Category Archives: blogging

What Does “Accessibility” Really Mean?

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It’s the final day in my matchup at the Aniblog Tourney, and compared to when the voting began, both featured matches have had a surprising turn of events, leading to extremely close vote counts. It’s been a lot more thrilling than anyone anticipated, and this unpredictability has me asking a simple question: What do fans want in a blog?

Writing Ogiue Maniax, I’ve gained a reputation for having an intelligent, yet accessible writing style that has given me a unique voice online. I am constantly working on improving all aspects of that voice, and I work towards having my posts be fairly easy to digest while also encouraging further thinking. But the Aniblog Tourney has made me well-aware that there’s always room for improvement and change, particularly in the area of accessibility.

Looking at anime blogs, the most popular ones tend to be “episodic blogs,” or ones that review shows episode by episode, laying down summaries and opinions on a (mostly) weekly basis. Most commonly, the latest shows are the ones that get episode blogged the most, though there’s nothing stopping people from doing the same with older shows. Not only do the more well-known episode blogs get more hits, but they also garner more comments, and as the tournament has showed us, have their fair share of staunch defenders and loyal supporters. In these, the most prominent of episodic blogs, their voices and content have reached a great number of people.

So I wonder, is the fact that I write in what’s often categorized as an “editorial” style holding me back from improving my accessibility?

I know that this sounds suspiciously similar to “Why isn’t my blog more popular?” but that isn’t really what I’m saying. Instead, it’s that anime fans appear to feel more comfortable with the episodic mode of anime blogging that has me thinking hard about the way I write. How can I reach more fans without scaring them off with meta-posts such as this? Would I be able to encourage more people to examine anime and their own fandom by adopting an episode blogging format?

Don’t get me wrong though, I like the way I write, and the basic format of Ogiue Maniax isn’t going to change any time soon. I’m not even sure if I would be able to even pull off Ogiue Maniax-style episode blogging all that well. It’s just something I wanted to contemplate. Though, if any of you are up for the challenge, be my guest. Out of what’s currently there, I think Unmei Kaihen‘s style is roughly where I’d be aiming for, as I always feel like I learn something from reading his Giant Killing posts.

Aim for the Ogi 2! Fudebuster

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Once again I am up in the Aniblog Tourney, an idea devised by Scamp to expose more types of anime blogs to people through the guise of (mostly) friendly competition. My opponent this time around is Chaostangent, and opposite our duel is the match between Tenka Seiha and 2-D Teleidoscope. Best of luck to all.

For those of you new to Ogiue Maniax, I want to direct you to my previous introduction for the tournament, as I believe it does a good job of summarizing what this blog is all about. In short, my approach to anime and manga is less about seeing what I like and more about seeing what anime and manga are. Of course, I still enjoy myself, I still cheer for the shows I love, laughing and crying along the way.

This tournament has been a good fun so far, but amidst accusations of elitism and the like, as well as visiting some communities I hadn’t in a while, it reminded me how easy it is to get inadvertently boxed in by the fans you interact with more often, and that for nearly every instance of “No one could ever possibly think this!” someone inevitably will.

Of course, I don’t think you have to spend time with every type of community. I for example tend to avoid livejournal groups as they tend to be a little overwhelming. It’s just good to keep in mind that there all sorts of anime and manga fans out there. But that is perhaps a topic for another day.

Now, for those of you who have come to know Ogiue Maniax through the Aniblog Tourney but are wondering just how much more there is to see beyond the list of posts I’d given previously, I’ve provided an additional set for your browsing pleasure. Take a lot of time, or a little, in either case I hope you get to know this blog well.

Ogiue/Genshiken

Fujoshi-related

Analysis

Translation

Reviews

Bad Humor

Artwork

Let’s Try to Foster Better Discussion in the Aniblog Tourney

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Ogiue Maniax wins its first round in the Aniblog Tourney (technically the second, due to a higher seed allowing me to bypass Round 1), and I am happy to be the victor in this instance. I want to thank Caraniel of course, who was not only respectful and courteous during the week of competition but also is a good blogger in her own right.

Ogiue Maniax goes on to face Chaostangent in Round 3.

