A New Year’s Introspection…of sorts

I say “of sorts” because, from the reading I’ve been doing around the ’sphere, my introspection has already been done. No, it’s not like I wrote the post in advance – I have a bad habit of leaving blog posts until I actually need to write them – it’s just that someone else already transcribed my story as an anime fan for me. That person is usagijen of Scrumptious, and after reading her post on her growth as an anime fan through the medium of blogging, I realized that I had experienced quite the same thing. And with a new year beginning in less than twelve hours, I think I’m ready to take my next step forward.

I always hate leaving blanks in my own posts because someone else already covered the topic, but really, if you check out the two parts of usagijen’s introspection I can assure you it’ll all make sense. Just replace bishies with…actually, I guess you could keep the bishies, and just replace hot with cool. That was pretty much my taste in anime a few years back, and when I finally “grew” out of that and started watching all of the rabu-rabu-moe-moe stuff, my ability to watch intelligently still didn’t improve much. The whole “Osaka mode” thing described me quite well a few years back – I hesitate to say even a single year back – and while I did watch anime in high quantities, I didn’t get much out of it. It was fun, I wanted to cry at the end of AIR, and Honey and Clover still remains as one of the most beautiful things a human being can experience, but all in all, there were a lot of things that I didn’t understand. In some cases, those things involved the intricacies of the shows I was watching – I’m looking at you, ef memories – but more often than not, they involved my understanding of the medium as a person.

And that’s where usagijen’s point really hit home with me: the way us bloggers grow as people through our work, even though our casual readers would never notice. It’s easy to think of blogging as a way to make money, with your hit counter almost like your experience bar in an MMO – and opposite to that, it’s also easy to think of it as a pointless hobby where you write a diary that the world can see – but the reality of the matter, from what I’ve experienced, is simply that blogging is a medium. And because it’s a medium involving non-fiction work as opposed to fiction, it relies heavily on communication with other bloggers (aka human beings), and thus, it’s something that helps expand your mind as a person. It may not have happened to everyone, but I know for a fact that it happened to me. Before long, I went from knowing only the names of Adun and DarkMirage to commenting around the ’sphere every couple days, and as I began to communicate more and more, even through the barrier of comments, my knowledge expanded tremendously. I feel as if I’ve grown as a person over the last four months, but I know for a fact that I’ve grown as an anime fan.

And don’t forget, all of this was done through reading and commenting on other anime blogs. What will happen when I get more involved and start participating in the community’s discussion? I’m not sure, but I’d certainly like to find out.

And at the end of the day, that’s where 2008 leaves me: an ending, of sorts, to my “buy cool merchandise and talk about it” days, and a much more important beginning to what I hope and expect to be a truly memorable experience. With the hit counter taking a back seat to my interactions with fellow bloggers and otaku, I’m finally ready to take the next step forward into the community and learn more about this seemingly shallow subculture that we’ve all somehow found ourselves in. It’ll be a time consuming journey, but it’ll also be a fun journey, and I’m looking forward to spending even more time with all of you in the future.

So with that said, may the new year bless us with moar Key and less mediocre harem, and keep us safe from the horrors of otaku burnout. Enjoy the remainder of the holidays, everyone, but don’t forget to come back to the ’sphere once you’re done!

~ ETERNAL
つづく

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