Eight Years of Otaku Journalist, Part 3

Writing

I honestly can’t believe Thanksgiving is this week. November goes by so quickly when you’re writing 1,667 additional words a day! I’ll save my NaNoWriMo impressions for the end of the month when I’ve finished or failed it, but I can already say it certainly makes time fly.

We’ve now entered the top ten of Otaku Journalist’s top 20 most popular posts of all time. Whether it’s a post about a defunct streaming service or a decades-old card game, it’s interesting to see what has endured the test of time—and how things have changed.

10. The Inside Story: Women and Magic

April 12, 2012 | 18,415 views

Magic: The Gathering has come a long way. At the time I wrote this article, pro-tour player Jackie Lee was facing disgusting comments about her gender. Today, she works for MTG and helps design the game. Since 2012, Wizards of the Coast did two things: they hired diversely, and they instituted a zero-tolerance for bullying that left the bullies tournament-banned. In 2016 I wrote for Forbes about how inclusive this once-unwelcoming community has become—and I honestly never thought that was something I of all people would be writing.

9. How to get paid to watch anime

July 28, 2015 | 20,044 views

I believe in monetizing all my hobbies. I like knowing that I can get paid to build Gunpla, watch anime, or even light a relaxing scented candle. So it was only a matter of time before I told people about some of the ways to do this. The trick is lowering your expectations: “Full-time anime reviewer” is not realistic, but “earning a couple hundred bucks a month definitely is. If I ever figure out how to make my entire living from watching anime though, I’ll write about it.

8. Is anime streaming site Daisuki worth your time?

May 20, 2013 | 20,057

Now that Daisuki is dead, I am sure this review isn’t long for the top 20 list. I think this article did well because of the leading title and the fact that I actually spoke to somebody from Daisuki for it. It’s amazing how rarely bloggers bother to reach out to expert sources because they assume they’re not equally desperate to talk to members of the press—but it’s surprisingly easy. (Kudos to Organization Anti-Social Geniuses especially for always getting sources for their articles.)

7. What’s the appeal of cat ears?

August 26, 2010 | 22,288

This is extremely old and low on actual facts and journalism. But I think the reason it does well is despite anything beyond anecdotal evidence even existing on this subject, this is still a question people Google a bunch. Cat ears are adorable, and I love how they’ve become even more mainstream in fashion—I used to have to go to an anime con to buy a cat-ear hat or headband, but now I can go to any trendy store at the mall.

6. Anime romance for grown-ups

August 25, 2014 | 31,307

I have to assume this has so much traffic because “grown-up anime” means different things to different people. This isn’t actually a post about hentai though, but my selection of romance shows that don’t end with “happily ever after” after the couple’s first kiss. They go into the difficulties of understanding one another after courtship is over, learning how to fight fair, trust each other even when other love interests appear, and yes, intimacy is also a factor but not the only one. Re-reading this article makes me think it needs a modern update with all the great new shoujo and josei romances that have gotten their own anime since 2014.

My NaNoWriMo project is officially more than halfway done. Once again, here’s my word count as of the night before this post went up: 31,738. I think I might actually do this!

Previously:

Otaku Links: The gang’s all here

Otaku Links

Lead image via Anime-Gataris.

Eight Years of Otaku Journalist, Part 2

Anime, Fandom, Writing

Tomorrow is November 14, 2017—eight years to the date that I started this blog.

I was 22 then, getting my Master’s in Print Journalism at American University. I had temporarily broken up with my college boyfriend (who you know as my husband, John), and a lot of things were up in the air. So when my professor instructed us all to buy domain names and start portfolio sites, I thought, why not start a blog? There’s never a right time, anyway.

Otaku Journalist was first called LaurenRaeOrsini.com. It was supposed to be a general portfolio in hopes that I would be palatable to the largest number of employers. But when I graduated with my MA to zero job prospects except retail, I decided to treat my blog as my job, writing about my favorite topics in anime and fandom analysis. In the following eight years I’ve worked a number of freelance and traditional writing and web development jobs, but Otaku Journalist has always been the place at which I center my core interests and identity.