Now one thing about the Aniblog Tourney is that for those who are actively participating in it, either as voters or contestants or both, the whole endeavor has allowed people to discover new blogs, to get an idea of the range of styles available from just these 96 examples, let alone branching out to ones that haven’t been included in the tournament. But it’s very clear that there’s a lot of blog readers out there who simply are not participating in this fully and are not bothering to read the majority of the blogs available, or at least are not voting.

The first big piece of explicit evidence that the tournament is not reaching as far as it could is the matchup between Colony Drop and Canne, which got by far the most total votes in Round 1. This had very much to do with both the Pro and Anti-Colony Drop campaigns conducted when Colony Drop was poised to lose and then to win, but it’s clear that here was an audience of readers (if only for the one blog) that could have voted in or even looked at other parts of the tournament but didn’t. The second piece of evidence is the matchup between Star Crossed Anime Blog and Just as planned, where, to put it mildly, Star Crossed is dominating like Godzilla mixed with Guts from Berserk. 568 votes, just for Star Crossed! And I don’t think it’s a big leap to say that the crowd that voted so much for Colony Drop is not the same as the one that was so eager to show their support for Star Crossed Anime Blog.

I understand that not even the people who are actively participating in the Aniblog Tourney are voting in every single matchup. I’ve missed a few opportunities myself, but there’s a whole bunch out there who just vote for their favorites without looking at the other.

While Star Crossed garnered plenty of comments on its own blog in regarding the tournament, there were comparatively few on the Aniblog Tourney page itself. Then an equally titanic blog came up, but Random Curiosity’s situation has been far different. Unlike Star Crossed, Random Curiosity is not crushing its opponent and its fanbase is much more vocal (though still obviously just a small fraction of the actual readership Random Curiosity garners). And in those comments is a classic accusation among fans of competing or opposing sides, the foul cry of elitism.

Amidst the complaints that the people running the tournament (and by extension the primary audience of the tournament) are biased against popular episodic blogs, I left a response basically saying that instead of throwing out accusations of elitism or using overall popularity as a metric of superiority, that those who disagree should state just why they read the blogs they do, why they are fans of certain blogs and what keeps them coming back for more. Rather than just  naysaying the other side, we can express our own opinions on why we read anime blogs at all and come to understand each other, even if it’s just agreeing to disagree.

Just to give you an idea, I’ll talk about a blog I enjoy that’s not in the tournament at all: Subatomic Brainfreeze (though actually he writes for Colony Drop so he wasn’t completely removed from it).

While I am friends with Sub and even engage in mahjong camaraderie with him on occasion, the reason I really enjoy his blog is his informative yet accessible writing style. Now I know that I am credited as having an accessible writing style as well, but Sub’s is on another level. When I read his posts, I feel like an arm is reaching out from the computer to grab my shoulder and occasionally high five me. Even his stuff on Colony Drop which makes fun of other fans still has the same basic feeling.

I know that not everyone who enjoys something is willing to comment about it, let alone write lengthy posts discussing the nature of preference itself, but I encourage everyone to think about why they enjoy the blogs they do.

Welcome to the OGI!

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Ogiue Maniax is up today in the “Aniblog Tourney,” a competition which asks readers of anime-themed blogs to vote for their favorites while also encouraging everyone to check out anime blogs they haven’t seen before.

For those of you who are already familiar with Ogiue Maniax, I recommend that you check out the other blogs for the day before you decide your votes.

hountou ni

chaostangent

Caraniel’s Ramblings

Who knows, you might find a new favorite.

Now, for those of you who are new to Ogiue Maniax, an introduction is in order.

As the name implies, I am a dedicated fan of the character Ogiue Chika from the manga and anime series Genshiken, who I honestly believe to be one of the greatest characters ever, if not the greatest. However, the content of Ogiue Maniax goes well beyond my interest in this blog’s namesake. As it says on my About page, I strive for a holistic view of anime and its fandom, approaching and analyzing a great number of anime and manga-related topics from multiple perspectives.

As you read my blog, I’d like you to keep in mind my three basic goals in writing Ogiue Maniax:

First, I want to share and express my own passion for anime and manga.

Second, I want to increase my own understanding of these subjects to which I have devoted so much time and energy.

