2010 in Review for Anime Blogging

It’s the end of 2010 and it was a nice year for Anime Blogging considering how many events that occurred during the year. With the second year milestone on the horizon, things can only get better. So, this post will basically take a look back on the major events that are influential to Anime Blogging and myself during the year. (Image Source)

If you were living in the rock or seem curious, this is what happened during the past year:

Crunchyroll and R1 Anime Industry criticism took most of the thunder in the first few months of the year when I harshly criticized them on the direction they are heading. If you don’t know already, I support the Anime industry, but I don’t like the streaming solutions and the distribution channels could be better. The major problem I saw recently when all of the Geneon licensed anime became out of print, which makes it nearly impossible to get a copy of Nanoha A’s unless someone rescues it. This pretty much shows the weakness of the R1 really in my opinion. In addition, I did some research and wrote a whole editorial on how the Animation Studios are getting ripped off by the middleman with horrible pay.
AniBlog Tourney… I know I didn’t win the contest, but the competition between Lostty’s Anime Princess and myself was pretty close. After I seen the results, it gave me the opportunity to improve my blog by double-checking and proofreading my posts before publishing, be more accessible (e.g. Implementing WPTouch Pro for Smartphone/iPad/Tablet users), obtain a dedicated domain name for the blog and reply to everyone’s comments made on the blog. On top of that, I have discovered and subscribed to many new blogs, which I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for this event. So, the event was pretty beneficial after all despite criticism.
During the AniBlog Tourney, I have shifted from the old and broken WicketPixie to a custom child theme based on Thematic. As a result, pages loaded faster, took advantage of CSS3 effects and have a cleaner design. I’m still on the fence to get StudioPress’s Genesis, but I probably don’t need it.
New Hosting… If you realized, I started to pay for hosting so my website can handle the increased readership. In the past, I was hosted with NotCliche, but the various hosting problems and increased traffic has ultimately pushed me to move. After the move, there wasn’t any major downtime, which made me pretty satisfied.
Expanded Tastes… In the past, I felt very pessimistic when a new season came. Ironically, that is changed when I started to watch anime I don’t normally watch like Hayate, Fate/Stay Night, Tears of Tiara, Otome Youkai Zakuro and Nogizaka Haruka {fanservice} while maintaining my tastes.
Guest Reviews… If you haven’t noticed, I have a strong interest on music, mostly Japanese. As a result, I started to contribute album reviews over at Anime Instrumentality Blog. So far, I have written 3 music reviews with more on the way.

So, this pretty much wraps up what I want to say about my blogging in 2010. Hopefully 2011 will be a good year for anime as I hit my second year milestone in February.