This year is the first one, I think, where my career is finally where I want it to be. I’m self-employed with income so stable I no longer think it’s helpful to write income reports. I’ve come a long way and I have a memory like a sieve, so it’s great to review my top 20 most popular posts as the “cornerstone content” I’ve come to be known for. Last week I reviewed posts 20-16. This week I’m going over 15-11:

15. Why every anime fan should be worried about cartoon porn laws

Nov 5, 2014 | 10,882 pageviews

Getting into the five figures! This topic is so important to me that I wrote an updated version for Forbes last year: Am I Going To Get Arrested For Bringing All This Cartoon Porn Into The US? I sort of hammed it up in the title here, but I actually did bring back doujinshi with me—I just mailed it from the Shinjuku post office to avoid getting stopped with it at the border.

Generally, I wrote this piece because I was hearing a lot of sentiment that people getting arrested for hentai doesn’t apply to fans of nonpornographic anime. But since authorities have mistaken PG manga for porn, and adult manga for child porn, this is a problem for everyone. I’m just grateful the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has our backs.

14. Maybe you’re the reason anime is dying

Aug 21, 2013 | 11,317 pageviews

This is certainly one of the most provocative post titles I’ve written on Otaku Journalist. Even though this post is 4 now, people still talk about how anime isn’t as good as it used to be. I refined this same idea in a 2015 post: The “good old days” of anime.

But this post also has a second prong, and it’s that we need to be kind to new fans. If the Anime Origin Stories project has taught me anything, it’s that we were all newbies once. If we are snobby about new anime compared to the old classics and turn our noses up at people just discovering anime for the first time, nobody’s going to want to be an anime fan anymore.

13. Why Gundam Build Fighters means now is a great time to get into Gunpla

Oct 21, 2013 | 13,233 pageviews

This article was John’s idea. It was still a few months before we started Gunpla 101, and he suggested that I keep testing the water to see if people were interested in Gunpla content from me. I probably didn’t have an idea to write about this week and went with it, because this is not the kind of deep analysis I preferred to do in 2013. But hey, it was popular!

By the way, you’ll notice that a lot of these older popular posts have exactly 0 comments. That’s because I switched to the Disqus commenting system per reader request in 2014, which overlaid a lot of the WordPress native comments that were here before. If I look at the editing screen for this one, for example, I can view eight comments that used to be here.

12. Fashion, Femininity, and Fascism, but Family Foremost: The Themes of Kill la Kill

Feb 12, 2014 | 13,721 pageviews

I rarely allow guest posts on Otaku Journalist—in fact, I think I have only allowed one guest post ever. This essay by my friend and neighbor Grant is the only post on Otaku Journalist that I didn’t write myself. Not only is it a great piece by a talented writer, but PBS Idea Channel linked to this essay in their video about Kill La Kill, and the views for this post skyrocketed.

I just notified Grant that his essay is one of my top 20 most popular posts, and when I did I asked what he’s working on now, since he’s also a professional writer. He said, “an essay on Gurren Lagann and libertarianism for a pop culture anthology.” Pretty cool. Still, not sure I’ll ever do guest posting again, because it means putting somebody else on my top 20 popular posts list!

11. Christmas present ideas for anime fans

Nov 17, 2014 | 15,179 pageviews

This is why picking the correct SEO keywords matters. The posts that say “gift ideas” and “holiday gifts” may be more PC, but they never get as much traffic as when I say “Christmas” because when it comes down to it, that’s what people are typing into Google.

I really enjoy putting together this list every year because as anime fandom gets increasingly mainstream, the merchandise gets so much more varied and better designed. I remember when I was 14 and the only, I repeat only, anime T-shirt you could buy at Another Universe was the Nerv logo from Neon Genesis Evangelion on a black background in a men’s size large.

It’s still NaNoWriMo, so once again I’m going to conclude this post with my word count as of the night before this post went up: 20,730. Almost halfway there!

Previously:

Otaku Links: When you assume

Otaku Links

Lead image: detail from “Dogo Onsen by Night,” Jake Jung.

Eight years of Otaku Journalist, Part 1

Anime, Careers, Writing

Eight years ago in November, I pressed “publish” on Otaku Journalist for the first time.