Third, I want to encourage my readers and fellow fans to look more closely at the fandom in which they exist, to think and rethink and to challenge themselves.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how much you know, there’s always something worth learning, even if it’s about yourself.

Since I began Ogiue Maniax back in November of 2007, I have posted at least once every day. As the content of my posts are subject to my everyday whims, the content of Ogiue Maniax is extremely varied. Combined with the large archive, it can be somewhat daunting, especially if you’re new, so to ease you along, I have provided a small sampling of some of my favorite posts. I think they give a good idea of what this blog is like as a whole. Take a look-see and tell me what you think.

Ogiue/Genshiken

Analysis

Fujoshi-related

Translation

Review

Bad Humor

Artwork

On the Usage of Profanities

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It’s about my persona ain’t nothing like a man
that can do wha he wanna
Ain’t nothing like man on that you knew on the cornna
See ’em come up and fuck up the owna
See ’em throw up Westside California

-Ice Cube

Personally speaking, I do not prefer to curse. Even on this blog I usually try to find other avenues. But years ago I asked a relative with a similar stance towards profanity a simple question: If you’re quoting someone who cursed, do you quote them exactly or do you still put in your personal filter? His response was a hard-line  “absolutely not.” It was at that point that I began to think about the nature of profanity as a part of the English language.

We can substitute for cursing all we want (and I do), but that doesn’t take away from the fact that curse words carry a lot of meaning with them that is specific to the fact that they are considered profane. There is a certain and special kind of impact that comes from their context in society, and so when you decide to curse, you transmit a message well beyond the surface meaning or even the fact that it’s a profanity. It hints at emotion and personality and any number of things.

You might think that my description is vague, and that it applies to all words, but that’s exactly my point. They can be treated as a part of your vocabulary, like a tool from your toolbox to use when the time is right and when you want to or even need to convey a specific meaning. They can be misused and overused (as was the case with the act of “fifteening,” the addition of excessive profanities in old anime dubs in order to bump up their ratings), but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they say something.

At this point, my non-usage of curses is simply a personal and stylistic choice.

I occasionally find myself in an odd position where I am defending rap and hip hop from criticism. Now while I like rap well enough, I am not a particularly big fan of it, and so I feel kind of out-of-place doing so. However, I think that a lot of people misunderstand rap and hip hop specifically because of that liberal use of profanity on top of the general image of violence portrayed in a great portion of it.

So for me, my non-usage is merely a stylistic choice.

These days, I refer detractors to Ice Cube’s “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It,” as an example of how words and phrases that can be considered offensive can be used to conjure up certain meanings and images in order to send a specific socially relevant message. If you’re unsure yourself, go ahead and have a listen.

Obviously, there’s explicit content.

I think this sort of thing is relevant to anyone who writes, and that includes anime bloggers.

I Have the Answer. What’s the Solution?

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Do we really know why anything is popular?

Whenever an anime or manga is super popular, be it with “casual” fans or super hardcore 4channers or die-hard bloggers or anywhere in between, someone eventually decides to ask, “Why is this popular?” The question can be interpreted positively, encouraging people to express why they like that work so much. It can also be interpreted negatively, giving way to sweeping generalizations that categorize a work’s fans in a particularly unattractive light.

As a quick demonstration: Why is Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu so popular?

We can posit why Gundam isn’t popular “here,” or why Captain Tsubasa is popular “there,” but after a while I just have to wonder how often we’re putting the cart before the horse, completely blinded by hindsight and trying to draw conclusions from something most people might have trouble expressing in the first place, even if you asked every Naruto fan why they like Naruto so much. And in a way, when we accumulate more knowledge and experience in anime, we paradoxically move both closer and further away from the truth.

Not saying I don’t enjoy the speculation, nor am I telling people to stop, but popularity (or lack thereof) can be such a difficult entity to grasp and manipulate that I’m sure we’re all wrong more often than not.

Also, I know this doesn’t just apply to anime or manga or even fiction. Asking why stuff is successfully popular is applicable to just about any topic where  group enjoys or uses something.

No, really, why is  Baka Test so popular? I liked it well enough because of the way it embraced the otaku/moe/anime humor and really ran it to some logical extremes, but why is it considered the #1 light novel series of 2009?

