Good lord, 2023 really went by pretty quick didn't it. What's that? It's almost 2025? It seems we've skipped a year haven't we? Somehow that's usually how things go for me and blogging. I'll set my mind to blog about all the books, or games, or trivial bullshit i'm involved in, and then life will get in the way of my daily posting routine and next thing you know it I've changed adresses three times and moved to another country. I got to go to anime Expo 2024 this year WooHoo!! Had an incredible time in fact! Went to some insane exhibits, saw some wild screenings (Look Back!!), meet and greets with a few really incredible people (HaneAme, NonSummer Jack, and most importantly Witch-Hat Sensei Kamome Shirahama!!). Stayed at the same hotel as the entire Trash Taste cast coincidentally and kept running into Garnt (arguably the one with the least trashy taste) at the elevators since apparently our rooms were on the same floor; wonder if he thought I was a strange, stalkery fan, but I never could get up the courage to ask him for a pic or a handshake or anything out of some strange desire not to make it weird (that probably backfired tremedously in hindsight). All said and done, managed to make it home with my wallet in One Piece *badum tss*.
Altogether pretty swell experience if you ask me. Definitely making plans to go again next year, but preferably in a room of my own next time. Best friendo snores.
In terms of the not so swell, In the year that's passed since my last seasonal anime wrap-up and manga review posts (god, was watching Frieren and Apothecary at the time wasn't I??), my health shit the bed (then recovered, then shit itself again in the past week or so), my dog died (still fucked up over that tbh), and I've gotten promoted at work (twice! - yay?) but as a result now have far, far less free time, and also far less will to live less energy, so blogging has become rather complicated in that it's something that I'd always love to do, but never have the willpower to sit down at my desk and ACCOMPLISH. But, I've now bought myself a swiveling arm-desk thingy so I can sit in my big, comfy leather chair, and not at my crappy pc desk, so I mean to get back to it for a few reasons:
1) I'm broke, and all of my hobbies cost money.
2) I'm broke, and all of my hobbies cost MONEY.
My current obsession is the One Piece TCG. It started casually last year at Christmas. We'd get a few packs in every month at work, and I'd buy them, and rip em open and get nothing of any value. Then, they started getting packs at the local BNoble, which was all in good fun, until I cracked something worth about fifty bucks, that triggered a tragic dopamine reaction in my brain leading down the path of hunting for boxes. Several thousand dollars later and I've opened up close to a dozen by now, sourced from local LGS's (support your local business) - and not even remotely come close to breaking even. I reconciled this by starting to play the game too, instead of just collecting shiny cards, but I'm utterly shit at it, mainly as a result of only playing the Waifu leaders and not the decks that are S-tier in the meta (though my Reiju deck is pretty much tournament-grade, I just need to pilot it better).
Lately though, I've managed to curtail the OPTCG obsession to some extent by just buying singles for the decks I'm playing, and I sold off all the money-cards. I know when set 9 rears its ugly head I'll get sucked back in again though, so I think I need to make a break for it before I do any further lasting damage. Sadly, best friendo is pulling me back to the financial black hole that is MTG, and that's a dark, dark path I'm not keen to travel solo). I figure, the best solution to spending all of my time and money playing trading card games every week is to rededicate that time to pouring over the manga collection I've invested my hard-earned dollars in and write more reviews of the individual volumes/series that I've amassed at break-neck pace over the last few years.
Maybe even sell some stuff off to make room for all the new series I'd prefer to pick up if I had the space for them, or so I tell myself knowing this will never happen.
Right now, my physical manga hoard is sitting at around 2500 volumes with another 500 or so in digital. Finding space for all these paperbacks has become a major conundrum. Owning my own little manga library used to be the end goal, but I've gone way past that and don't have any room for it anymore. Have had to start spreading the collection out into other spaces of the house - which the rest of the family aren't too keen on (especially since I started moving the mature books into the communal living spaces). They need to experience the culture though, so it's ok.
I've now begun measuring the value of the books I own in terms of missed opportunity cost; specifically as it relates to the value of the Honda I could have purchased had I been someone who made good financial decisions. Currently, we're looking at a nice 2025 Civic LX, but probably couldn't afford the sport, so I guess when all things are considered, that's not that bad right?
But I digress.
Current life goal #1 is to get this place up off the ground, especially with the site formerly known as Rightstuf burnt to cinders and twitter quickly following suit. I used to post reviews of all the stuff I read on Rightstuf, Barnes&Noble and Goodreads, but then Crunchyroll nuked all the Rightstuf product review pages making that site, for me at least, very much the Wrongstuf. I haven't shopped there much since (did maybe one order to test things out... it didn't go well). I don't know why I never got into Goodreads more, but I suppose I should. Or mabye make a bookstagram? I guess that's a thing, but I'm not sure how I like hearing my voice in recordings. Generally, just want a place to reconcile my thoughts, longform, with words, about the books and anime I'm reading, and I want to do it on a more regular basis. Consistently.
Over the last year I hit a life milestone with my anime consumption - I cleared the "Year of Your Life Spent Watching Anime" statistic over on MAL. Over 1000 series completed. That's just so much anime - and even with my average score being so much higher than the norm, so much of the anime was just... shit. Goal #2 is to catch up on all the anime worth catching up on, and polishing off a bunch that aren't anyway, but in all honesty, the amount of anime that exists in the world is currently growing at a rate greater than the amount of time I have free in a week; even if I multi-task and watch anime while reading, or gaming, I still don't have enough hours in a week to watch everything that's airing seasonally taht I actually give two fucks about. This has led to a pretty huge backlog, which I'll gradually get through, but I'm being much less completionist about (and that kills me - really). I do however want to continue contributing anime reviews to MAL, but that site, like Goodreads, is picky about sweary content, so I'll most likely continue to cross-post the uncensored reviews here.
So, I guess expect more posts here from me if you'd care to read them. Or don't. Reading's hard, and nobody has the attention span for it anymore. Suppose I should just train an AI to write my blog for me; that would be the real 2025, way of the future, thing to do. But, sadly, I can't stand the idea that instead of the machines replacing my day job, they're replacing the escapism I used to seek out to get away from my day job. Crazy how things turn out isn't it?
