10 years of AnimeYume

This past June 30th marked the 10-year anniversary of my domain name, AnimeYume.com. I would have mentioned it sooner, but as usual around that time of year, I was busy with Anime Expo and writing my reviews of completed seasonal anime. I decided that today would be a good day to post about it since, while Mainichi Anime Yume is only 6 years old, this is the blog’s 600th post…

I’ve written many birthday posts over the years for both the blog and the domain name in general. But I don’t think I’ve ever written a post describing the total history of AnimeYume.com in detail. Since a 10th anniversary is a special one, I figured this would be a good opportunity to write such a post…

I got my first computer with dial-up Internet in 2001, during a time when any fan with an Internet connection and a bit of html knowledge could put together a freely hosted web site to post pictures, information, mp3s, and other things for their favorite anime or favorite character. Wikipedia, YouTube, and other social networking sites didn’t exist yet, so sites like these individually-run fan sites were primarily how fans found things out about anime or obtained exclusive images and other media files. It sounds strange now, but I knew pretty much nothing about computers when I first got mine in 2001 – I didn’t even know how to save images from the Internet onto my hard drive! But experience and help from more computer savvy friends let me become computer literate before too long.

The following year in 2002, I was in my sophomore year of high school and I was really starting to become an anime fan beyond my gateway shows like Pokemon and Cardcaptor Sakura. I’d spent a lot of time on the computer by then and had gotten familiar with many anime fan sites (anyone remember Anime Web Turnpike?) I decided that “Hey, I want to write about anime and post my favorite pictures and stuff online too!” I didn’t know the first thing about starting a web site, so I asked one of my friends to help. I suppose I could have started with a free site, but she got me to buy a domain name, which I named animeyume.com, with a monthly payment plan from Yahoo! Geocities (which I guess was better in the long run since their free hosting no longer exists). Being the generous lady that she is, my mom agreed to pay for my web site. So once summer vacation came around that year, I spent hours writing pages for the site and learning basic html from one of my friends who had a freely hosted Geocities site. Finally, on June 30th, I publicly announced Anime Yume…well, as publicly as you could get in those days, which mostly consisted of me telling other fan site owners that it exists and asking if they wanted to exchange links.

The site started off with the typical fan site stuff; I had a page about the site, about me, links to other anime sites, a page describing what anime is, a link to e-mail me, and a few other general site pages. In addition to those, the main part of my site were the sections I made for individual anime series, each of which had a synopsis page and a few character bios (which I wrote myself), and a picture gallery where I posted pictures for that series I found online or scanned from books I had once I got a scanner later on. Some anime had other exclusive pages such as a Clow Cards section for Cardcaptor Sakura where I would write about and post pictures of each Clow Card. The seven anime sections I opened Anime Yume with were Pokemon, Digimon, Cardcaptora Sakura, Tenchi Muyo!, Trigun, Mon Colle Knights, and Slayers.

It would be too long for me to discuss everything that happened with Anime Yume over the following years. To generalize, I continued to add new anime sections for new series that I watched – sections for Evangelion, Inuyasha, and Yu-Gi-Oh! came soon after I started the site, with Fruits Basket, Fushigi Yuugi, Chobits, and others not far behind. At one point I decided to add mp3 and OP/ED video downloads to the site, which caused my bandwidth to skyrocket. I then decided to rotate them, letting the mp3s be available for a while before taking them down and making the OPs/EDs available. For a while I even opened up an mp3 request page where people could request anime mp3s and my friend pkjd and I would try to find them. I eventually added more general information pages and episode listing for each anime section too. In addition to new anime sections, I continued to add other pages to the site over the years – once I started importing anime calendars yearly, I made my own scans of those. When I started going to anime conventions, I made a section for my photos and coverage. In 2003 I got into writing anime fan fiction, and made pages for my stories on the site as well as FanFiction.net. When I started learning Japanese, I made a page for common Japanese words and phrases. Lots of pages like these would spring up on the site whenever I thought of making them. My most popular pages were the Inuyasha section, which I got tons of e-mails about, and my Wolf’s Rain Ending Interpretation, which I continued to get e-mails about years after I wrote it.

