Who gets to have their anime opinions heard?

Anime, Writing

Nobody was more surprised than I was when I was picked to be a Crunchyroll Anime Awards judge. I’m not famous or in the industry, like some of the other judges. When I told my friends about the honor, I know they were happy for me, but behind that was a bit of “Why you?”

Let me try to answer that. I’ve known Crunchyroll editor Patrick Macias since I reached out to him for an interview on Otaku Journalist in 2010. Since then I’ve worked with him briefly when I freelanced at Otaku USA and published an article on Crunchyroll. The biggest thing the two of us did together was put out a print edition cosplay magazine. So when Patrick was tasked with finding some people to send a “judges needed” boilerplate email, that’s probably why he thought of me. (And since it was a general call for judges, it’s likely that not everyone he asked accepted, though I’m pretty sure I set a record for instantly replying “YES.”)

So there you have it. I’m old, I’ve been writing about anime for over 7 years now, and I’ve worked with a lot of different people so I’m well connected. Want to be selected to judge neat stuff? Don’t stop writing about anime for almost a decade and that could be you.

I was the person picked for the job. But am I the BEST person for the job? Definitely not. I never took a film criticism course in college. I don’t speak fluent Japanese. I am not an expert on sakuga or any other facet of how your anime sausage gets made. I am just a girl with opinions, opinions that have kept getting louder and louder as I applied for (and picked up) work at Anime News Network, Otaku USA, Crunchyroll, Kotaku, Forbes, and more.

As a result, the Crunchyroll Anime Awards have been met with some criticism. A lot of fans, including people I count among my friends, have been doing “write-in” votes because they don’t see their own favorites among the four selections for each category. I get that; not all MY own favorites got picked. Here’s what I submitted to Crunchyroll, which was then pooled with the six other judges’ picks in order to get the selection you see on the Anime Awards. Keep in mind this was blind voting—I didn’t sit down with LeSean Thomas and compare notes or anything. It was a group of seven people choosing their subjective favorites.

Probably most of the anime reviewers and bloggers you read on a regular basis are no more qualified than I am to do this, though there are some notable exceptions. (Amelia Cook at Anime Feminist has a college degree in Japanese Studies; kViN is a sakuga expert, etc.)

YouTube anime reviewer Digibro recently suggested that these experts, and the most established anime bloggers in general, should be the people with the loudest voices in his video “On the Need For A Cabal of Anime Gurus.” (He later expanded on this viewpoint in detail on Josh Dunham’s Senpai Coast to Coast.) The downside is that this looks a lot like gatekeeping, implying that some voices are more valuable than others. If that became the accepted state of things, I probably never would have started anime blogging. I struggle with imposter syndrome and I wouldn’t have ever felt like I was good enough.

Here’s why I do think I’m good enough—I’m persistent and reliable. I have been vocal about anime several times a week for almost a decade now. I didn’t start out educated about anime, but experience and reading other reviewers has made me better. I also think that by adding my voice to all the others out there, I bring my own experiences to the table. As it turns out, that’s the thing I value most in the anime reviewers I admire myself.

I love reading about the nitty gritty of animation—stuff like how the art director planned a show’s ED, or how Yuri on Ice doesn’t have a higher than usual budget behind its ice dancing choreography. But what I value even more is my favorite reviewers’ individual viewpoints on a show. I want to hear Isaac justify why he likes shows other people think are uncool because I think he has a unique perspective. I like Reverse Thieves’ joint reviews because I think their friendship with each other is just as interesting as the way they rate shows. Not to say that these reviewers aren’t educating themselves about anime more and more all the time, but I value their opinions, how they relate to these shows as people, most of all. And I want anime bloggers just starting out to know that no matter their anime knowledge level, they have an incomparable perspective on anime that’s unlike any other out there.

“I want people to be more educated about anime,” Digibro told Josh, and that’s a very laudable goal, and due to our language barrier with Japanese anime creators, the misinformation he speaks out against is definitely a problem. But I definitely think there are different degrees of being into anime, and there are people out there who just want to enjoy shows without thinking too hard about them. I think that leads to a pretty forgiving audience for anime blogging, one that cares about why you thought it was an episode worth watching, even if you didn’t know who the episode’s sound designer was. That would be an interesting detail, but it’s not enough to build a review out of. For me, opinions are still valuable. After all, there’s no way to objectively rate the best anime of the year, or else seven judges picked for being “respected voice[s] in the anime community,” as my Anime Awards Judge email read, would be able to accurately predict fan favorites without anybody doing write-ins.

