Chikorita157's Anime Blog

Sorry for the bad editing… but it serves the point.

Twitter is a popular microblogging website that people write 140 characters on what they are doing or share something on the internet… Recently, more people in the anime blogopshere are getting Twitter accounts and we also created one too… (just click the Twitter icon on the top right hand corner to view our timeline) and it’s popular in Japan. Recently, something is bothering me because I saw a headline that blogging is dead because of the popularity of Twitter and social networks… but does that apply in the Animeblogosphere… the answer is not really… for several reasons:

Posting reaction posts and news takes too many characters

Blogging about anime requires alot of characters, and simply summing it up with 140 characters won’t cut it… Also, Twitter doesn’t allow you to post any pictures of any kind, although you can share a link to it… but what if you want to post something interesting about it… You can’t do that with Twitter!

Twitter is too limiting

Yes, Twitter have it’s limitations, but it’s more limiting that you cannot categorize your updates by anime series or tag them… nor you can format your posts or have people comment on them. You cannot even embed a MAD or someone playing anime music on the piano due to the lack of HTML input.

Although Twitter won’t replace Anime Blogging by a longshot, there are advantages:

• Updates are instant: You can instantly share your blog posts to everyone and people might catch attention to it and read it.
• Share interesting infomation: If you find interesting blog posts, you can share it to others by posting the link in your update.
• Can potentially replace RSS and Anime Blog aggregators: Since updates on Twitter is instant, there is less of a need to use RSS and Anime Blog aggregators since you can follow the author of the anime blog and receive instant updates. There will be less of a need to use AnimeBlogger Antenna (which won’t index my blog posts) and AnimeNano to receive updates for blogs you subscribe to.

What is your take about anime blogging and Twitter? Do you think that Twitter will make anime blogging obsolete or help promote anime blog posts through Twitter? ¶

This is the most debated topic in the Animeblogosphere and Anime forums alike, is Anime really for kids because it’s implied that cartoons are for kids? Not really, but shows like Pokemon, Naruto, Dragonball Z and others make it seems like that. However, most anime are not meant for children, but teenagers or even adults.

The difference between a typical cartoon and Anime is that Anime focuses more on culture, art and often have deeper plots than a typical cartoon. Also, Anime ranges more in genres like action, romance, drama, slice of life, etc than a typical cartoon that usually focuses on comedy. Most cartoons are stereotyped as for children because a great deal are made are for children and most wouldn’t enjoy it because of it (with some exceptions). Although there are some Anime series that are targeted to children, a vast majority isn’t. These are shows that usually have intense violence with murder scenes (for example: Death Note, Higurashi, Elfen Lied, etc), which no parent would show this to a child (unless you have bad parents).

Another problem is that some shows are not understandable by young children. These are usually a drama/romance show that focuses on deeper feelings of people and different situations that a 13 year old or higher will understand more. It’s pretty much like making a 8 year old child watch a drama show like Kanon and expect them to understand it… Most likely the 8 year old would get bored and won’t appreciate it opposed to a 16 year old who watches it and will most likely appreciate it more. The child who won’t appreciate it is because the child haven’t mature enough in life and would likely enjoy something like Naruto…

Depending on the show, most shows are not suitable for children, but does it mean that Anime is not really for children? In some cases, no… as mentioned before, there are Anime that are geared towards children

What is your take on this? Do you really think that Anime is really for children or not? ¶