I consistently updated Anime Yume once or twice a month. I don’t believe I ever took an extended hiatus from it. Updates would often take hours because I was spending lots of time writing character bios or other extensively written pages, or scanning, searching for, and uploading images (which was not easy on dial-up Internet). It wasn’t until 2006 that things started to change for me and Anime Yume. I was in junior college that year and had also gotten my first part-time job, making me busier than usual. I had also gotten a better computer with high-speed Internet at that point, so I had just started watching anime seasonally via fansubs. I was taking notice of the rise of anime blogs and other early Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and YouTube. I saw that there was a “Crate a Blog” tool on my site’s control panel and I made the fateful decision in late 2006 to give it a try.

I didn’t have much of an idea what kind of blog to make when I first started. But I did know that I wanted to write more subjectively on the blog, as I had mostly objective material on the regular site. My very first post on October 1st, 2006, was a review of a Pokemon spin-off game, followed a few days later by my thoughts on Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. I still wanted to do most of my work on the regular site, so many of my early blog posts in 2006 and 2007 were simply announcements of new content on the main site or my thoughts on current games I was playing or anime I was watching (I also started doing weekly reviews of the Inuyasha manga, but that didn’t last long). There were a few editorial posts sprinkled here and there, but not nearly as many as I’ve made in recent years (plus my writing wasn’t all that good back then).

In late 2007, I regrettably had to put site work on hiatus for the first time since I began working on Anime Yume due to my transfer to a university and becoming an extremely busy full-time student. So posts from late 2007 until mid-2009 are few and far between. During those years however, is when I really decided to make the blog my primary web site rather than the main site. Fan sites like Anime Yume had simply become obsolete with the likes of MAL, Wikis, Google image searches, and the many other Web 2.0 sites offering more up-to-date info and media than I could ever achieve on my site. Once I graduated and resumed blogging in 2009, I started the format you see today; mostly editorial posts, occasional seasonal reviews, and random other posts. Updates on Anime Yume became scarce – maybe a couple times a year – until 2010, when I decided to stop updating and leave it in “time-capsule” mode. Though it looks quite different from when I started it ten years ago, you can still browse through it here and get an inkling of how anime sites used to be and how I got my start with having my own site.

And that pretty much concludes the chronology of the ten years I’ve had AnimeYume.com. While I currently don’t have plans to resume work on the old fan site, I still plan to continue blogging of course =) I also plan to finally change to a cheaper hosting account after being with Yahoo! all these years. Hopefully that will be a smooth process. Having Anime Yume throughout my high school and college years really helped me grow as a person and I may not be who I am today without it – through the site, I greatly improved my writing skills and self expression, met all kinds of wonderful, interesting people, some of whom became close friends, and discovered all kinds of things about anime, its fans, and my relationship to it all. Even if you haven’t been following Anime Yume for all of its ten years, I appreciate your readership even if it was just once or many times =D Thanks so much to my visitors, dedicated readers, friends, and fellow fans who have made my anime web site experience so worthwhile this past decade. I look forward to more insightful and fangirling years to come~

No Comments… read them or add your own.

  1. Congratulations on making it this far. Your story reminds me of the early web days when people joined webrings and the like in an attempt to bring more traffic to their site. And then there were all these services that would submit your website to web directories. I know because I used them all back when I was more into gaming and wanted people beyond school friends to check out a website I made and dedicated to a certain game.

    And as you mentioned, anime web turnpike was big and you also had download sites like Naoted (whose owner was a huge FLCL fan). Now? We have all this fancy SEO and CMSes like WordPress to make our lives so much easier… I kinda miss the days where we actually had to build a site from scratch using HTML and update it manually. And without having CSS to help us either! Ahh the memories~

    • Yumeka says:

      I actually submitted Anime Yume to Anime Web Turnpike but I don’t think it ever appeared…I could never figure out why ~_^ But I do remember submitting it to a search directory – AOL I think – and it did appear there and I was happy ^_^

      I never learned anything beyond basic HTML, so while WordPress pretty much does all the work for you, if something goes wrong I wouldn’t know how to fix it without any knowledge of CSS, PHP, and the like. HTML was simpler but took more time to work on because you had to do everything manually, while WordPress makes updating faster but I don’t always know what I’m doing – you give something up to gain something else I suppose.