If you’re on the fence about sharing your anime reviews because you don’t think you’re good enough, or anyone will read and find value in them, I’m encouraging you to think again. Your passion for anime is already giving you license to write helpful, entertaining reviews.

Photo via elderleaf

Otaku Links: F A S H I O N

Otaku Links

December 2016 Monthly Income Report

Careers, Income Reports

Most of the time I feel like Schrodinger’s Freelancer: I’m both doing pretty well and one step away from bankruptcy. Any time I’m working, I’m fine. Any time I’m not, I can’t relax because what if I never manage to get any work again?

This was fine in 2016, but as the new year arrives, I’m making some changes. I am going to eliminate some of the parts of my freelancing career that give me unnecessary uncertainty.

The first thing I did was spend some money. This doesn’t look like much, but I spent almost $700 on business expenses in December. It started on the 23rd when ALL my websites went down! I then spent the rest of the holiday trying to figure out why. I spent three hours on Boxing Day on the phone with Bluehost (note: this is my affiliate link!) trying every possible fix, from disabling every plugin and non-basic theme, to updating the PHP version, to refreshing the WordPress core files.

Troubleshooting with Bluehost wasn’t my first choice for how to spend the holidays, but the longer I stayed on the phone, the more I realized why I’ve been a Bluehost web hosting customer for seven years. More than anything else, I appreciate their tech support. There’s hardly ever a hold time, there’s no song and dance with a robot, and the technicians treat me like a person and acknowledge that I know my own sites best. So when we finally reached the conclusion that I needed to upgrade my Shared Hosting plan ($6 a month) to my own Virtual Private Server ($18 a month), I realized that I was actually comfortable investing this much money now. And sure enough, this was the fix I needed—I had exceeded my traffic and memory limits for shared hosting, and that was the issue.

My next expense was MUCH cheaper—Quickbooks Self Employed is having a sale right now, and it’s only $5 a month for the first six months. I’d been on the fence for a long time, but after reading Nicole Dieker’s review on The Billfold, I finally took the plunge.

Since 2013, I have tracked my business income, expenses, and estimated taxes in a Google Spreadsheet. It’s free, and I figured it was all an organized person like me needed. But Quickbooks is already eliminating the double-checking I have to do for stupid financial mistakes. With my spreadsheet, I have to deposit a paycheck, check for it to appear in my bank account, and then correctly write down the amount and date it arrived. It takes a lot of mental energy because if I accidentally wrote $450 and the check was for $475, I’d be unwittingly committing tax fraud. This is why the IRS audits self-employed people more than anyone else.

Quickbooks syncs with my bank account (it’s an Intuit product so if you have Mint, well, it works exactly like Mint) so I don’t have to worry about getting my accounting wrong. When the paycheck arrives, I mark it as business income, attach a PDF of my invoice, and I’m done. The best part is that it calculates my quarterly estimated taxes, so I can do less math. I usually spend the year wondering if I paid too much or too little in taxes, but I won’t in 2017.

This month has also been momentous when it comes to income streams. Notice I changed the legend. Now that I quit my day job, I divided my “freelance” income (formerly medium blue) into two parts—my web work and my writing work. It looks like web work is still my biggest income slice right now, even if I am back to working on projects for clients.

I’ve mentioned before that the Amazon Affiliate program pays me on a three month delay, so the paycheck that made this pie chart, around $500, was was I earned in October. In December, I finally met a goal I’ve had for a long time—I made $1000+ in one month. I didn’t know if I’d meet it, since my sites were mostly down from the 23-26 and I made about $2 that entire time! Now, my goal is to make four figures every month in 2017. If you want to start, too, here’s my free guide.

I worked really hard this December, compared to usual. I worked on my birthday and Christmas, which are usually days I’d rather take off. Ideally, this means that January should be pretty comfortable, but like I said, it’s little comfort to Schrodinger’s Freelancer, who needs to work on adjusting to living without a safety net, AKA a salaried job.

