It’s my birthday, again…

Credit to linked pixiv user

Today’s my 29th birthday, and being only a year away from the big 30, it’s a little scary. This past year has seen a lot of changes in my life, both in terms of blogging and personally…

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Anecdotes of an anime fan #2

Credit to linked pixiv user

This is the second installment of a post I wrote back in 2011 where I recounted several interesting, weird, funny, and/or endearing anime-related things that have happened to me during my years as a fan. I’ve been wanting to return to this idea for a while but other posts have always taken precedence…until today that is! So here’s another batch of anecdotes during my now 15 years as a fan…

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The beginning of the end for Haruhi

I was originally going to write this post a couple of months from now (for a reason I’ll explain later) but with the recent news that the Haruhi manga series will be ending on its next chapter, I decided that now would be just as good a time…

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How to keep the hobby going

In numerous past posts I’ve discussed topics about keeping our anime hobby going even when the social pressures and time constraints of real life kick in. I’ve talked about what things could determine how long our fandom lasts, citing examples of friends of mine who once loved anime but eventually lost interest in favor of other things. I’ve talked about what it could be like when we become the first large wave of senior citizen anime fans and whether we could even remain fans for that long. I’ve even talked about how I budget my time to make room for anime activities like watching and blogging among real life obligations. But one related thing that’s been on my mind recently is, when we become full-time workers, parents, or gain other kinds of real-world responsibilities, how do we still find time to partake in all of our favorite anime and other “nerd” activities, like blogging, video games, reading manga or novels, going to conventions or other fan meetups, and of course, just plain old watching a lot of anime…

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The ultimate anime questionnaire

I’m feeling under the weather today, so we’re having a light topic for this post. Some years ago on my old fan site, I made a questionnaire that covered just about every aspect of someone’s anime fandom. Today I’ll be making a long overdue updated version of it, and would also like to invite any of my readers and fellow bloggers to take part in it as well…

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50 questions

A list of 50 questions recently posted by AceRailgun has been making its way to various anime blogs, with the respective bloggers taking a shot at answering the questions. The questions are a mix of anime-related and personal questions. It looked like fun, so I decided to give it a go…

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What makes a good introductory anime?

A common question among anime fans is what titles would be good for introducing someone to anime. It’s actually something I haven’t given much thought to since all my friends are into anime themselves or at least familiar with it. So, for the person who doesn’t have a clue about anime but is willing to watch, what would be good titles to show them?…

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How important is an anime’s length?

While the majority of anime series are 12 to 26 episodes long, some could extend to 50, 70, or even hundreds of episodes (not to mention titles with a continuing story across multiple seasons). I’ve heard fans complain when a series is too short. I’ve heard fans complain when a series is too long. But is there really a “perfect” number of episodes for anime?

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Anime art styles

One of the many things that makes anime stand out among other forms of media is the sheer variety of art styles that exist within the medium. From the sharp lines of shonen and fluffiness of shojo, to the dark hues of sci-fi and the brightness of moe, anime entails an amazing variety of character designs and artistic elements to match anyone’s tastes. So what have I found about my tastes in terms of anime art styles…

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The appeal of original anime films and my top 5 of them

Original anime movies, “original” meaning their content isn’t based on an existing series, don’t seem to get as much attention or produce as big a fan following as other forms of anime among English-speaking fans. The obvious reason for original anime films being less spotlighted than anime TV series is simply because much fewer of them are produced, so there’s just a lot less of them in total. But wouldn’t having less make each one more valuable?…

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