The End of the Otaku Diaries, the Beginning of More?

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In their concluding post of the Otaku Diaries, Hisui and Narutaki of the Reverse Thieves reflect back on their experiment: the ups, the downs, what could have been done differently, what they learned, and what they’d hope to learn in the future should they take up the task again. I hope to see them take a swing at it at least one more time, but that’s up to them.

One of the really remarkable things about the Otaku Diaries was that it was a concerted effort by the Reverse Thieves to learn about their fellow fans, and to do so by collecting information in a structured manner. With anime blogging (or hell, writing blogging in general), it’s very easy to play fast and loose with facts and data, and to write based primarily on feel (I am guilty of doing both), so it gives me a degree of joy to see bloggers who actually want to discover more about their peers instead of pigeon-holing them in stereotypes or talking in too-broad strokes. The project wasn’t perfect, as they’d themselved admit, but it opened up new possibilities.

Obviously I’m not telling people they can only write about anime and fandom once they’ve gathered enough information on the subject, but I’d like to see others encouraged to try similar endeavors, to really reach out and try to learn about your comrades-in-arms. I could stand to do more of that myself.

On a final note, I think they’re onto something with the idea of interviewing people over Skype instead of simply writing surveys. Provided they can make the conversation easy-going (and I know they can), it would allow a lot more otaku to open up, and would also make the conversation more free-flowing.

Worth Thousands Upon Thousands of Words

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This picture is here for a reason.

The Aniblog Tourney has me looking at a whole lot more blogs than I normally do, and as I check out one after the other, I’ve noticed a recurring blogging style that many sites follow, and I would like to figure out where it came from.


I also have no recollection where this image is from.

The style is defined by its frequent back-and-forth switches between between text and anime-related images. Sometimes it involves screenshots, but more often the pictures are high-resolution fanart with some kind of humorous caption underneath.  At their most extreme, images and text will alternate at a frequency of one image per paragraph.


Like so.

Now it’s easy to point fingers at “episodic blogs,” but that’s a little different from what I’m talking about, as a glut of screenshots is practically par for the course for an episode review. Also, many times they’re placed at the beginning, with a summary and then opinions following. This 1:1 paragraph to text ratio seems far more common with editorial-style anime blogs.

So I’d like to know, where did this style come from? Using the Aniblog Tourney itself, I checked out the highest-seeded blogs in the tournament to see if it was their far-reaching influence which provided younger bloggers with a stylistic framework, but in all of the cases the connection would be tenuous at best.

I might be thinking about this too hard. Maybe the desire to alternate paragraphs with images at a constant rate goes beyond simply anime blogging to the fact that there exists a space between every paragraph, literary voids which beckon to gain prominence by having art emerge from them. Or maybe it’s that people take screenshots and download fanart in batches first, and then look for ways to apply all of the images to an existing post. I’ve felt that desire myself, as it becomes hard to decide which images to cut from a post, a decision almost as difficult as having to cut out extraneous paragraphs that kill the flow of a post.

Speaking of which, the reason why I don’t really throw in a large amount of images into my posts is because an excess of images has the potential to be detrimental to the writing itself, interrupting the flow of a post as much as a superfluous paragraph, if not moreso. Not to say that it’s impossible to write well with constantly alternating paragraphs and images, but you risk cutting off your writing at the knees just as it’s starting to go into a full sprint.

So if you’re a fan of the aforementioned style of blog-posting, tell me, where did you find your inspiration, if any at all? If you really enjoy those types of posts, what in particular do you like about them?

Dairy Influences: A Personal Look At “The Far Side”

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In his latest comic, the author of Gunshow Comic pays tribute to cartoonist Gary Larson (while also making a reference to his own series, The Anime Club, which I talked about previously). The Larson style was instantly recognizable to me, as I am actually a long-time fan of his classic one-panel newspaper comic The Far Side. Seeing this parody of the man’s work, it makes me want to reflect on the influence that his surreal humor had on me and my development in art and life.

