Picture Perfect Paranoia

I for one will never be able to understand why they did what they did. Nevertheless, today is another anniversary for the Anime Nano Podcast, dead or alive. XP

On the heels of what has transpired about two weeks ago, the online community has spoken.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, did I miss the party? It sure looks like I did.

Anyway, congrats to the winners of their respective categories! Let’s just hope the anime blogging community flourishes, and all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Finally, my blogging software is updated to the latest version 2.5!

Kudos to Maestro for borrowing his spare time to make the upgrade.

As you all know, AnimeBlogger.Net is in dire financial straits, which started last month and is still ongoing. From Maestro:

.AnimeBlogger.net has always been supportive of new writers all over the world to establish their blog for free. As we continue to expand and include new bloggers to the anime blogosphere, we have reached a point where advertising dollars are not enough to pay for the hosting services.

Hence, we have decided to appeal for donations to cover the taxes and hosting fees of AnimeBlogger.net. The first goal is to raise US$1600 to cover three months of hosting and the taxes applicable to AnimeBlogger.net. When we have secured that amount, we are looking into adding another server in order to accommodate more writers, which is where the second goal comes in. If we reach our second goal of US$2200, we’ll be able to add another server.

If you are wondering how you can donate to us, there are various ways. First, you can directly donate to the site via Amazon or Paypal from our donations page. Second, you can buy AnimeBlogger.net merchandise. As an incentive to those who donate, everyone who donates more than $5 will be entered to win a prize.

Currently we have a sponsor that’s paying for two AnimeBlogger.net shirts for winners. You can also contribute any anime-related items as prizes for the lucky draw.

AnimeBlogger.net needs your help. Everyone is integral to the support of AnimeBlogger.net. Every little bit counts to hit our target, be it $1 or $100. You will make a difference. Thank you and please continue to explore our anime blogging community!

So go ahead and donate your share. Meanwhile I’ll ask Maestro’s assistance, again, for installing the donation plugin for this blog.

I’ll be mostly offline starting tomorrow, in preparation for the start of the Final Exams.

Here’s a rather humorous picture and supplemental serious post to think about.

Warning: Too Much Blogging is Dangerous to your Health - PinoyBloggero

Remember this?

Well, I’d figured I’d chip in my nominations before the deadline, ’cause I have this tendency to beat the deadline and all.

It’s been nagging the back of my head the whole day. So now it’s back to the study room for me.

BTW, if you’re curious about the said nominations of mine, here they are:

http://www.minaidehazukashii.com/
http://anime.jefflawson.net/
http://animeotaku.animeblogger.net/

I’ve been keeping a relatively low profile in the anime blogosphere, since I’m busy with my thesis and all, but hey, there’s got to be some way to keep this blog relevant.

So there’s a blog awards of sorts going on. I got notified of this via an email from the AnimeBlogger.net Site Announcements.

Herein is the opening paragraph:

Given the exponential growth of the anime blogosphere, the number of quality blogs with insightful opinions and perspectives are ever increasing. Yet a majority of the blogs out there remain isolated, lacking a sense of community and meaningful interaction. The Anime Blog Awards was created in order to bridge that gap by recognizing worthy bloggers and their achievements in various fields.

So recognition, notoriety or social networking are involved, huh? This I have to ascertain.

As of now, the people behind this event (which was scheduled on April 1st, so no it’s no joke) decided to remain anonymous - on the site page that is. It’s rumored that a Singaporean animeblogger by the name of Impz is one of the few people who set up the event. This remains to be uncertain.

However one thing is. Thanks to the “super-sleuth” done by Pete Zaitcev of Ani-Nouto (though he’s been rather humble about it), it has been confirmed that fellow animeblogger Mellow Bunny is behind the event.

I’m not claiming to be an Internet super-sleuth (as “metantei” was translated in Haruhi), but they aren’t really hiding. It says right there in the footer: “Modified for The Anime Blog Awards by mellow_bunny 2008.” It has AB.net Donation Drive gauge. And the e-mail was sent from 116.14.79.112, which resolves to bb116-14-79-112.singnet.com.sg (it’s a /15 block, but you can fuzzy-search your own server logs).

After visiting the site, and sifting through the list of participants, I’ve noted that not a single animeblogger from the Philippines is participating. Well that’s kind of an odd one, since I’ve seen glances of anime fans waiting for their passion for the hobby to unfold. Oh well, at least it’s certain that I won’t be in, as you know.

So I know now what’s been happening.

Well, who knew that the anime industry is going through shittier times than prior to the Fansub Era?

What the Japanese media companies are experiencing right now could draw comparisons from the fact that newspaper printings are going digital. That available content can now be found on the Web, as opposed to strictly on print. The change could be slightly drastic, and some companies are taking a hard-line approach to stemming the flow of goods going off the shelves and onto the price listings on the Internet.

Sigh.

When I started immersing myself into anime, the whole industry wasn’t this hesitant in providing fansub groups with leeway to distribute their titles, acting as a sort of middleman between the consumers (that means us) and the producers (distributing companies, animators, artists, etc.). With the advent of the Internet as a distributing medium, this creates an upset in the balance, and now the producers are struggling to recapture their target, now fully or partially realizing the benefits of bypassing this conduit in favor of more accessible, less costly, and thus less restrictive means of obtaining content they are in favor of.

As fellow blogger Nagi now cites:

With the failure of major player Geneon earlier this year and the recent increased Japanese hostility towards fansubs, the future of anime both here and abroad has been a much discussed topic of late, with many greatly differing opinions.

…

It gets worse when the original Japanese rights holders horn in on things and constantly try to push the domestic markets to charge even more for anime to bring the rest of the world in line with their own absurd pricing policies, and prevent Japanese citizens from importing the cheaper foreign anime DVDs to circumvent their own native country’s horrendous practices. It’s bad enough that the Japanese charge domestic licensers two arms and three legs just to make this stuff available to us at all and effectively started this entire mess, but it seems they just won’t be satisfied until they’ve completely changed our market to match theirs and make us pay as much as every starving otaku and hikkomori. It’s now becoming an undisputed fact: prices rising sky high does not correlate with the high demand for anime merchandise and paraphernalia. And it’s this problem that has become the subject of much discussion.

Hopefully, the local industry (that means both in Japan and elsewhere) realizes the kinks in this setup, for the betterment of both them and us.

…at least that’s what I think where the problem lies. If anyone can offer some comments or suggestions concerning this issue, feel free to inform me.

Been quiet in these here parts, so instead of writing something new, I decided to do something else to my blog baby. Yup, reducing the size of the blogroll.

Been noticing that it’s gotten longer than my other list of links. Plus, it somehow dilutes the credibility of this blog, having drawn info from obscure sources, such that no one has been paying any sort of attention to them.

And it is with this understanding that I came upon a decision point.

If you are a blog owner, whose blog (especially those whose link I will be “retiring”) is listed in the blogroll, please notify that the status of your activity is higher than what I occasionally see, and we cam come to an arrangement as to your blog’s visibility.

That is all.