  2. Kal says:

    10 years! wow… That’s quite a history. Congratulations! I’ve only been reading your blog for a year or so, but it has been good. I remember the days without youtube, google, etc. How did we even find stuff back then :S Anyway, your posts are good and fun, so I hope to be here for the 20th, 30th year, etc, celebration as well :P

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks so much! I actually think you’ve been reading my blog longer than a year – it seems like you’ve been around at least since 2010. But regardless, you’ve been one of my most dedicated readers and I appreciate it very much ^__^

  3. Mushyrulez says:

    Congratulations! Here’s to six (hundred) more.

  4. Nic says:

    Congrats on making it that far! It’s quite impressive to see an amateur site requiring such dedication to anime last this long.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks. If I’m really passionate about something, I’ll stick to it, and anime must be something like that for me to not only watch it all these years, but to consistently keep up a web site about it XD

  5. Bryce says:

    Congrats on the ten year mark. My oldest domain name is also for an anime fan site that I setup when I was originally learning the HTML 4.01 and CSS Level 2.1 standards (High school covered basic HTML, but not validating it). I kind of let it go to to pot now and got a new domain name that I can use for any topic I desire. I don’t really pay for hosting on my current domain name, just the yearly fee and ISP fees. Of course, I am more proficient at PHP and MySQL because of it.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks!

      Yeah, I never learned anything beyond very basic HTML codes – just things to make paragraphs, links, images, etc., appear on web pages and nothing more. Anything beyond that, like CSS and PHP, is like a foreign language to me =P

  6. chikorita157 says:

    おめでとうごさいました! (Congrats)

    Yeah, I quite remember the days of having to code your own pages. Although I protected my identity since I was very young when I got on the internet via Dialup, it was quite revolutionary. Even with WYSIWYG HTML editors, the pages were a pain to edit and eventually gave up.

    I think making a blog definitely opened up a new range of possibilities, especially with the social. Comments allow for interaction and it’s a lot easier to manage. I know CSS myself since I designed my own WordPress theme, but WordPress does make everything easier. Can’t imagine manually coding my site after that, although it’s more resource intensive compared to the old fashioned way.

    Aside from that, I wish you luck for the future!

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks you! You’ve certainly done your share of helping me with my site over the years and I appreciate it ^_^

      Yeah, comments make reader interaction much easier. I remember back in the day, the only way to interact with the web site owner was to either sign their guest book or send them an e-mail, both of which wouldn’t always get a response. I never had a guest book but I always tried to respond to all the e-mail I got =)

  7. Myna says:

    Congratulations! :D

    Your blog was the first anime blog I started reading. Glad to see it’s still running smoothly~

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks for being one my longest lasting readers all these years ^_^ Even though our tastes and opinions on anime are often vastly different, I still appreciate your input and support~!

  8. Justin says:

    Yumeka…you’re now an old fart veteran the likes no one has ever seen :D

    All right in all seriousness, congrats. Keep on writing somehow Yumeka!

  9. Reason says:

    Congratulations.

    That is a very impressive feat, and something that has my respect. Good luck with your endeavors in the future.

  10. Frootytooty says:

    Congrats for 10 years! I remember the Anime Web Turnpike days, though I was so young back then that I spent most of my time wondering what a turnpike was rather than actually looking at the site’s content. XD It’s nice that sites like MAL have sprouted up, making it a one-stop shop for anime information. Of course it lacks the subjective things, but anime blogs have served to provide that part. Hope your blog keeps going for a long while yet!

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks! You’ve been a visitor to my blog for quite a while now and I appreciate it ^_^

      I often wondered what a turnpike was too XD

  11. Alterego 9 says:

    Wow, that’s a lot of years! Congrats!

    The old animeyume looks adorably retro.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks! I’m glad I discovered your blog – your posts have been consistently interesting to me =)

      Heh, there are still some retro old fan sites like mine that haven’t been taken down yet, though most have long been abandoned. Actually, my site’s affiliate, AnimeAdmirers.com, is a similar fan site that still updates to this day =D

  12. hayase says:

    Congrats! 10 years is quite a long time to be around.

    I do remember the days of dial-up where I would browse around Anime Web Turnpike and wait patiently while pictures slowly downloaded from sites from Geocities/Angelfire/etc. I also had a site on Geocities back then, though it wasn’t anime-related and I soon abandoned it because I didn’t have the patience to write HTML.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks~

      Yup, I remember waiting for all those anime image galleries to load page by page. Thumbnails were quite helpful back then XD Instead of waiting for images to load, we wait for videos to buffer nowadays.

