Anime Expo is this weekend.
And—like last year—I’m not going.
Not making a statement or anything. I think it’s part of the process.
If you’ve followed this blog over the years, and especially in the past year, you know I’ve been going through changes as an anime fan.
I was into anime 1,000% from 2006 until last year. Last year, I felt a cooling in my interest, which continues to this day, though anime is definitely still a part of my life.
Case in point: Arslan Senki (The Heroic Legend of Arslan).
I’d stopped watching Arslan Senki in its first season because my life got busy. I enjoyed the series and always meant to get back to it.
A few weeks ago, I picked it up again, finishing the first cour of its first season. And found out there was a whole second cour I didn’t know about.
I marathoned the second cour in two evenings, all 12 episodes.
I’ve been so out of it as far as keeping up with what’s new each season, it then took me a while to discover that Arslan Senki has a second season that will begin a few days from now. When it does, I’ll be watching.
This past year has been like that. I watched the third and final cour of Durarara’s second season, and continued with new seasons of series I’d been enjoying like K, Haikyuu, The Case File of Young Kindaichi Returns and Kagewani (pictured at the top), but didn’t make the effort to search out new series.
I also marathoned the third season of Junjou Romantica on Funimation—and really liked it, a lot more than the first two seasons. So anime still holds surprises for me.
And to this day, I still totally love Kuroko's Basketball. One of my favorite ways to relax is to rewatch my favorite episodes/arcs from the series, especially the second Seirin-Touou game and the Seirin-Yosen game episodes.
I’ll continue to watch the series I enjoy. Not sure I’ll make huge efforts to find new anime series, as I’m enjoying the ones already on my list and my free time has been taken up with writing fiction and learning Japanese.
I’ve spent more time this past year on my writing career, and also on my Japanese studies—particularly learning kanji. In my work, if I can learn the kanji, it’s a huge boost in income for me. So there’s great incentive there. ;-)
Another interest that has captivated me is Star Wars.
I’ve been a Star Wars fan my whole life. I saw the original trilogy when it came out in the theaters, and the new movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens has brought all the old feelings back.
I’m especially intrigued by the fandom that has arisen around “Reylo,” the Rey/Kylo Ren pairing. There’s not only fan fiction, but a significant number of meta essays and posts on the topic.
So, I have no grand pronouncements or conclusions in this post, which marks the seventh anniversary of this blog. I’m still an anime fan. I still want to write about anime, though not as much as before. So this blog will continue.
A housekeeping note: I closed this blog to comments last year, as I was checking here less frequently and didn’t want to leave comments hanging without my moderation. Blogger unfortunately hides all past comments when you do this—it doesn’t let you close to comments going forward and also leave the past comments visible. If I get more active on this blog again, I will open to comments as before and the past comments will be visible again.
That's all for now. I'll post again when the mood strikes and I have something anime-related to say.
Until then, best wishes to all, and if you're going to Anime Expo - have a fantastic time. =D