Long before I could even really call myself an “anime fan,” I was a fan of The Far Side, calling it “my favorite comic” for years, and to this day I consider it to be the very best one-panel-style strip in history. For those unfamiliar with it, The Far Side was typically a single-panel (though it would sometimes split itself into two or more), and would be a mix of suburban stereotypes and off-kilter humor that took normal situations and twisted them just enough so that the mild absurdity would be magnified ten-fold. The comic also often featured humor based on biology, a direct consequence of Gary Larson himself being a biologist as well as a cartoonist, and while it had no real recurring “characters,” it did have a number of iconic designs and stylistic flairs. Bespectacled pudgy boys and their bee’s nest hairstyle mothers, animals standing and talking like people (particularly cows), and a tendency to have bulging eyes be an attention grabber were all common sights The Far Side. In a way, it was like a precursor to the Perry Bible Fellowship.

I would provide an example image, but Gary Larson has personally wrote letters asking everyone to not post his comics online, and while not 100% perfect it has worked surprisingly well. And so, even though I know that explaining a joke inevitably ruins it (as author Stephen King demonstrated in his foreword to The Far Side Gallery 2), I’m going to try so that you can understand Gary Larson’s style of humor.

The comic is situated in the backseat of a car, behind the driver. The driver is staring into his side-view mirror, and as is the case with all side-view mirrors, there is text to inform the driver that “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” The object in the mirror, meanwhile, is an eyeball taking up the entire surface of the mirror. In other words, the object reflected is your eye staring into the comic’s panel (Again I apologize for my humor assassination).

So what did The Far Side do to me? When I first discovered it either fourth or fifth grade, I already loved to draw, but Gary Larson’s comic made me love art even more. It gave me a role model in art to look up to, and it gave me a direction to take in my drawing. I started actively trying to make things that would be seen as “crazy.” I created my own Far Side-style comic, called My Biz and also Crash and Bash Land, about horrible rides in an imaginary amusement park whose themes were violence and abuse of its customers. Both were as good as you’d expect a 10 year old’s attempts at Far Side knockoffs would be. Even after I discovered anime and became a “fan,” I held in my heart two dreams, to draw a full-fledged story comic like my favorite manga, and to create a humor comic that would appear in newspapers.

Today, though I no longer aspire to draw my own absurdist newspaper strip, I can see that Gary Larson had an enormous influence on my sense of humor, and for that I am ever so grateful, though my peers who have seen my brand of comedy in action may be inclined to disagree. You can even see The Far Side‘s effects on at least some of the drawings I have posted to Ogiue Maniax. And though I can’t tell you for certain, I think The Far Side probably even influenced my writing style through its combination of simplicity and eccentricity where even those who weren’t enthusiasts of biology could find a laugh or two.

Read and/or Die: Aniblog Tourney Thoughts

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Back in 2008, I won 3rd place for Bloggers’ Choice Rookie of the Year in the now-defunct Anime Blog Awards. I thought that would be the first and last time anyone ever did some sort of anime blog competition, but  Scamp over at The Cart Driver has proven me wrong. Now he’s pitting 96 blogs against each other in a Saimoe-style throwdown in a competition aptly named the “Aniblog Tourney.”

Most likely your first reaction to this is something along the lines of, “This is just some kind of circle jerk popularity contest!” And you’re pretty much right, at least for the popularity contest side of it. The circle jerk I think is up in the air.

The one thing I like about this endeavor in particular is that the criteria for voting is very clear and simple, with no ambiguity like so many other vote-based tournaments you’ll find on the internet. This isn’t like Saimoe, where the meaning of “moe” is so nebulous that it loses all meaning in voting, or the GameFAQs character competitions where the notion of “greatest” can be construed in a million different ways. Here it’s just, if you were only allowed to read one blog out of those two, which would you pick? What do you personally prioritize? Humor, knowledge, writing style, good or bad is all up to the remote control voter.

And it’s not like it’s hard to get an idea of how a particular blog is. Just read one or two posts and you’re good to go.

I don’t know when this thing is beginning, and I can’t tell you who to vote for or whether you should vote at all, but if you do decide to participate, just go with what you think is right. And if you don’t participate, then at least it might be a good opportunity to just check out some blogs you’ve never read.

You can check out the bracket, as well as the thought process Scamp went through, right here.