  13. lostty says:

    Congratulations!

    Ten years is so amazing! It’s so weird to think about how much the internet and the blogging world has changed in such a short period of time!

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks!

      Yeah, it’s amazing how fast technology has changed in such a short amount of time, especially for computers and the Internet. It’s hard to believe that so many Internet technologies we can barely live without nowadays didn’t exist ten years ago.

  14. Congratulations on ten years, and here’s to many more!

    I’m glad you’ve kept the old fansite up; it’s not a bad resource in itself, but it’s also a reminder of a time when the internet had a lot more personality to it than Wikipedia, MyAnimeList, and the like.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thank you!

      Heh, what you said is one reason I’ve kept the fan site available despite not working on it in recent years. Another reason is that I just don’t want to throw away all the work I’d done on it XD Its purpose has simply changed – instead of reading it for information and acquiring media files like in the old days, people can visit it for nostalgic purposes now.

  15. Congratulations on 10 years! =D Here’s to another 10 years and more…

    I’m also planning to switch my Yahoo web site to a cheaper hosting plan (Host Gator). I’m already signed up with Host Gator and have an “under construction” page for my new publishing company Bell River Publishing through them. You can purchase an inexpensive plan that gives you unlimited URLs so you can take over the universe – er, start as many new websites as you want. ;) Email me if you want further details.

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks!

      Actually, HostGator is exactly the host I’m planning to switch to. But I’m gonna have one of my more computer savvy friends help with moving my entire blog to the new host since I don’t know how to myself. The move is more complicated since I have a registered domain name and I don’t want anything to go wrong! =O Good luck with your move too.

  16. Mikoto says:

    Congrats on 10 years!

    I actually remember your fan site being where I downloaded my first anime mp3 and opening videos. Very nostalgic. xD

    • Yumeka says:

      That’s awesome that you’ve been a visitor on Anime Yume for so long ^__^ Thanks for sticking with me all these years! I appreciate it~

      • Mikoto says:

        No problems, I loved it. ^^ Although I must apologize, because I’ve been a visitor since my first days on the net (AKA when I was a massive idiot), I must confess that I may be one of the causes for the bandwidth spikes. xD I was such a terrible and stupid person back then, I even leeched off of various Pokemon sites like Dogasu’s Backpack. T_T

        Love the picture of Sakura, by the way. xD Good luck with your host migration.

  17. Luxor says:

    Congrats! I know I haven’t been here for very long, but I’ll stick around and enjoy your posts.

    And you mentioned you started a site the year after you got your first computer? My first entry into the internet was around 2004 and still haven’t made any contributions yet. ^o^;

  18. Tiboreau says:

    Congratulations! 10 years is definitely a long time on the internet, no matter the content. I applaud your dedication, and can only imagine the productive consequences it’s had on your writing, technological savvy, and relations with the fandom.

    Your little corner of the internet was a boon to this recent anime fan as I discovered new series & adapted to the culture surrounding the medium through your posts after encountering your site via your comments on 2DTeleidoscope (another blog to which I am indebted).

    Here’s to continuing your endeavor as long as your heart desires!

    • Yumeka says:

      Thanks so much for the compliments ^_^ I’m glad you were able to discover my blog and that you’ve been enjoying it. I hope to be around for a long time to come~

  19. Nopy says:

    OMG, I remember Anime Web Turnpike! It’s where I went to find pictures. Back then I got into the whole making a website thing too and made a Gundam fansite on Geocities. I’m not sure what happened to it.

    I’m amazed that you were able to keep at it for 10 years, even with a few disappearances here and there. I think the longest that I’ve been able to keep up with something was a game called Continuum; I played that for 8 years. My blogging activities are starting to get up there too though. I’ll be ending off my 4th year of blogging in a little over a week.

    • Yumeka says:

      Actually, the longest I’ve been able to keep up with something is the Pokemon games and anime, which I’ve been consistently into since 1999, never missing a release of a main series game or an episode XD My web site would be 2nd, LOL.

      Four years of blogging is a pretty long time. Congrats~

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