12 moments in anime #1: Saying farewell to Bokutachi no Blog

Yes folks. This is my last post I shall ever make on Bok­uta­chi no Blog. Over the course of the last 18 months I’ve made 180 posts (kinda cool how that roun­ded off so well) and I finally felt it was time to me to leave. After a year and a half writ­ing as part of a team, I even­tu­ally decided that I wanted to fly solo. You can fol­low me on my new blog, The Cart Driver, but for now let me remin­isce on my time I’ve spent here. For­give me if I get a bit corny.

I still have the e-mail I sent Brian two years ago. I could show it to you guys but no, I am far too embar­rassed by my level of noo­bid­ity, but if I tell you that I used the word ‘baka’ you might under­stand where I’m com­ing from. Yikes, did Word­Press ever baffle someone so unversed in the ways on the inter­net. In fact I still haven’t really learned how to work all these vari­ous things that sur­round the text box I’m writ­ing in now. There is no 4 let­ter com­bin­a­tion that strikes more fear into my heart than html. *shudders*

After the dip in hits after Brian and Loba went on hiatus around Octo­ber last year, the site has grown slowly but stead­ily. Like a woman will never tell you her weight, a blog­ger will never tell you his stats, but let me give you this inter­est­ing bit of inform­a­tion. The search term ‘bok­uta­chi no blog’ is the 14^th most searched term to find our web­site of all time. How­ever if you were to look at just the last 3 months, it’s the 5^th most searched term. That should give you an idea at how the name has grown and how the site has stamped its own per­son­al­ity into the blog­sphere. To give you a slightly edited ver­sion of the his­tory of the site, I’ve recently updated the epic his­tory of Bok­uta­chi no Blog, if epic tales are your kind of thing.

Once upon a time I had an idea for anime blog­ging. An Anime Blog­ger Appren­tice­ship site. New­bie blog­gers would join the site, write there for 6 months and then receive their cer­ti­fic­ate. The site would solve all sorts of new­bie blog­ger prob­lems. Sur­roun­ded by other writers, you can learn off oth­ers and also learn what not to do as you see other new­bies fall. With maybe some senior per­son run­ning the site, they would thrive of each other, com­ment­ing on each oth­ers posts (some­thing that most new­bie blog­gers sorely need). With the site well-known, this also means their work is open to the world, with a clear sep­ar­a­tion between each writer and a sep­ar­ate feed for each. When they leave after their 6 month train­ing, they could either be ‘hired’ by estab­lished team blogs or start a blog of their own, with their badge proudly show­ing they were a gradu­ate from the Anime Blog­gers Apprenticeship.

Of course, the idea is riddled with flaws, as I’m sure you can see your­self. But take the basic idea of a new blog­ger start­ing out their jour­ney on a team blog and even­tu­ally to leave once he has found his feet and you’ve got the basic idea of why I’m leav­ing, (albeit a year longer than I had ori­gin­ally sug­ges­ted). When I star­ted blog­ging, it was purely on a whim. I wanted to share my thoughts to other anime fans. Look­ing back at my early posts is a bit of an embar­rass­ing exper­i­ence. But I learned. Very slowly, my posts improved, I got bet­ter at con­vey­ing my thoughts and my jokes were actu­ally cap­able of mak­ing people laugh. But most of all I learned how much I loved doing this. In the same way my anime obses­sion has only shown signs of increas­ing, as has my thirst for anime blog­ging. But being the egot­ist­ical prick I am, I felt the need to have a space of my own. To move we for­ward, not back­ward, upward not for­ward, and always twirl­ing, twirl­ing, twirl­ing towards freedom…errr…yeeeaaaah…

It’s a bit sur­real to nobody be a com­plete noob in the anime blog­ging world. To see a blog that you remem­ber read­ing when it first star­ted and think­ing “meh, he’s not very inter­est­ing at all” to go on and become some of my favour­ite anime blog­gers around, it makes me feel a bit old. 18 months may seem quite young to some of you who’ve been around for 3+ years but damn, I feel pretty old right about now. So my advice to new­bie blog­gers is to keep chug­ging away at it. You will improve, the anib­log­sphere is con­stantly chan­ging with old blogs dying and newer blog­gers tak­ing their place. Learn from those around you and cre­ate your own stamp on the field. But remem­ber, this won’t hap­pen overnight. Give it…oooh, I’d say about 6 months?

I’m hanging up my Team Zero jacket. Farewell Brian and co. As for the people who enjoyed my posts, I hope to see you over on The Cart Driver.

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