Hey there!

It’s… uh… it’s been a while, huh?

Alrighty, well, let’s not beat around the bush. Get right to it. Let me start off with an announcement, and then I’m gonna talk for a bit about various things with this website.

Firstly, I’ll be putting out a new review next week Friday (the 15th). This review will not be for the third season of Free!, but as luck may have it, it will be another Kyoto Animation-animated show. (5 of the 6 past reviews were of KyoAni-animated shows, and honestly, this wasn’t really intended. I’ll delve into that later.)

So this leads into the next talking point: why isn’t it the 3rd season of Free?

I’ll be honest with you, I just wasn’t with it that season. I’d say this is spoilers for my review, but honestly, it’s not like reviews are something rare to find, especially for a popular franchise like this. I felt that Eternal Summer was the perfect ending point for the Free! series (and since the other CTFK shows ended after their 2nd or 3rd project, I figured that’d be it for Free too). This 3rd season just feels unnecessary, and it doesn’t help that everything in this season just feels… manufactured, contrived. I didn’t really feel like actually finishing the 3rd season, but I also couldn’t put out my review for it because I jumped off before the climax. I didn’t feel like jumping back in to either finish the show or rewatch some earlier parts (as I often have to do with my reviews) to try to finish my review, and so it’s been sitting here, half-done, on my computer.

At first, I didn’t think I was going to jump off for as long as I have (and still am). I thought it’d be an extra week, and then I’d be done. So I wrote that update post saying so. But then 1 week turned into two. Then 2 weeks stretched into a month, and then 2 months… and now we’re here.

But since I had previously said that this 3rd season was next, I couldn’t get myself to posting anything else because “anything else” wasn’t the 3rd season. And so this website just sat without anything being posted to it.

So that brings me to my next point. Usually I don’t announce what my next review is going to be (mostly because I myself don’t know what it’s going to be), but in these cases, I did, and then I couldn’t do anything because I couldn’t do what I said I would be doing. So I’m going to be doing things differently. I may still continue to announce my next reviews (especially since right now, I have a pretty good idea about what my next couple ones will be), but don’t 100% expect me to hold myself to that. It’ll be less of a “this is what’s coming next”, and more of a “this is going to come sometime soon”.

I do still want to review the 3rd season and share my thoughts in a more constructed, organized way, but it just won’t be right now. I do also want to review that bizarre adventure I teased in that last update as well, but, again, it’ll be a little while.

Alright, so that’s all been discussed now. So, two last points.

Next point: why so many KyoAni shows in a row?

Honestly, this wasn’t intentional. I’ve been going through the process of rewatching some shows I’d enjoyed a lot previously to get myself back into anime, and as I’ve been rewatching them, I’ve been writing reviews as well. … And, well, a lot of the shows I’ve enjoyed were KyoAni shows. That explains Nichijou, Daily Lives of High School Boys (which isn’t KyoAni-animated), as well as this next review coming up. But the others…

Munto (and Munto 2), I had wanted to see for years, and I watched it for the first time about 6 months before I wrote the review. I had intended to write reviews for them at the time as well, but since I only had them on loan, I couldn’t keep them long enough to reference for finishing my reviews. So when I had the chance to go back and get them, the timing just lined up to be after Daily Lives of High School Boys.

For Free!, that’s easy. Since the 3rd season was announced, I intended to rewatch the first two to refresh the franchise in my head before the new season came out. And so I wrote reviews for them as I was doing so. So again, it was a happenstance of them just lining up.

After this, though, I’ll resist the temptation to rewatch Tamako Market and move on to something animated by someone else for a change lol.

Lastly, what should you expect from my website in 2019? How often will I post?

To start off this answer, I’ll begin with a side note.

The time is coming up soon for me to renew my yearly payment to keep this website going. I gave a bit of thought about what I want to do, but I pretty quickly decided that I’ll be paying that renewal. And so here’s the thing: if I’m gonna renew my payment for this website, I should be posting to it. No point paying for something I’m not actively doing anything with.

So I will be around in 2019, posting things.

The real question is how often, and the real answer is… I dunno. I’ve said it a looooot in the past, but I run this site primarily for my own amusement and interest. I’m not expecting success or popularity or some anime reviewing gig for some major publisher. I’m writing here because I like to write here, and that’s pretty much it. I don’t want this to turn into a chore or job, because at the end of the day, it’s still just a hobby.

So when I have a review ready to post, I’ll post it. And when I don’t, I don’t. It’ll be as simple as that.

As for things that aren’t reviews… my interest in those have really started to wane in recent times. Part of me would still love to do pieces on how the anime industry is going or writing topical posts or making videos of any sort, but… I just don’t see it happening right now.

Conclusion

That’s all I’ve wanted to share for now. If you read all the way down to the bottom here, thank you! I’ll be honest, this blog has a bit of a bigger following than I expected (the following I expected being 0). I really wouldn’t call this blog successful in the financial or social sense or anything, but still, it’s nice to see people enjoy the things I make.

Actually, I did get an offer about a month ago from someone asking me to do a sponsorship deal… but I’m not here for the money, so I didn’t accept. Person seemed maybe a tad sketchy anyway.

Either way, I’ll see you soon!

– Jayke