I was thinking today (which warrants a post all by itself) about all that is involved in picking up a series to blog on and I realized something: picking an anime series is like picking a pet! Oh sure they are all so cute and cuddly and winsome at first, but it takes time, effort, and love to do a series justice. And then of course there are those really evil series that pretend to be so good before crapping all over your living room floor. Obviously (unless you are in jail or something) most people don’t have enough time to blog everything, so choices have to be made. Bad series don’t usually get blogged, and well-covered series sometimes get skipped over (for instance, what can I really say about School Rumble that hasn’t already been said?) when it’s picking time. After all, I like to think of blogging a series as a big responsibility! If you don’t want to take the time to blog it, you can always just watch it and comment on other people’s blogs (like when your friend has a really cute pet that you play with when you visit). So what do you look for in a series before you start blogging it? If I had to analyze what we here usually blog, I’d say this (I am totally guessing here):
Kungfucius: Elephants. He picks the big ones that live a really long time. Elephants live a really long time, right?
Ender: Aibo. Robotic and strange, but slick.
Kabitzin: Siamese Fighting Fish. Looks beautiful, but has a wildly variable difference in temperament, longevity, and energy depending on where it came from.
Of course it seems like anime series themselves could be classified in different ways. OVA’s would be like… Chia Pets. Then there would come the 12-13 episode series, a significant portion of which are adapted from H-games, which require less of a commitment and stuff a lot of fun into a small package. And so on and so forth until you get to series like One Piece and Dragon Ball Z that never ever ever end. Like a pet rock. Ok, this analogy is getting strained…
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nice comparsion of anime blogging to pet owning. I got a good laugh from that. Matt had a good response to your question kabitzin and really, not much else can be said after that.
Man, seems like I blog slightly different then you guys though. Usually for me if I did decide to take up an series to blog, there’s two requirements:
1. I’m watching it, cause ain’t no way I’m suffering through anime I don’t like.
2. Blogging popularity. I try to blog the less “famous” ones since it’ll be waste of time and space. There are rare exceptions if I really really like the series and can get off my lazy butt to blog it. Mai-HiME being a good example for me.
anyway, good call on random blogging enlightenment. I hope you didn’t have this realization while driving like you did with Mai-HiME dude
Oh hell yes. There’s no way I’m blogging a series that I don’t like. Especially after the nightmare that was ‘This Ugly and Beautiful World’. That’s why I’m a bit afraid to blog something I’m not familiar with until a couple of episodes later. For example, I like ‘Air’ character design and animation but the storyline seems kind of iffy at the moment.
As for not blogging popular series, I think that different blogger has different things to say about each series though so I like it when a series get more than a couple of bloggers talking about it. I wish more people had blogged Yakitate!! Japan or Monster, for example.
My requirement in deciding what series to blog are:
1. I have to like the series, especially the characters. At least if the story sucks, there’s something that I still like. Which is why I couldn’t go on with ‘Elfen Lied’. I hate every single character in the series (Lucy nothwitstanding), and wish Lucy will decapitate all of them.
2. The series has some kind of arc in it, no matter how weak that arc. Comedy-based anime without arc like ‘Sensei no Ojikan’ are hard to blog because well, what else can I talk about apart from the joke? And I believe the series itself already does a good job at that.
Of course like you said, there’s always a chance that a seemingly good series end up crapping all over your living room (again, ‘This Ugly…’). In this case, there are only 2 choice, continue right to the end in the hope it’ll get better. Or else, stop while it’s safe.
I have a pretty simple criterion for blogging anime:
1. Cute girls
That’s it! It makes choosing anime very easy, I assure you.
Lol. I loved your analogy to pets. I’m new to the blogging world, and I’ve only begun to look around at the vast sites that are out there. Sometimes I get discouraged because everyone else seems to have such lovely sites with so much more stuff. But…I know exactly what you mean about blogging series that aren’t done as much. I was going to do Mai HiME, but so many people already do…. And yet nobody does my favorite anime this season, Yugioh GX! I guess that’s just an added bonus for me. Although…the fact the no one blogs it may also mean that hardly anyone likes it? ^_^;;; I hope not. Anyway, Yugioh was the first anime series that I REALLY got into.
I wonder…did people blog Inuyasha when it was still airing?
I literally blog every episode I watch of anything. Kinda sad, but there ya go.
I choose by sucking up pre-season information and websites like a particularly geeky sponge and then choosing to trial what seems interesting. Unfortunately, it usually ends up that I get way behind at the beginnings of seasons so never really get around to all the series I might like, but ho hum.