Well, let’s just get right into this, then. Lots to cover. Greetings, Geeks!

Content

Lots to discuss in this category, and it all revolves around Bulletoon and Overwatch, as usual. So let’s get started.

We’ll start with the elephant in the room. Bulletoon’s been going through some big updates, as you can see. As I stated before (and had them state during the show, itself) we’re experimenting with some stuff. Realistically this season will, in fact, include more than the initially promised 8 episodes. So there’s that to celebrate.

As you probably noticed, we’ve been testing out ways to split up the episodes into smaller, easier to digest chunks. I don’t want to get into the reasons we’re doing that (though you can probably guess). Not yet anyway. It’s very “business-y” and I don’t want to bore you before I have to. The reception to these changes has been rather good, however. So I may be able to fill you in on that, sooner rather than later. The upcoming AX episode will just be a traditional, long-form one, however, largely because I’m going to be busy and won’t have time for the extra editing.

Another test we’re going to run, probably with the episode after this AX Recap, will revolve around scheduling and episode releases. After that things should be back to traditional episodes for a bit while we work on cranking out the really different stuff. But that’ll take a while, so please bear with us.

The other big update is Overwatch related. We’re still not quite there in terms of being able to stream. But, thanks to the new LFG system, I’ve basically found a new love for the game. Playing in groups of people who are dedicated to working together makes it genuinely fun. I don’t have a lot of friends to play the game with. Most I do have aren’t really interested in doing anything but goofing off. And while that’s perfectly fine, and a blast when we do that, I’d like to play serious games on occasion as well.

So I’m thinking I’ll start uploading matches I play through the LFG System, either in Season 11, or when Season 12 starts. The main thing preventing me from doing this immediately is that I really want to get a new headset (long story), and I’m working on getting a new controller as well. These things cost money. So it’ll be a little bit. Another thing I’m planning is to do actual breakdowns of the games I play, analyzing the matches to show the ins-and-outs of my play, and the plays of those around me. Hopefully, it can be used as a learning tool for others, as much as myself, as I catch my own mistakes and highlights to seek ways to improve.

Social Media

I’ve dropped off the Twitter a bit lately. Been around, but so busy and exhausted that I couldn’t really be bothered. I’m not a social person by any means, nor all that interesting or insightful. So it takes energy, being on there. Unfortunately, things in the real world don’t presently show signs of slowing down any time soon. So I’m just having to adapt.

Conventions & Events

Nothing to report. I’m going to try to personally make it to Otakon (it’s in my area, anyway), but I can’t make any promises.

Site Maintenance

Still waiting on some aesthetic pieces, banner included. It’s just taking much longer than we’d hoped to get the assets. But we’ll be making those updates immediately, once we have everything.

Schedule

All right, here we go. The Summer Anime Season is upon us and… it’s surprisingly sparse in terms of anything we’re all that interested in. We’ve watched everything we were even remotely thinking about and we’ve come to a point where we kinda just have to acknowledge that this season’s gonna be a bit of a light one for us. Very little of it falls into either of our respective wheelhouses. But the biggest shift isn’t actually in the section of what we’re covering. This time it’s going to be all about how we’re covering it. We like to change these things up, from time to time, to figure out what works for us, as you’re well aware. This season we’re gonna do something a little… different. So. Here’s what we’ll be covering this season.

EvilBob’s List

Holmes of Kyoto (Tuesdays)
Angolmois: Record of Mongol Invasion (Thursdays)
Angels of Death (Fridays)
Chio’s School Road (Saturdays)
Cells At Work (Sundays)

The major change here is that EvilBob will be covering anime at least a day after they release (with the exception of Angels of Death). This is primarily to give him more time to think the episodes over and provide a somewhat deeper analysis. He’s also no longer doing the reviews every other week, going back to covering each episode individually, rather than two at a time.

And then there’s my list.

CVoyage’s List

How to Summon a Demon Lord
The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar
Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs
Black Clover
Boku no Hero Academia

So the first thing you’ll probably notice is that all three of the pick-ups from this season are Harems. I suppose this is what I get for openly praising not one, but two harem anime on this site since we launched it. I fully expect that at least one of those three shows is getting dropped. It’s entirely possible I drop all three, leaving me “stuck” with two continuing anime from the previous season. Frankly, something tells me I’d be completely okay with that.

The next thing you’ll probably see is the complete lack of dates attached to my schedule. This is because I’m going to take this season as an opportunity to run a little experiment for myself and step away from doing a review of every single episode of every single show. And the reasons for that are plenty.

First and perhaps least surprisingly, a lot of shows just don’t warrant that treatment, every episode. There are only so many times you can point out a show’s consistent problems or strong points before it gets old. I prefer to only call attention to things that are splendidly done or spectacularly failed. Or things that I appreciate that most others may not. The second reason is because I’m a busy guy, these days. So I don’t always have the luxury of time to sit myself down, watch an episode of something, then try to come up with an eloquent way to verbalize whatever thoughts I might have about it. But last, and most importantly, the motivation just really isn’t there. I’m just not always in a mental headspace to force myself to write those reviews. It becomes work. And that’s the last thing I want. I want this to be fun.

So here’s what I’m gonna do instead. I’m gonna start doing a weekly recap where I briefly go over each episode, their strengths and weaknesses, the best and worst episodes of the week, and maybe a few quirky little bonus categories I come up with as a surprise from one week to the next. I’ll still do full episodes reviews, but only for the episodes that stand out to me as especially good, especially poor, or especially interesting.

“But dude! What’re you going to do on the other days?”

Well. Aside from working on that webshow that’s not easy to make and takes far more time and effort, I figure this opens up my schedule to do the other stuff I’ve been wanting to. Without worrying about “oh, but I also have anime to watch and force myself to talk about at length.” It’ll give me the chance do more  things like that Magical Girl Site article as well as cute little lists and other things I come up with. Also more chances to do more retrospectives like Date A Live. I even have a good idea as to what my next one is going to be.

I won’t be cranking those out all the time (they also take a lot of work and time, but work and time I am more than happy to put in), of course. I think once we’re more set up, we’ll use the off days to stream some games like Overwatch or Fortnite. But in the meantime those days will probably just be empty. Fact is, we have a lot of creative projects going on behind the scenes. Two of them, in particular, are especially huge in scope. And we need the time to work on those as well. So there may be days where you just don’t see anything from us aside from some tweets or something.

If we come up with any other amusing ideas for quick little things we can do in the off-time that don’t require large amounts of thought or editing, we’ll give it a whirl.

Patreon

Yes, the Patreon stalled again (though not nearly as badly). It was on purpose, this time. Basically we were just waiting to get a few of our ducks in a row. It’ll be back to regular updates when we start with the new reviews and everything, next weekend.

Discord Server

As I said before. Probably won’t see it until months down the line. The core reason is the same as the Site Maintenance. We’re just waiting on some aesthetic stuff, at this point. Everything’s basically in line.

The Wrap-Up

And that’s pretty much it. Everything we’ve got going on at the moment and everything we’re planning to do in the near future. No real witticisms or anything to close out with, so I’ll just leave it here. Thanks for reading, folks! Keep up the Awesome!

Take Care,
C. Voyage