Oh, hello!

So I’ve been cooking up some things for this website, and I thought it’d be knife to talk about them! … Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “knife”? I meant “nice”. Honest mistake, truly.

Funimation February

First of all, by sheer coincidence, I will be able to do a Funimation February! In case it was not made aware before, I stockpiled a bunch of reviews that I’ve made before I even started this site, and it turns out a good majority of the reviews I’ve yet to publish are from Funimation-licensed titles. (It wouldn’t be a majority, but I ended up scrapping a number of reviews because they weren’t written well enough, so the majority left over are that.)

Thus, look forward to me doing that this February! Maybe I’ll try to find a fancy little way to spruce up the site or something during that, but don’t count on it.

Along with that, I will be writing two non-review pieces for the month of February. The first will talk about the history of Funimation as a company; although I won’t really be providing much anything that you can probably find yourself, I want to compile it as part of this whole big event.

The second post will be more of a piece on North American licensors/distributors at large, and talking about their role in the anime process. I want it to be the starting point of a growing number of posts talking about the anime industry and how it works, simply because I’ve always wanted to do that since I began writing here. So hopefully that will be a good kickstart that will lead to more industry-related posts in the future.

Somewhat Related Things… plus Twitter!

This being said, I might not be posting a review this Friday to prepare for that (and other things going on in my life). I don’t want to completely rule it out just yet, but if you don’t see one on Friday, you’ll know why. I will try to mention it on Twitter if it ends up not happening.

Speaking of which, I do have a Twitter! In fact, it’s been at the bottom of every page here on this website! I’ll be trying to be more active on it, so if you want more of a look into what I’m doing with this (or anime in general), please follow me there! My account is AnimeBirdTweet, since AnimeBird was already taken.

Also, shoutouts to Karandi at 100 Word Anime! They’re a pretty cool blog, and they just started a Patreon too! Karandi has a lot more followers and is more active than I am, so they’re succeeding in every way I’m failing, but hey, that’s part of what makes them cool!

March Troubles

Alright, now to switch gears.

Sometime in mid-to-late March, this website will be going down for up to a week while I figure out some back-end stuff.

Actually, more specifically, the website will still be around, but it will be at “animebirdreviews.wordpress.com”, rather than the URL you’re used to (“animebird.net”). So I’m not gonna be actually gone during that period of time, I just will be harder to find.

It is temporary, I assure you! When I first started this website last year, I ended up in a setup that was needlessly complicated (and expensive), mainly because I’m pretty new to this whole owning-a-website thing. I’ve learned since then, though, but to implement the changes to make things easier on me, it will require some downtime.

I’m just putting this here now, so whoever reads this in the near future will be notified. … If it’s already past March (2017), well… you don’t have to worry about anything then, do you? … Why are you even reading this anyway?

Other Website Update Stuff

So, now I’ll just give a quick rundown of some other things I’ve changed or that are in the works:

1. I added a “Marathon Mode” option to the top navigation bar, which you can get to by putting your mouse over the “Reviews” button (if you’re on mobile, I’m not entirely certain how you’ll get there, sorry). If you’re looking for a way to read all of my reviews in one place (for whatever reason), here you go! … Honestly, I just added it there because I thought it’d be kind of cool (or at least silly).
2. I’ll be doing further translations for the McDonald’s anime ad thing. I asked people if they wanted me to do so on YouTube, and (unsurprisingly), a decent number said yes. I won’t give a deadline for that, since I haven’t even thought about it much yet, but it’ll be happening eventually.
3. My 1-year-anniversary (since my first review) will be coming up this summer! I do have plans for things I want to do for it, but I’m gonna keep quiet for now.
4. I’ll be trying to unify the colors and fonts used on my site and in my branding here. I don’t know yet if I’ll change the website to match the branding, or change the branding to match the website. We’ll see in the future though!
5. Should I make the font size bigger for my review posts? It’s an 11 pt font; it’s not unreadable, but it is noticeably smaller. I’ll be pondering it.

And that’s about it. I know this is kind of long for an update post (but still not as long as my shortest review). I wanted to say a bunch of stuff though! So here we are.

I’ll see you around again sometime soon!

Jayke (AnimeBird)