of some of them.

If you want to collab in the future please let me know.

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Solo Collabs

Fatal Fury: The Motion Picture Collab with Ospreyshire
Samurai Flamenco Collab with Irina
Symphogear G Collab with Galvanic Media

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Group Collabs

100 Worst Anime Openings with a lot of People on K’s blog
QUADRA-COLLAB FAILS TO MAKE A BANDabout Given the Movie W/ Irina, Karandi, and Shoujo
The Great LiSA Collab with Jon Spencer, Moya, K, and OwningMatt93
Joining the Jon Spencer led JCO
Hosting the Jon Spencer Showcase in June

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Failures
I was able to do everything on my list this year besides the blogging tour, which I was unsure about doing in the first place and the Getter Robo/Space Brothers manga read along. For the blogging tour, I was way too tired and exhausted to do anything of that. For the manga stuff, I was so burnt out from the One Piece Reading Tour that I didn’t want to do that again. You could probably tell that I was burnt out as the posts for those got longer and longer apart and will, it did affect some other things there.

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2022 Plans and Hopes

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Mecha March 2022

Yeah, this is obvious. I have all the shows that I wanted to watch for this watched and all I must do is write about them. I have been so busy that I have not been able to write the reviews and posts ahead of time like I used to. Usually this month is like a break month because I have so many things don’t ahead of time, and I will just play it straight this time. That’s fine. I may find another month to take a month slow down or break though. We shall week.

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Shonen Jump Movie Month

Gen Urobuchi month was hard to prepare for. It meant re-watching a lot of shows while I was also watching a lot of mecha shows at the same time. So yeah, it really strained a lot of what I previously watched and that is why I started posting a lot more ovas and other strange things like the local things. Now, I will just do a simple shonen jump movie month. Some One Piece and probably Saint Seiya as well. This means seeing what is available and watching what is available.  A lot easier though.

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Another Blogging Tour

Yeah, I think I want to do it this time. I feel like I might have the time and effort to do all of this here finally. Still thinking on a theme, but it might be time travel still. A lot of the older concepts that I have stuck on my file folder that I haven’t used yet because I’ve been too busy. I just want to try this again if people are interested.

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More Visual Design Attempts

I’ve been experimenting more and more with Gimp as you can time with the random featured images/thumb nails I’ve been trying on Mechanical Anime Reviews. I’ve done some interesting things for the Mecha March 2022 images that I like and the Dirty Pair mini event that will be in the later part of this month (spoilers). I want to see what I can do beyond that to give each posts more of their own personality somehow.

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Try New Things

Last year, I started a monthly podcast and an original story. I want to see what more I can do. What about trying to do some videos by learning video editing software or something else? I always seem to try more random things each year and I just want that trend of trying new things to continue.

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Rewatching Favorite Shows

Yeah, this is a goal that I’ve wanted to do for a while. I want to re-watch my number one favorite show, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex yet again. Turn A Gundam as well. Also Kino’s Journey and probably Trigun as well. Just all sorts of favorite shows that I have not written about yet that I definitely should have written about yet but haven’t yet. I want to have that fun of re-watching some favorites while watching newer things as well.

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