Hey! by the end of January, this blog is four months old. Much young, such baby. If this blog were a cat, it’s now entering its social development phase. Meaning, I think I should seriously consider guest posting.
For the most part, I only write for another blog owned by an acquaintance of mine, menulis.id. I generally cover literary works, bits of history, and what not on their English section. But, I’ve been experiencing writer’s block recently. Sometimes the words just won’t pop in.
Writing for my own blog seems fun so far. All I write is based on shower thoughts and some weeb discussion with my friends. Also, I didn’t expect to get my first monthly 1k traffic. Hey! I guess that’s an achievement in and of itself. For the longest time, I never knew how to research what topic to write. So, I write my posts purely out of my enjoyment, and don’t really consider how much traffic that I expect.
Anime Blog To Build Portfolio?
But, aligning with the original purpose of this blog, I’m steadily getting the hang of blogging overall. Heck, I hope this kind of blog can count as a portfolio. I’m pretty much a blank slate in terms of job experience anyway. It’s tough receiving rejection email every day. So, it’s still grinding time for me. Ganbatte myself!
When I browse for job openings, I occasionally search for anime content writer jobs. But, what I notice is companies often just want writers who write about Jujutsu Kaisen, One Piece, or Dragon Ball. Is this because of the hype and large fandom? But, come on now, ain’t there a lot of great anime other than those?
My Concerns With Corporate Anime Journalism And Self-Owned Blogs
When multiple big websites only post about three well-known anime, it gets boring, right? (This guy wrote this while fully aware he only writes about Frieren). I don’t know, maybe they’re looking for the most organic traffic. After all, they’re companies and have to pay their employees. So, I turn my attention to independent bloggers, like myself.
There are some very lively anime blogs, I follow several of them on WordPress. Some of you guys occasionally interact with me too, which is lovely, thank you. However, much to my dismay, there are many… too many, anime blogs that have either stopped posting, or has been in hiatus since forever. As a new anime blogger, I say what in the world happened? Did this niche get an apocalypse or something?
Anyway, I stumbled on chikorita157‘s and Irina posts about this. Hmm, seems like the situation is rather bleak overall. I wonder, though, what could’ve caused this? Are all anime writers sucked into those anime corporate reviewers? A plausible hypothesis. After all, when I clicked some of their writers’ profiles, they used to have anime blogs as well. However, when I visit their blogs, what I mostly found were barren blogs with no post since 2019.
So, What’s Next?
I understand the trend in anime blogging has changed, and it’s good for those who found a career in anime journalism. Although, I wish I could relive the height of anime blogging. I remember around ten years ago, when I attended high school. I often looked for anime reviews and all that I saw were pretty much bloggers.
Some anime bloggers that I follow might be the same ones that I visited back then. Do I want to be like them? Kinda. I was skeptical about my writing quality, though. So, I asked Reddit (like the proper adult that I am) about it. The response were mostly encouraging, which made me more enthusiastic about this hobby.
However, I don’t really share this blog on the platform that I’m most active in, Twitter (or X as this grammar checker keeps correcting me, leave me alone Grammarly!). People who know me on Twitter are mostly my real life friends, and not all of them are kind to the anime community in general.
When I say I discuss anime with friends, that means online friends. I love being a weeb, but it’s still something that I keep on the online world for the most part. Although, I do hope this anime blog will get me somewhere, someday.
Seinenrider 
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