Saturday, January 9, 2016

2015 Year in Review

2015 has come and gone, marking my first year of writing in this blog. As such, I'd like to take a look back and recap what stood out to me personally over the past twelve months.

The Good

Shirobako definitely tops my list of best show this year; even though only the second half technically aired in 2015, it included some of the most powerful moments. One Punch Man remains one of the most lavish, loving adaptations of an already-great manga, and Ore Monogatari! Still gives me warm fuzzies whenever I think of it. Prison School raised the bar for filthy, uncomfortable jokes done incredibly well, with Shimoneta trailing not too far behind. And even if they don't get quite as much mainstream attention, I always love it whenever I get another small piece of the ongoing Bakemonogatari or High School DxD franchises. This year we got both, so I'm a pretty happy camper right now.

The Bad

Gate sticks out in my mind as the most irresponsible show this year, spouting the immature message that the only consequence of invading a more primitive country is an avalanch of cute girls and victory. Ranpo Kitan: Game of Laplace ruined its playful, somewhat arts atmosphere with unrealistic, irritating characters and contrived mysteries and plot points. Likewise, Sailor Moon Crystal showed us how badly sacrificing the characters' personality for plot can go wrong (as well as sacrificing animation budget . . .), while Gundam: Reconguista in G just didn't know what the hell was going on. With anything.

The Stats

Not counting my introductory post or the season-in-review articles, I posted 30 times over the past year. All told, I wrote almost 30,000 words, or about a 45-page document on my OpenOffice word processor.

The Goals

Because what's a New Year's post without some resolutions? My goal most immediately relevant to this blog would be to post more often, or at least more consistently. My average number of articles dropped significantly as the year went on, with some serious gaps between them. Hopefully I can fix that with a little effort. Also, I'd like to get more followers, since my current number of readers is . . . very, very few. Maybe this can be helped with a little touching-up of the site for more user-friendliness, but I'm guessing the best route would be to check out other successful blogs. See what works and what doesn't for them. Maybe post some feedback of my own if I expect to get any myself. Finally, I want to significantly reduce my backlog (as I always say I should) and attend a local convention or two, since I didn't get the opportunity to this past year. Here's to a great 2016!

No comments:

Post a Comment