My 2015, Looking Forward, & Thank You

Welcome, one and all, to the very first of my PersonaLog series!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Yeah, figured you had no idea what I’m talking about, and you have every right to know.

Ok, so this is a new, fun little series that I’ll be doing from time to time, which is basically just me ranting about stuff that happened either in anime or in my own personal life (relating to anime), as well as thoughts about certain things that come up in my mind, mostly relating to anime because that’s pretty much what my life is revolving around right now.  Any and all opinions expressed here do not reflect those of the site’s and should be taken with a grain of salt, whether or not you like salt.  Also this is pretty much my thoughts put immediately onto paper, so it may come off as a bit more unorganized than how I traditionally write, so please bear with me.

 

So, 2015 is over huh?

Yay.

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This year has been kinda like a dry well to me, in terms of the amount of anime that I’ve seen.  This is mostly due to me focusing on my last year of high-school, and then before I knew it I was a university student.  On that note, my writing suddenly became really lacking and I would leave huge gaps, sometimes more than a month, between a review and the next article that I’d be doing, and for that, I apologize sincerely.  On the bright side however, I am finally a bit more acclimated to my university schedule and would be providing more content for you guys in the upcoming year more consistently (more details on that later), so that’s always a good thing.

During this year, as I’ve mentioned, I haven’t really watched as much anime as I wanted or could’ve because of my busy schedule and an overall lack of motivation.  I was able to sneak in a few seasonals here and there, but overall nothing too big.  Nothing really piqued my interest and I was desperately searching for something to tickle my fancy and get my anime vibe back, so to speak.

 

Until one anime showed up on my queue.  An anime that would change me into a complete fanboy of the series and pull me back into my old anime-watching self.

 

That series was the Fate series.

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I started with Fate/Stay Night, then went over to Fate/Zero (OMG FATE/ZERO), and then immediately to Unlimited Blade Works, all in the span of about 3 weeks, and, to keep it short, those were the best 3 weeks of my life as an anime fan (again, more details on that later).

So, after the Fate series got my anime vibe back, I began watching more shows that were up my alley, and those shows that I watched basically made me fall in love with the medium all over again and are some of my favorite shows to date.  Stuff like Trigun, Nichijou, Food Wars, and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (ESPECIALLY JOJO’S) are all series that I greatly enjoyed and all of them just made me want to watch so much more.

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Especially. Jojo’s.

And then, university happened, and being the Regigigas that I am, it was inevitable that I had a seriously slow start (if you got that joke then we can be friends) before I eventually got used to both my surroundings and my schedule.  I decided to join the school’s anime club, and that’s when my  love for the community was rekindled.  That’s when I remembered why I watch and write about anime:  to be able to express my creative thoughts from the experiences that I get from these shows to other people and be a more active member of the anime community as a whole.

Eventually I got back to my writing groove, making a Food Wars review, a whole buncha press releases, and then finally the just-finished “12-Days of Anime” (which I had tons of fun doing) and my One-Punch Man review.  And it was then that I realized that, in my absence, I feel like I have regained something that I lost over the course of the year: love and pride for what I do here on the site, no matter how big or small the article I make turns out to be, and for that I am very truly grateful to have learned that lesson the hard way.

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Sure, in terms of my editorials, 2015 was not the best year.  However, it is definitely a year full of lessons and experiences as much as it is a year of challenges and obstacles.  There were plenty of hiccups in both my personal life and my editorial life that just led me to be so stressed that I ended up not enjoying things that I normally would have, and yet I kept going, which left me very unsatisfied with myself and thus my motivation dwindled.  These past few months reminded me of what it was that made me enjoy anime in the first place, and this past month definitely reminded me of why I love my work here so much.

Probably the most important thing that I take away from this year and going into 2016, regarding both my personal life and my life here as an editor, is this:  do what you love.  If you do what you love, work will not seem like work, and you will ultimately be proud of whatever you do and be happy with sharing it to other people.

That, and also Saber is the ultimate waifu.

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OKAY, enough with the sappy talk!

SPEAKING OF 2016, there will be a couple of changes this year and I will be following a more organized schedule as wellr:

  • First of all, I will be making the guarantee that you guys will be getting an anime review from me at least once a month.
  • Secondly, the last Monday of every month will be called MovieMonday review (MoMoView), where I will have a review of an animated movie in addition to the anime reviews that I will traditionally put out.  I wanna do this mainly because I haven’t seen a lot of anime movies personally and would like to be further motivated to actually go and do that.
  • Thirdly, I will sometimes have special themes for some of the months where I just make articles based solely on that theme for an entire month, including reviews and anything in between, to keep things fresh and dynamic.
  • Fourthly, I may or may not be doing stuff in-between the 3 mentioned articles per month thingy, obviously, although I’m not entirely sure what they might be; could be a first impression, a seasonal recommendation, an editorial about a certain topic, or maybe something that isn’t anime-related.  In any case, this is to prevent long downtimes in-between the reviews I make over the course of a month. as well as provide you guys with more variety with the content that I’m producing, although this can change depending on my schedule.  So, essentially, you could be getting up to 4 things/month from me.
  • Fifth-ly?  Fifth?  Finally?? I dunno anymore(???), there will be changes to my overall review recommendations and I will be reintroducing my old rating system (that is, I’m giving shows that I review a score out of 100).  I’m doing this because I want to provide my overall personal rating for any given show as well as give a proper generalized recommendation to account for as many differing anime tastes/preferences possible.

I’ll have posts like this every so often so you guys can get updated in what I plan to do.  Of course, there might be things added here and there, but generally speaking, what will be on the schedule will be followed.  Just know that they won’t necessarily be in the same order and that things can be added at any point.

 

Ok?

 

Ok.

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For now, here are my plans for the first few months of 2016:

January:

  • Anime Review– Hyouka
  • First Impressions of Winter 2016
  • Anime Movie Review:  Makoto Shinkai’s The Garden of Words

February:

  • FATE FEBRUARY- In celebration of my second year writing editorials for this site, I am gonna make the entire month of February dedicated to my favorite anime franchise ever.  I’ll have a separate PersonaLog detailing how the schedule is gonna go sometime in January.

March:

  • March Movie Month- 3M for short, this’ll be a month that will only feature anime movies.  I dunno what else there is to say, I mean it’s pretty straightforward.  Details to be given once the time draws nearer.

April:

  • Anime Review- TBA
  • MoMoView- Akira
  • First Impressions of Spring 2016

May:

  • Month of Moe-  yep, all things moe, all May long (details coming soon).
  • Anime North 2016 Coverage- regardless of whether or not I go as part of the press, I will be doing a little coverage of the event.  Still deciding whether to make it a video format or not, we’ll see.

Yeah, I dunno if these seem like too many or too little, but I think this schedule works well with me, considering all of the other things that I have to do as well.  Rest assured that I will do my best to make sure that all of these articles are insightful and high-quality, with just a dash of my own brand of humour (a.k.a a whole bunch of puns, so get ready).

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Finally, I’d like to give a special thanks to all of you gentle patrons of both my work and the site as a whole for supporting us all throughout the year.  I think I speak for all of us here at thebuttonsmashers.com that you’re all the reason we need to make everything we do as well-done and entertaining as we can possibly make them.  Despite the stress and occasional mental-blocks, you guys make everything worth it and seeing your wonderful reactions to what we do here is what motivates us to keep putting out more stuff for you guys.

So, once again, from the bottom of our hearts:

Thank you all!

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Aaaaaaand, with that, I bid you all adieu.  This has been Ken for thebuttonsmashers.com Anime Reviews, and I’ll see you all in the future!

Here’s to an amazing 2016.

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