My first post of 2008! I hope the new year is off to a good start for you all ^_^ 2007 has been a great year for anime both in Japan and the US so hopefully 2008 will be too. Unfortunately, although I’ll still watch as many new 2008 series’ as I can, I’ll have to put my sites back on hiatus soon once my classes start. But I should have time in the summer to do some site work and you can still check the About the Blogger page to see what anime I’m currently watching. But for most of the year there won’t be much activity here on the blog or the main site. Sorry about that, but I’m sure those of you who are or have been swamped with work and/or school know how it is =/ More details about my sites’ return to hiatus later, onto what’s new on Anime Yume…
Major image update! (plus more site news)
Off on a tentative hiatus…
Yes, I’m away but I’ll be back! Read on to find out what and why…
Mainichi Anime Yume’s 1st year anniversary!
Wow, I can’t believe I’ve managed to keep up this blog for a year now! ^_^ Even though I’ve been working on my main AnimeYume.com site for over 5 years, I’ve come to realize how different working on a blog site is. Within the year, I’ve written 126 posts and I’ve received over 700 comments and over 23,000 hits. It still pales in comparison to the over 800,000 hits the main site has received, but considering I’ve only had time to post on the blog about once or twice a week, I guess that’s still pretty good results =) I’ve really enjoyed writing all the anime reviews, rants, etc., posts here on the blog…they’ve been a nice change from the objective and fairly structured writing I do on the main AnimeYume site. The reason I started MAY back in the fall of last year was because my life had become so busy and I was unable to keep up with big updates on the main site. But unfortunately, my life has become even busier than before, so much in fact, I may have to put both sites on a temporary hiatus. More about that on the next post…
AnimeYume.com’s 2nd Image Contest! (winners receive free scans from AnimePaper.net)
I’ve only held one other image contest besides this one, which was about a year ago back in summer 2006. But now that I finally have some much-needed vacation time, I decided to have a second one. The main reason why I’m having AnimeYume’s 2nd image contest (same reason for why I held the first one actually) is because I’m tired of looking at the same old splash and homepage banners, and since I lack the computer programs (like Photoshop) to make nice site banners myself, why not let my visitors make these images for me and reward the ones that do the best job? =) I’m making this contest better than the first one by having more lenient rules and offering better prizes.
Anyway, you can find out all the rules and details about the contest here. My appreciation goes out to everyone who participates ^^ I look forward to seeing your entries!
New anime sections!
Well, I’m back with two new anime sections on the main AnimeYume.com site. I’ve literally spent all of the past couple of days working on them but I think they came out pretty good ^^ So check out the new Death Note and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya sections! (BTW, about the Haruhi section, I made an html version of the timeline I posted a while ago, and also updated it with some images). I’m really not sure if I’ll have time for more anime sections anytime soon but maybe.
Anyway, these past few posts here on the blog haven’t been very “blog-ish” (just stuff about the main site and my own personal life) so I really want to get back on track with good blog posts, and also catch up with my Inuyasha chapter reviews and other stuff. But I also need to catch up on my Japanese studies and my backlog of anime to watch…::sigh:: even on vacation there’s not enough time to do all the stuff you gotta do =P But regardless I’ll definitely be back here on the blog soon!
I’m back! (and with actual site updates!)
Well, I’m all moved into my new apartment, my computer and Internet are hooked up, I took my Japanese placement test, and now I’m just waiting for my university’s fall semester to start towards the end of September. Since I’m all finished with my summer classes and I’m currently not working anymore, I’ve got about a month of free time with nothing to do but watch anime and work on the site. I can’t remember the last time I had an actual vacation like this! ^^ To start things off, I did some major (and long overdue) work on the main AnimeYume.com site, and a lot more is on the way…
AnimeYume.com – celebrating 5 years!
AnimeYume.com’s 5th anniversary was actually a while ago, June 30th to be exact, but I was away at AX. Now I’ve finally found the time to do a proper announcement ^_^
Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been running a web site for 5 years. I regret that within the past year I haven’t been able to update the main AnimeYume.com site as much as I’d like, but thankfully I made the blog site you see here to make up for it =) There’s still a lot I want to add to AnimeYume, particularly new anime sections of more recent series’ I’ve watched and also perhaps a more updated layout/design for the site. But these things will have to wait until I have more time in my busy life. For now, doing posts here on the blog is all I can handle. But as I’ve said many times before, the main AnimeYume.com site will still remain open and I’ll continue to do updates on it when I can. I wouldn’t have nearly as much motivation to work on both AnimeYume and Mainichi Anime Yume if it wasn’t for the support and kind feedback of visitors like you! ^_^ Thank you so much, and although my life is going to become even busier since I’ll be going away to college soon, I’ll still try and find time to work on the site! =)
New site theme and more site news
In commemoration of my blog reaching 100 posts (and my main AnimeYume.com site being less than a week away from turning 5 years old), I decided to change the layout here on the blog. I finally got rid of that plain-old header image I was using since I started the blog, and replaced it with an anime-related one (El Cazador!) I also changed the theme/layout of the site as you’ve probably noticed. I think this one looks better, especially when it comes to the organization of the sidebar links. Let me know what you think of it ^^ I also added a new Page called “Home – AnimeYume.com.” It’s basically just some info about how the main AnimeYume site and this one are related/different and a link to the main site too (I really should’ve added this page a long time ago =P) And lastly, I finally updated my profile page. I can’t believe I never noticed how many typos I had there ~_^
Anyway, I’ve been sort of lazy these past few days, hanging out with friends and enjoying my summer break, so sorry if I’ve been neglecting the site =) Tomorrow and Wednesday I have work and Thursday I need to finish packing for AX. Also, Pokemon Battle Revolution comes out tomorrow and I know I’ll become addicted to it right away ^^ But I’ll try and find time between all these things to do a couple more posts before I leave for AX on Friday.
100 posts + site news
Well, Mainichi Anime Yume finally reached 100 posts a couple of days ago. When I first started the blog back in October of last year, I knew I would continue to keep it up, although a few months ago I got really busy with school and work, and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to keep working on it after all. But with some proper time budgeting I’ve been able to keep it running for over 9 months now! So a big thank you to everyone who’s been visiting, and also to those who visit my main site, AnimeYume.com, which is now almost 5 years old! I wouldn’t have nearly as much motivation to continue working on the blog or the main site without your continued support and feedback! ^_^ Anyway, if you’re interested in my current/future plans for both MAY and AnimeYume, read on…
Anime Preference Survey ’07 results posted!
I finally posted the results of the General Anime Preference Survey ’07, which I started back at the beginning of the month. Very interesting statistics if I do say so myself ^^ As a whole, the results turned out to be quite varied, meaning my site is visited by a good variety of anime fans. Anyway, you can find the results on the main AnimeYume.com site, or just follow the link here.
By the way, finals and graduation are coming up so next week I might not be able to post, but we’ll see how things go. However, my summer break is right around the corner so I should definitely have time to do some good posts then(and get out of this rut of “mediocre” posts I’ve been stuck in lately ~_^) Even though I’ll be taking a summer session at my college, it won’t be until mid-July. I’ll also be attending the full four days at Anime Expo this year so expect good coverage of that too! =)