Greetings, Geeks!

We’re coming off of a week-long break, refreshed and ready to go! And the first order of business? Well, it’s been a while since we last did a site update, so Merry Christmas! Or something.

Content

All right, here’s the first and most important thing that everyone always wants to know about, I’m certain. “What’s new in the content department?” Well, not much. Yet. We’re still basically working on finding our rhythm, here. It’s a work in progress. But you’ll probably be pleased to know that that break we took wasn’t a vacation. Not entirely, anyway. We (meaning I) have been busy with a bunch of little things behind the scenes that are really going to impact the content around the site. Unfortunately, none of that will really be showing itself for another few months. Slow process and all that. But let’s get into the specifics.

Uh… right! Anime (and other) Reviews! By far the biggest thing on the site. Amusingly that was never even the intention. But, hey, we’ve found a niche doing it. So we won’t complain. It’s fun. Usually. Those aren’t going anywhere. Buuut we have been working on changing up how we do things in this department a little (And again, “we” means I). This’ll mostly just be a thing that’s relevant to the schedule. But I, personally, want to try handling reviews and critical content a lot differently. So we’ll come back to that. As for reviews on movies, comics, etc… well… here’s the thing. I have accounts with several anime sites that allow me to watch a ton of anime for very close to free. Crunchyroll, Amazon, etc. I don’t have this for movies, comics, and stuff. And those cost money. I am the poor. So while you’ll definitely be seeing those, every now and again, it just won’t be as often.

Overwatch! An aspect of the site we would love to have more going on with. Alas. Fortune has not really afforded us the ability to do a terrible lot with that. The plan was to start streaming it months ago. But some communication errors and delays on aesthetics and other assets set us back. A lot. A lot a lot. And did I mention my headset broke? So that’s a thing I’ve gotta work on, now. I won’t make promises, but we’ve seen some movement on that front. I’ll predict that we’ll finally be able to do a little more on that front within the next month or so. But don’t hold me to that. Oh. And also funny Overwatch videos. You’ll, uh… you’ll see. In the meantime, though, I actually do recaps of the Overwatch League games for The Nerdstash! Feel free to check that out if you’re interested!

Articles! Yeah. This was formerly a much more significant part of the site but all the anime reviews sort of made it fall to the wayside. The fact of the matter is that there’s just not a lot of time to do it. In theory, I could use whatever stories I knew we weren’t going to cover in Bulletoon to write articles on the site, itself. But with anime reviews and all the behind-the-scenes projects I’ve gotta work on, plus work outside of the site, itself, it just isn’t really a thing we can dedicate a lot of time to. So we’ve suspended that element. Maybe once we have a couple more writers. But, for the meantime, the news articles are only really going to happen when we absolutely cannot miss out on talking about the story.

And then there’s Bulletoon. Full disclosure. Contrary to what Riley says, Bulletoon does operate on seasons. (I’d go crazy if I had to do that show literally every week). And with that being said, there are only 4 episodes left in the current one. After that, the show will be taking a one month break and coming back in June (oh. goody. right in time for convention season…) for a mini-season. There’s a reason for that. When Bulletoon comes back, the new season will only be 8 episodes. That includes side things like Bulletoon Mini or Bulletoon Reviews. And the reason for that is that we’re going to be… experimenting with some things. Testing the waters. There are going to be quite a few changes coming to the show soon. Not all at once, mind you. But a gradual evolution of things over time. And the first of those changes is going to be preeetty noticeable. So, in the words of the Bulletoon Twins, Stay Toon’d!

Other Stuff! Heh. Wouldn’t you like to know.

Social Media

Oh yeah. This is a thing. Well, in fairness, we’ve been (slowly) working on boosting our Twitter presence. Nothing major, but making fairly certain we continue to exist there. Aside from that, we have a fair few social media channels. We just don’t really go out of our way to use them. Facebook, Tumblr, etc. We’re still working out a few things before we really roll out any real plans for that. In the meanwhile, feel free to say hi on Twitter! I occasionally live tweet the Overwatch League! Or I’ll just ramble about completely inconsequential things, from time to time. But I don’t bite.

Conventions & Events

So! I did get the chance to go to AwesomeCon! And that was part of why we took the break. Since I’m the editor and basically in charge of everything, my absence basically walled everything. That and it was a really inconvenient time since the Winter Season was just starting to wind down and a bunch of shows just ended while I was at it. Anyway, I got the chance to go! While I was there I met a lot of awesome indie creators! And, in the coming months, I’m looking to feature some of their work on the site! Probably through Bulletoon, though. So look forward to it!

As for other things, unfortunately, we did have some pretty big plays for May that got put on the backburner. Now that one’s been put on hold until next year. But that’s not the end of our convention endeavors for the year. Just our biggest one. We’re still planning to attend a few minor ones throughout the year, similar to AwesomeCon in size, if not smaller. None of them are locked in, just yet. But we’ll post an update when they are.

Site Maintenance

Hey, we’re actually going to be doing something in this department fairly soon. Nothing too drastic, but we want to update the look of the site a little. So, pretty soon, we want to get a new banner for the site. We’ll probably debut it around June if it’s ready by then. But that’s pretty much it.

