I completely forgot that November is the anniversary month of this blog. I guess I was bound to do this eventually after 17 years, though the tumultuous nature of both November and December (let alone the entirety of 2024) made it even less of a surprise.

From what anime has told me, this is the eternal year. Once you reach this milestone, you’re 17 forever (or you enter “17, Season 2,” as per one Houshou Marine). So here we are, where Ogiue Maniax isn’t quite able to vote, but it’s still insisting that it’s practically an adult. 

I’m making all the jokes that we’ve seen from anime and otaku culture, but when I look back on how far I’ve come writing here, there’s gotta be one thing above all else that marks how far I’ve come: I got to interview Inoue Kikuko, the mother of the Eternal 17 movement. How wild is that?!

But as long as I’ve gone, I still find the identity of Ogiue Maniax to be perpetually in flux. A big part is that every year I find myself with new ideas, new responsibilities, and the awareness that my perspective simply has to be different from when I started. That’s not to say that I consider myself a traitor to the values and inspirations that prompted me to start an anime blog in the first place, but I inevitably have to approach it with a different energy.

In a way, continuing to write about anime in this fashion is a sort of Eternal 17 attitude in itself. At the same time, who the hell blogs anymore? It’s the domain of weirdos like me who have stubbornly refused to switch mediums (this is not a bad thing). Yet, given where media as a whole has come and gone, I wonder if younger people will rediscover the unique joys of writing as a way to escape some of the things they enjoy less. 

Blogging’s fun, everyone!