In past times, the start of a New Year was traditionally a time to settle old debts and accounts. It is also a good time to go through some of the accumulated stuff of last year and clear it out. I have a bad habit of sometimes not reading people’s blog posts, just bookmarking them for later (a time which may never actually arrive, so the bookmarks just get deleted). But when I keep them, these links can pile up quickly and it’s now time to look through my bag of stuff and say things about it! Consider this the super slowpoke post, or, maybe a kind of year in review thing. Yeah, that’s right, reviewing some old posts from other blogs I didn’t read yet really found worth revisiting.
So, um, it looks like last January (that long ago…. ^^;), Bateszi blasted EPISODE SUMMARY BLOGGING, which was then defended by Kabitzin. Well, I’ve tried and failed at writing ES posts, mainly because a) It’s a chore to do summaries; b) I had a hard time coming up with material each time that would be funny (because it should be funny, otherwise how much can you really say about twenty-some minutes of stuff you’ve seen before anyway in other shows? Of course, I could continue to insert dango references, but that would be overkill for 26 episodes…); c) I fell behind in watching stuff (I can drop a searies for a year and pick it up later); and d) I didn’t get a lot of comments and I need those to keep going like a tween girl needs the latest Twilight book.
So ES blogging is not for me. What about EDITORIAL BLOGGING? This seems like a better idea, although I don’t think it would get comments either, which I need to keep going like a tween girl needs to live and breath everything related to the Jonas Brothers. I think I’ll try some of that anyway in the new year, since I’ll be (hopefully) marathoning tons of series I never watched yet from 2008 (and earlier?).
Hmmmm, Okay, there’s more here… Jeff Lawson talked about it, so did animediet! And TJ And there’s this interesting one and this trollish thing too. I can’t read through all of that, can I? Blagh, and it’s still only January of last year! Too much to skim through a year later.
But this gives me an idea… are there any people out there who are not so much anime watchers as anime blog episode summary readers? Maybe you run into someone who knows about every show and character just from reading summaries? And he can say, “Well Kabitzin loved this episode and Totali had this funny screencap and I loved Hinano’s rant and I think the plot of this episode is the best all season!!” But, “Did you watch it?” “Nope, maybe someday, I just get bored waiting for a download (and Scott says doing that is evil anyway), and I end up reading the ES posts instead.” Just think of it!! All of these ES blogs make it possible for someone to become an expert without ever watching any anime!! I think I’ll call this hypothetical person “Mr. Epsumonli” or maybe Mr. “Onli Epsum.”
My Serious Opinion About Episode Summary Blogging
Although I rarely read Episode Summary Blogs (or Editorial ones either, for that matter), I think they are still the heart of the anime blogging community. This is because the main focus of the community has always been to follow the latest stuff from Japan. There is something impressive about a lot of people reacting to each season, each episode, each scene. It’s like you can feel the interest like a wave, from the raw watching vanguard to the long tail of slowpokes. Sure, some of them are good quality posts, some are repetitive run-throughs and some are just lame, but its the mass of them which is most notable. Scanning through animenano, you get a real sense, for at least one small segment of the otakuverse, of what’s out there that really excites people, what’s the next great meme-generating agent, what’s the show you have to know about (or should avoid). So let the ES blogs proliferate, cause even if one is crap, its part of one big wave man.
Let’s quickly warp through the rest of my link backlog…. In February, Usagijen blogged about the good old 90s anime fandom days. All I can say is, I remember them too and anime was a precious commodity. I remember back to when I contemplated making a Fushigi Yuugi fansite that would have a guide to each episode! I even wanted have a “No Da” count for each episode. Didn’t get far with that…
OK, I’m tired of this so I’ll just stop there. Maybe I’ll do more of this trolling through (other people’s) old posts thing again sometime…
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I think I did when I first started for a few posts but I quickly noticed the futility of providing a summary. When I did episodic blogging, I just explored the philosophical/artistic content while other times I simply critiqued the episode’s events.
I think I mostly left behind those days, I just pick up whatever I feel needs to be said about any anime at any episode.
All in all, episode summaries are near-worthless imo and boring to write.
> Of course, I could continue to insert dango references, but that would be overkill for 26 episodes…
…have you seen your tags?
I can’t believe I wrote that. Oh my young trolling days, and how I didn’t know my place in the blog community at all.
Well, I don’t like writing Episode Summaries or Episode Reviews as I like to call it, even though I’m still writing them now..(might quit soon)
It’s boring and hard to write.
In writing episode reviews, you have 2 path that you can choose from.
Being intelligent or being funny, and I’m good at neither of them..
Just coming up with things to talk about takes up most of my time, thus writing episode reviews takes me about 4 hours to finish..
It’s also because I’m tl;dr (lol)
And there’s the thing about having to finish the episode reviews on time, or no one will read it..
Actually, only a few people will read them, since there’s already an ultimate episode reviews blog out there (RC)
You can read more of my rant here:
http://abanzai.animeblogger.net/2008/07/09/setsukyie-on-episode-reviews-darkside/
I attracted some attention at anitations.
blah blah blah
Personally, episodic summaries don’t interest me too much, which is why I don’t often read Subculture and RC even though I’m sure Totali and Omni would be interesting people to meet IRL. However, I’ve found that episodic posts that do more than just summarize – as Setsukyie said, posts that are either funny or smart – can be fairly interesting to read as they give you either insight or entertainment. I’d rather watch anime instead of read a summary of it, but just like how I’d enjoy reading an editorial on the themes and symbolism in ef, I also enjoyed reading Ascaloth’s episodic posts on RIUVA because he did more than just summarize. I try to do the same thing with my episodic posts, although they’ll probably degenerate into the occasional commentary at some point. It’s tough keeping up with the latest every week ^^;
Episode summaries are a chore, but I do agree with you on the point that episode summaries are the heart of anime blogging. What else is there to write? But what other thing can set you apart from other anime fans? Because if I ever want the heart of the very shoujo Shugo Chara episode summaries, I’ll go to Fuyu Maiden blog, or if I want to know about Bleach summaries I’ll go to Random Curiosity. On my own blog I use to do that with One Piece summaries, before I realize that it was such a chore… still not all fans are able to go over to Japan, or even know how to blog Japanese….so that might be a bit more interesting. Even now I am still trying to write what I can on my blog…
I don’t do episode summary posts mostly because I’m not interested in it, and because a lot of the series I watch I plow through in two or three days. I do follow with a few series as they air, but there already seem to be so many other summaries out there that it doesn’t seem like it’d be worth the effort. Plus, I’m bad at taking screencaps, which seem to be a required item. I might glance over other people’s episode summaries now and again, but I don’t follow any blog for that specific purpose.
Episode blogging is a big part of the community, yes, but I’d be disinclined to say that it’s the “heart” of it. There are plenty of varied-content blogs out there that offer editorials, other opinion posts, reviews, etc, and I think more people are starting to venture into different kinds of things, which is really nice to see.