My first post, “Welcome” is so laughably vague compared with how specific I’ve gotten over the years. Today I’m not only occupying a specific niche topic; the main purpose that Otaku Journalist is still around is to help others with their niche (usually geeky) pursuits, too.

Eight years is an incredibly long time to have a blog. I’ve gone through four visual redesigns and countless directional shifts, in which I prioritize different topics. But I don’t blog in a vacuum and it’s always been my readers who have set the pace.

With that in mind, I’m going to take the rest of November to look at the 20 most popular posts of all time on Otaku Journalist, according to the Google Analytics tracker I first placed in the site code on November 14, 2009, and share my own insights.

Let’s get started with #20-16 this week. We’ll end with #5-1 on November 27.

20. How to start a career in anime journalism

Sept 29, 2010 | 7,458 pageviews

It goes without saying that the older an article is, the more time it had to build up pageviews to get on this list. But I think the reason this article is on the top 20 is because it stars three big names—Colette Bennett, Patrick Macias, and Gia Manry—who are still active in the industry.

Seven years later, Patrick Macias and I co-edited an edition of Otaku USA magazine. I still chat with Colette about our Korean skincare routines. Gia moved to my city to work for Bethesda, but I only recently met her and her husband for the first time at an Otakon happy hour. I will always be grateful to the three of them for giving me a chance when I was nobody, and somehow still popping up in my life now and then almost a decade later.

19. Why is the media covering Space Dandy while other anime get ignored?

Jan 6, 2014 | 7,627 pageviews

You’ll see that a lot of the top 20 have these question-format titles. This particular one has not aged well. Anime is practically mainstream these days, with the New York Times reviewing Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name like they would any other blockbuster.

Space Dandy marked a sea change in how anime was produced. More and more, we’re seeing not only simulcasts, but co-productions where an American company funds a Japanese anime project and the resulting production is equally marketed toward an overseas audience, too. To this end, I’ve noticed more and more shows have Crunchyroll listed as a producer.

18. The truth about Boys’ Love and rape culture

Oct 14, 2013 | 8,237 pageviews

The likely, ugly truth is that people Google “anime” and “rape” and this pops up. It’s definitely a fetish thing, but my article is clearly not about that and I guess people are still clicking.

Like most older posts, I read this one and think I could rework it to be better now. It takes a while to get to the point. It makes it sound like anime fans invented slash (actually, Star Trek fans probably did). Plus, I think at this point, I still felt a lot of shame about enjoying BL, while today I realize it’s a fairly simple concept—just one of many sexual fantasies people enjoy.

17. How to make money anime blogging

Aug 28 2013 | 9,066 pageviews

I believe this is the first time I ever wrote about affiliate marketing on Otaku Journalist. Today this is one of the cornerstones of my career, through Gunpla 101, my candle blog, and this one.

You can tell just how long it took me to develop techniques to make affiliate blogging profitable. First I made $150 in eight months, then I made $150 every month. (Now I make $150 every couple of days, or once a day around Christmas. For more on how I did that, you can read way more recent articles.) There are also some references to projects I no longer have, like my “free guides” which actually became the chapters of my book Otaku Journalism. I hope that my more recent courses and posts on the subject surpass this post’s popularity, because I have absolutely refined my blog money-making techniques a lot since then.

16. How to write anime reviews people actually want to read

Dec 17, 2012 | 9,469 pageviews

Amazingly, I wrote this post before I was even writing reviews professionally. (I started as an Anime News Network reviewer in 2014.) So this advice isn’t using the full extent of my knowledge and experience on writing reviews week after week for four years. Some of it I don’t even agree with anymore (who cares about audience reception, actually).

Even in 2012 I knew that it was important to give reviews a recognizable grade, but this is the hardest part for me even now. I wrote a blog post about it in 2015: My Biggest Weakness: Grading Reviews. I tend to write a review that says what I really think and then give it a higher grade than it deserves to get the hecklers (who are just coming to check the grade and not to read the whole review) off my back. But lately I’ve been working with my editor to give more critical grades that better reflect what the episodes deserve.

Since this is NaNoWriMo, I’m going to conclude each post this month with my word count as of the night before this post went up: 8,253. Still on track!