Other People’s Reads

It wouldn’t be a round-up post without them. However, since I scour people’s archives on a regular basis, these may not even be from the right time period…

• WordPress Reader — The Double-Edged Sword by Renard Moreau – A rookie mistake on blogging platforms is tag spamming. Blogging is an endeavour that requires patience, so tag spamming won’t automatically get you an audience – it might even cause people to find you intrusive! So here’s a guide on how to avoid tag spam on WordPress.

• Why Blog About Anime Anyway? by Jane-Michelle (The Magic Planet) – One of my fellow #AniTwitWatches people put out this post several years ago. To be honest, my reason is that I grew up with anime and stuck with blogging after having it as an on/off hobby, but it’s always insightful to see what brought people to blogging and what drives them as a blogger through their genesis story.
• Gendering Fandom: why women are expected to put their toys away while the men keep playing by A Fan of a Certain Age – It’s said that girls mature faster than boys, but that’s all baked into our social norms, marketing and expectations.
• The Casual Anime Fan: How My Anime Viewing Habits Changed Over The Years by simpleek – It’s okay to admit you’re a casual anime fan, so long as you don’t stop watching it in the end.
• Review for Blue Flag Vol. 1 by Mehsi (Twirling Book Princess) – This post is how I heard about Twitter user Manga Mogura who reports manga-based news and does giveaways. I’ve mentioned several times within round-up posts how manga-centric internet denizens, as opposed to anime and manga or anime-only ones, are much harder to find so I needed something like that. As for the post itself, it’s interesting seeing a take on manga from a person who is mainly a book blogger but also reviews manga and graphic novels on the regular, too.
• Arte by Ashley (The Review Heap) – I don’t think I saw any regularly-occurring reviews for this anime outside of the Anime News Network reviewer…so to hear about people’s positive responses only after its season has ended means it flew under the radar.
• Monster #8 First Impression by Geeknabe – I dissected this manga via its two translations this month (see below). I didn’t think Viz would jump on to it so early, as I’d only seen it on the Shonen Jump + app (in Japanese) before they did, but I’m really glad they did – it’s a great series!
• The God of High School: An Instant Hit by Jiraiyan – As simulcasting continues to be the dominant form of anime consumption, it gets harder and harder to meet expectations, especially in action anime where spectacle is everything. Jiraiyan breaks down how God of High School makes it work.
• Ponyo! by maica007 – I’ve been seeing this blogger wander around the blogosphere lately, so I figured if they had a blog I’d stop by. This seems to be one of their only anime posts, but it pulls from various sources, both formal and informal, to make a thorough dissection of the movie.
• What We Buy When We Declare a Show a Favorite: An Image to Sell or, How Anime Fans Create Themselves As Brands in a Social Market; a Theoretical Speculation by ghostlightning; Told in the First of Possibly More than One Blog-Post by…well, ghostlightning (We Remember Love) – This round-up ends on this kinda old (hailing from 2009), but nonetheless insightful, post about what your top 5 anime (if you can pick 5…) says about you, while touching on what the merchandise you possess says about you. Be mindful of an instance of NSFW language, though.

Spellbook Offerings

#AniTwitWatches (Rolling Girls)

The final Rolling Girls post goes up the day this round-up goes out.

• Rolling Girls 3 – 4
• Rolling Girls 5 – 6
• Rolling Girls 7 – 8
• Rolling Girls 9
• Rolling Girls 10

Summer 2020 First Impressions

• Summer 2020 First Impressions: It’s All a Bit Muddled (Lapis Re:Lights, Misfit of Demon King Academy, Healin’ Good PreCure, Get Up! Get Live!)
• Summer 2020 First Impressions: A Supernatural Summer (God of High School, Muhyo and Roji’s BSI s2, Fruits Basket s2, Deca-Dence)
• Summer 2020 First Impressions: Best ’til Last (?) (No Guns Life s2, Koi to Producer: EVOL x LOVE, Gibiate, Rent-a-Girlfriend, Super HxEros)

Other Stuff

• Behold, the Universe is Full of Blessings!
• Ode to Anime Studios – Gainax
• Venus Project: Climax Lives Up to Its Name
• Watch Out for Kaiju No. 8! (An Exercise in Translation)
• The Folkloric Connection in Mahoutsukai no Yome [OWLS Aug. ’20 Blog Tour]
• What About Korea and China?: About my relationship with Korean and Chinese media, since they have such a strong correlation with Japan and, by extension, Japanese media.
• The Ol’ Time Sink…Gacha Games…

Current Obsessions

(Had to write this section from scratch since WordPress kicked me on to the block editor and the conversion made this section – which was complete pre-conversion – disappear. Luckily, I did remember the contents of a link I threw in there, so I was able to bring the gist of one point back.)

• Oct. 2: Normally I don’t worry about anime debut dates because I only have one anime I care about for each of the debut dates I think are significant enough. However, it was announced HypMic Rhyme Anima and Haikyuu to the Top 2 debut on the same day, which is Oct. 2. Haikyuu is popular enough that it stomps its competition flat (if you count fans of both as well as fans of one series only), as proven by Bungou Stray Dogs s2 airing when Karasuno vs. Shiratorizawa did (I think “Karasuno vs. Shiratorizawa” is an s3, but I’m not a Haikyuu fan, so I’m saying the season name just to be sure) back in 2016…so this presents HypMic as the underdog, to put it in nice terms.
• Sept. 5: Speaking of important dates, Sept. 5 is coming up. I’m in lockdown for it (thanks, COVID!), but considering the most significant stuff I’ve done for Sept. 5 in the past few years is have takeout bento and binge Sailor Moon (excluding that one year I watched I Want To Eat Your Pancreas and had pizza instead…I think those hints may have given away what the significance of the day is), I don’t think it changes too much about my celebrations. The special content I put out for that date is already scheduled for 2020, so hopefully the block editor doesn’t mess with it…
• Spotify: Between AMQ, finding anime soundtracks and Japanese song recommendations I encounter in my language classes (hey, writing haiku in its native language is hard! You need some kind of inspiration!), I got a bunch of new additions to my Liked Songs, so much that my Daily Mixes are two thirds Japanese, even though my Liked Songs are overwhelmingly in English otherwise. Who knew I’d encounter a song I previously only ever heard as an orchestral version at the charity store (Sakura-iro Mau Koro by Mika Nakashima) again, this time with vocals…?

Coming up next…

• WordPress may cause me some block editor havoc, so please tell me if you see anything of the sort on the Spellbook.
• After thinking about how unloved Muhyo and Roji’s BSI is and how many of my anime are at their core battle shonen (or very similar), I cut my lineup to that, Deca-Dence, God of High School, Fruits Basket s2, Healin’ Good PreCure and Koi to Producer, alongside the returning anime Appare-Ranman and Fugou Keiji. If Deca-Dence becomes too much, I can switch, while Idolish7 is set to return with ep. 3 on October 3rd (so new eps. don’t show up until Oct. 24 for me).
• Haven’t forgotten the spring 2020 wrap-up…it’s just massively delayed, as noted in the 1st summer post (above). I’ve only finished Arte as I type this (including not being caught up to Fruits Basket), which is why I haven’t put it out yet.
• It’s Trigger this month and NAZ next month re: studio posts.

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