Schedule

Hoo boy. Here we go. So. The current schedule juuust wasn’t workin’ out for us. We’re just too busy outside of everything to really make episodic reviews work on an almost daily basis. I don’t mind cranking out an article well beyond midnight. The days, themselves, were never a big concern with us anyway. We have people reading our stuff from far too wide a variety of time zones for that to really matter. Really it was more a concern about making sure we could post the episode reviews within a day of the episode coming out. And while we usually managed this, it proved a bit stressful. And then we started doing the multi-reviews. The reviews where we’d cover two or more episodes at once. And it usually worked out pretty well for us if we missed a deadline. So we’ve been working out a schedule that frees things up a little more, using a system of A weeks and B weeks. But you don’t care about that. You wanna know what anime we’re covering, this season. So here ya go. Two birds with one stone. You’re welcome.

Mondays
Mahou Shoujo Ore (A) – Is It Evil?
3D Kanojo: Real Girl (B) – Flash Anime-tion

Tuesdays
Tokyo Ghoul:re (B) – Is It Evil?
Black Clover (A) – Flash Anime-tion 

Wednesdays
Juushinki Pandora (A) – Is It Evil?
Tachibana-kan to Lie Angle (B) – Flash Anime-tion

Thursdays
Butlers: Chitose Momotose Monogatari (B) – Is It Evil?
Comic Girls (A) – Flash Anime-tion

Fridays
Hakyuu Hoshin Engi (A) – Is It Evil?
Toji no Miko (B) – Flash Anime-tion
Last Period: Owarinaki Rasen no Monogatari (A/B) – Evil Anime-tion

Saturdays
Hisone to Masotan (B) – Is It Evil?
Boku no Hero Academia 3 (A) – Flash Anime-tion

Sundays
Nil Admirari no Tenbin (A) – Is It Evil?
Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card (A/B) – Evil Anime-tion
Cutie Honey Universe (B) – Flash Anime-tion

Series End Reviews
Seven Deadly Sins – Evil Anime-tion
Darling in the FranXX – Flash Anime-tion
SAO Alternative: Gun Gale Online – Is It Evil?
Beatless – Flash Anime-tion
Caligula – Is It Evil?
Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii – Flash Anime-tion
Golden Kamuy – Is It Evil?
Tada-kun wa Koi wo Shinai
Akkun to Kanojo – Evil Anime-tion

Okay. So. One thing I need to make perfectly clear. This list is obviously subject to change. For example, Beatless was previously a regular thing. But if you think I’m going to cover Beatless over Boku no Hero Academia, you’ve lost your mind. So yes. That one got bumped. Not dropped. I’ll just be covering it as a series-end review. Maybe. This is an A week. Sort of. After all, EvilBob did just cover Hakyuu Hoshin Engi. But he really only did that to get it over with. He didn’t have to, but… well… four episode of that in a row is probably bad for one’s health. (EvilBob: Do you mean Physical or Psychological?) Yes.

Now here’s the other thing. I, personally, am just not finding myself particularly invested in the ordinary episodic review format. I enjoy reading it, just fine. But I’m honestly more interested in editorial writing, opinion pieces, and stuff like that. The more essay-formatted writing. I know, right? Me? Enjoy writing? Crazy. But that’s just how I’m wired, I guess. And the episodic format doesn’t always provide me with the material to really do that. Sometimes an episode just isn’t that interesting and there’s not much to say about a thing that you haven’t already said about an earlier one.

But aside from that, I just like writing more on abstract topics than specifically breaking down the plot of an episode in a series. And this likely has to do with how little I actually care about the plot in anything. So with that said, I’m still going to do the episodic reviews. But the new schedule will afford me more time, perhaps, to work on doing the writing I prefer spending my time on. I loved writing that article about Fight Scenes. And I just wrote that one on a whim. I wanna do more stuff like that and now I think I’ll, at last, have the time. Also, I do genuinely enjoy doing full-series reviews, like the Yuki Yuna wa Yusha de Aru one I did, a while back. It gives me the chance to look at things in more of a big picture way where I don’t wind up repeating myself over the course of 12 – 24 episodes. Looking forward to it!

Patreon

Oh yeah. We do have one of these, huh? Well, we’re still not quite ready to roll out our plans for this, but it is still there. So if you want to give a go at supporting us, you can check it out HERE. Or you can go through the Support button in the top menu. We’ve updated a few things, but we’re still not quite ready fully dive into that turf.

Discord Server

Calm down. It’s not ready quite yet, but yes. We’re working on setting up a Discord Server. We’ll throw out a few more updates on this once we’re a little more set up.

We have our own individual accounts and all that. We’re actually working on using it to host a little manga/anime club type deal between us and some buddies. But setting up an actual server takes a little more effort. Still, hopefully we can get that running and then it can become a major part of our streaming. Once we actually get that set up, anyway.

The Wrap-Up

And… that’s it! More or less. Now, keep in mind that, just like before, I am making no promises, here. About any of this. None. We can’t really afford to. As I said before, we’re busy so consistency isn’t going to be our strong suit. But we’ll certainly try for it. Anyway, thanks for reading, as always. Keep up the Awesome.

Take Care,
C. Voyage