Been a while… again. So let’s crank out a little update to give you guys an idea of where we are, at the moment.

Content

All right! So we actually have a bit of an update. One of the things you’ll no doubt notice is the slow move towards a more conversational approach to writing episodes of the show. There are three real reasons for this. The first of which is that writing a news-driven show with a scripted format is actually remarkably difficult. News topics lose their relevance quickly, in this day and age. So talking about them half a week after they’ve dropped is becoming less and less viable.

The second is that I’m inherently someone who doesn’t like to stick to one way of doing things for an extended period of time. I get it from my parents, I think. Regardless, we’ve changed elements and details about the show a bit over the years, but I think it’s about time to change things up quite a bit.

And the last reason is that the news format is… honestly rather limiting to creativity. We have the comic strips on occasion, sure (something we’re actually expecting to bring back, later next year), but there’s only so much I can do with the twins just talk about hot topics every week. Here’s where the fun stuff comes in.

We’re planning a sort of mini-revamp of the show, next year, probably around the Spring. Possibly earlier. We have most of the assets we’ve been waiting for to do it. But there are still a few little things we’ll need, and we expect to actually be getting those shortly after the holidays. Speaking of the Holidays, no there won’t be a holiday-themed episode or comic strip, this year. I’ll simply be too busy. Instead, we’ll just be closing out the year and season with a couple more Bulletoon Minis.

If we’re not ready for that soft-revamp by the time we come back (the first weekend after New Years), then we’ll just start up Season 9 in the same format as right now. Buuut, whenever we are ready, expect a bit of a hiatus. Probably just two or so weeks. Time I’ll be taking to put together a backlog of episodes… because the new format will allow me to do that.

So what can you expect with this little revamp? Nothing amazingly drastic, I assure you. If there are news topics we want to discuss, we will most definitely still do episodes on those. We just won’t concern ourselves as much with addressing it as “news.” It’ll be more about the conversation, itself. But other things to expect? Well, more interaction, for one thing. We’re thinking Polls and such. Also more connectivity with the actual website. Right now, the show is in a weird space where it’s part of the site but has a very distant relationship with it. We’re not saying everything we plan to do to fix that will happen at the beginning of this little revamp, but just start to expect a little more overlap. And that’s all I care to talk about on the subject, at the moment. For the rest, you’ll just have to wait and see when the time finally comes.

Gaming

We’re still on a bit of a freeze with this stuff, at the moment. Though mostly for a different reason than you might expect. With so much stuff going on, we just decided to prioritize other things. So our gaming stuff is on the backburning, right now. The Overwatch videos take a while to make. And the streaming is going to cost money for the proper setup, both tech-wise and in terms of arranging the aesthetics for the Twitch page, itself. So it just makes sense to put that on hold while we work on other, more important things, like making sure our review and editorial content is top tier and paying for… other things I’ll talk about in a bit.

Reviews

Obviously, we’re not yet at a point of updating our schedule for the Winter 2019 Anime Season. So there isn’t really any new stuff to talk about in that area. But, as you’ve likely noticed, we recently debuted an experimental new review series – Sibling Warfare, written by our very own EvilBob and his brother, Ry. Give it a look-see, when you get a chance. If you dig it, we’ll make it a regular thing.

Back on the subject of anime, though, I recently announced that the poll winner for the next Full-Series Review (after Toaru Majutsu no Index) is Kill la Kill. So when can you expect that? Well, I’m thinking that I’ll be launching that review at the end of the month. And because those reviews take a while, I’ve been working on sort of a schedule for that. So when it comes to Full-Series reviews, here’s what I’ll be doing. I’ll break it down by cour. While there won’t exactly be a pattern to this, some months I’ll be covering two single-cour shows – once halfway through the month, and once at the end. Other months I’ll dedicate to just one two-cour show at the end of the month. In the case of shows that are much longer – Hunter x Hunter, for example, I’ll make specials out of those and break them down by the story arc, covering just one arc a month. Sound like a plan? Cool. Moving on.

