Two years ago to the day I started this little blog on old school Anime, Manga and associated otaku stuff. It was a way to vent the many thoughts in my brain on the subject and also a way to hopefully connect with other like minded individuals who appreciate “the classics” while hopefully bringing some older titles to a wider audience who may not have checked them out otherwise.
While I haven’t been as productive as I’d like in these two years, I have at least (in a small way) achieved some of the goals I decided on above.
As a result of this blog and my Twitter account I have forged a number of good friendships with those who blog and podcast about anime both old and new. If I hadn’t started it who knows if I would have still gotten friendly with great people like Ian Harper of the Retro Anime Podcast and went on to help him create the sister project Retro Mecha Podcast. I may not have chatted with people like Scott of Scott’s Mechanical reviews, fansubber GANGO (Thanks for the gift of Bismarck, BonoBono and Granzort In English bud) Anti-hero and Thalliarcus on Twitter and many, many more.
There aren’t a large number of people that I converse with about Anime, Manga or Japanese culture on a regular basis face to face, so setting up the blog and Twitter has really opened up the possibilities for conversing with other people about my interests. This has definitely enriched my life in the past two years and given me more enthusiasm and positivity.
It’s been particularly great seeing that people have checked out older shows and Manga based on my recommendations and have ended up really enjoying them. Best of all though it’s just been great to talk about this stuff with a wide variety of people and see that there’s more enthusiasm for older titles out there than it might appear at first glance.
As mentioned in my happy new year post two of my goals for the blog going forward are basically to post more and to engage more with both the Ani-blogging community and Twitter. I also want to write more reviews and analysis as well as more personal posts as people seem to enjoy those. I’d like to talk about my collecting obsessions and maybe collaborate with some other bloggers at some point and also to finish my Votoms retrospective (I still have quite a few OVAs to review).
I’m also going to try and make a more sustained effort to learn Japanese. There are too many manga and anime that remain untranslated that I’d like to read/watch as well as games, novels and art/guide books on franchises I love that would be illuminating to read. A lot of this stuff is highly unlikely to ever get a translation at this stage so the only solution is probably trying my hand at doing it myself. Outside of anime and manga I just love so many other aspects of the cutlure that learning the language would be a dream come true. There’s a more immediate practical application as well in that my partner and I hope to go to Japan in 2020. Having a better speaking ability would be good in case we get lost and need to ask for directions!
Finally I need to find time to go through all of the various WordPress themes and perhaps pick something a bit different and redesign things around here.
I didn’t even post about my first anniversary here on WordPress simply because time got away from me. I’m a bit more organised this year and I thought it’d do me good to reflect on the state of the blog and make a record of my aims that I can look back on in the coming year.
If nothing else writing this thing keeps my hand in and makes sure I don’t get too rusty. It also forms a kind of chronicle of my thoughts on stuff I enjoy that I’m sure will be fun to look back on in future years. If anyone else enjoys my content it’s a bonus.
If you’re one of the people that does then I hope you’ll still be reading on my 3rd anniversary post in 2020.
Animehead's Retroworld 
congrats on the anniversary! it sounds like you’ve met some anime buddies online. i also don’t really know many people who like anime IRL so it’s great to connect with people online about one of my greater passions
i also need to learn japanese but also i’m so not disciplined! i always start but never really continue Orz
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Yeah. That’s been me in the past as well. Going to try hard to keep going with it this year though. Was thinking about signing up to a course to motivate me to keep going at it.
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oh i think that would be a good idea, i think i would if there was something like that near me (i’m so lazy). they have courses at my school but uh, those are EXPENSIVE so i’ll skip those for now xD or even just finding a buddy might help. i think they do stuff like that on reddit (i’ve seen it for other languages)
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Congratulations on 2 years! Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?
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