How did I do on my December financial goals? I finished launching my “business venture,” which I revealed to be my Asuna WordPress theme and my new freelance web design business. I bought gifts for everyone for around $400 which felt like a lot, but family and friends are worth it. I did not even TOUCH Gunpla DB, oops.

My January financial goals are:

  • Master Quickbooks and start making it work for me.
  • Pay estimated taxes and mail out my 1099-MISC forms to my subcontractors ahead of schedule!
  • Forget about work for just a few days. I’m taking a small vacation with some friends in late January, and I’m going to do my best not to touch my laptop during that time.

Happy 2017! What are your financial goals?

Previously: 

Otaku Links: New Links Eve

Otaku Links

  • I don’t drink a lot of whisky but I finally found one I like, and Ink asked me to review it for Drunken Otaku. Considering my favorite wine costs $10, I’m not surprised it’s a cheap one.
  • Speaking of speaking of drinking, Emily’s Cooking with Anime column published its first drink recipe, a revenge cocktail inspired by Lupin the Third.
  • Remember Shazaam, the ’90s genie movie starring Sinbad? A lot of redditors do, even though the movie never existed. Maybe they’re thinking of Kazaam? (They say no.)
  • Got that last link plus the YoI cocktails link from The Rec Center, my favorite fandom and fanfic focused newsletter. You should read it because I don’t usually take all of Otaku Links from it!

Photo by GW Fins on Flickr

The Best of Otaku Journalist 2016

Writing

It’s the day after Christmas, and you’re already back on your computer? Me too.

It’s hard to make the end of the year a time of relaxation, because it’s so packed for me—five birthdays for friends, family and me, plus a major holiday. The least I can do is make it a time of reflection. In 2016 I blogged (almost) every Monday, so on this final Monday of 2016, I’m picking a favorite post from every month. Here they are, the best 12 posts of Otaku Journalist 2016:

How to make 2016 your year of profitable niche writing

This is cheating, a little, because this is the first of my free four-part series on creating a niche affiliate blog. This is the closest I get to passive income, the kind where I wake up and find out I made $100 overnight, and I want to show everyone how to do it.

How to balance a lot of major projects (AKA how to do everything you want)

I’ve stuck with my monthly paper planner since January ‘16, and I’m not stopping now! This February post is still a great example of just how I balance all the stuff I’m doing at any time.

How to prepare for your first visit to Japan

Finally visiting Japan was the highlight of my year, and perhaps life. Here’s how I got ready, starting twenty years in advance. Sort of!

How to get back to normal after a trip to Japan

Another “cheating” post. I wrote eight blog posts for the ten days I was in Japan, and you can read all of them here. My favorite day: Awestruck at Fushimi Inari Shrine.

What I want the next generation of anime fans to know

I got the privilege of speaking with Quirkster Kids, a group that happens to have a lot of members with good taste in anime, and I can say that the Kids Are All Right. Here’s what I got to tell kids and their parents (and wish somebody had told my parents) about anime fandom.

Why you should get started even if it’s hard.

In which I revisit my least productive month in recent memory and explain how I broke out of that rut and found the momentum to start getting shit done again.

None of this is your fault.

Even though the person I wrote about found this post and continues to harass me, I don’t regret writing it. I hope it encourages at least one other person in trouble to speak up.

Welcome to the Gunpla DB Beta!

My biggest completed project of the year, which combined mine, John’s, and Crimm’s hard work. One of my major 2017 goals is to get this site OUT of beta now.

Fashion advice from a freelancer who likes bright colors and saving money

This definitely isn’t a fashion blog, but I decided to post about my clothes anyway after getting comments on a tweet I posted featuring my totally color-coordinated closet.

Web design retrospect: J-Novel Club

Another major project I helped with this year—doing the graphic design component of the web’s first “streaming service” for light novels. Are you reading light novels yet?

5 things I did before quitting my day job

After a year, I quit my web developer gig downtown to return to full time freelance, and immediately began making a living wage. Here’s how I did that.

Meet Asuna For WordPress

The last big thing I accomplished in 2016—a from-scratch WordPress theme that proves that my day job wasn’t for nothing. Couldn’t have done this without the new skills I learned there.

Thanks for reading Otaku Journalist in 2016. See you next year!