Anime TKO

In case you’ve not been paying attention, EvilBob and I have been running a fun little project we’ve dubbed Anime TKO. It’s a tournament in which we pit each other’s anime selections against one another in a bitter fight to the end to help us trim down the li- I mean determine what the best anime of the season was (that we decided to cover). It’s been a blast to write and the semifinals just dropped today. So be sure to check that out and see which shows made it to the finals.

As for the future of Anime TKO, we’re not sure. We definitely wanna do more of them. Maybe even make it a regular thing. Buuut we can’t always guarantee that a season is going to produce enough anime for us to do it. Next season, for example, is looking pretty slim, so far. Good, but slim. And we also fully expect to be making a few format changes, next time, to make it easier to follow and just more organized, in general. But We’re hoping you guys have enjoyed reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it.

Originals

Aaand then there’s this. I can’t go into a looot of detail. Some of this is still super secret stuff I shouldn’t say too much about. But, as you know, we’re constantly working on original projects. And we’re actually significantly far along in one of them. To the point that we’re aiming to launch it, somewhere around the middle of next year. Meanwhile, we don’t have any projections on the other main thing we’re working on, just yet. Monetarily or Time-wise. But I can say that it’s a book! So look forward to more on that!

Conventions & Events

Not going to confirm anything juuust yet, but we do plan to attend at least one con in a major way, next year. And that would be MegaCon in Orlando. Don’t wanna say much more about that, but it should be pretty fun if we can make it. Aaand if not, we do still have plans to hit AwesomeCon in Washington, as well as Baltimore Comic-Con, as we do, pretty much every year, at this point.

Site Maintenance

So. In case ya didn’t notice, we kinda tweaked the site a bit. And by “a bit,” I mean we basically overhauled the top menu. We didn’t really talk about it, but here’s a quick rundown.

We added a “Community” tab, which basically consists of Anime TKO, Lightning Lists, and a section for Tags & Awards.

Next there’s the “Writing” section, which has been revamped into “Reviews.” This also holds our Editorials. The main drop-down menu mostly features the anime reviews. There’s also the archive of older reviews from before we overhauled what series were meant for what. And last is a sub-menu for all non-anime reviews.

We also have an affiliate menu for… well… our affiliates. When we add more of them, anyway.

Schedule

Okay. And now we have some tweaks to address to the schedule. Nothing’s really changing that much, here. It’s actually just EvilBob’s schedule, this time. See, after Anime TKO, Bob’s list… well… it got culled to near oblivion. So he decided he’d be bringing some of his shows back to cover. As such, Golden Kamuy and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind are coming back to his lineup. Granted, Golden Kamuy is about to end. But still.

Sunday – SSSS.Gridman
Monday – Golden Kamuy
Tuesday – N/A
Wednesdays – N/A
Thursday – N/A
Friday – N/A
Saturday – JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind

As for me, nothing new to report. Most of the shows from my run of the season are staying how they currently are. So basically Irozuku, Bunny Girl Senpai, and Index are all staying. As are Noragami and Black Clover.

So How Long Are You Still Waiting For Artwork?

Too long…

But, to be honest, it’s probably going to be another two or three months, if all goes according to plan. And what does that mean? Well, once we have the necessary artwork, we’ll be doing a few things. One of which is the stuff I mentioned about Bulletoon, earlier. We’ll also be updating the look of the site a liiittle more. Oh. And there’s that Discord server we talked about. Some other things would be getting tweaked as well. Social Media, for one. We’d probably also start streaming on occasion, just when we have some free time. But nothing regular, as implied above.

There’s also the matter of the original projects, which require artwork of their own. And as those things also require time and money, it’s entirely possible our work on those could interrupt some things. But here’s to hoping it won’t.

The Wrap-Up

That’s pretty much everything. A bit of a longer update than I was expecting, but we’ll actually probably have another one towards the end of the month. In the meantime, thanks for reading, as always! Keep up the Awesome!

Take Care,
Voyager