Pandemic Procrastination Continues

April 29th, 2020

At least I've only gone marginally stir crazy.

As I'm sure most everybody is aware at this point, there's a bit of a pandemic going on. I'm personally largely unaffected thus far, being of the not-terribly sociable type to begin with, already in the process of being kicked out of the office to work from home, and living in a state so blue that our labdradoodle breeders are only allowed to be in charge of labdradoodle breeding, and even that's iffy. Media production, however, has certainly been affected, and a number of shows have already announced that they're going to be going on hiatus. I'd expect this to be an ongoing thing, likely for the rest of the year, since studios have all kinds of production schedules. Studios like Shaft who are always up against the deadline and regularly put out unfinished shows are likely going to be hit sooner and bounce back quicker, while the ones like Sunrise who tend to have most of their work done ahead of time are likely to see the hiccups far off. Who knows what editing or recording was left to polish up though?

Anyway, the point is that chaos is going to reign for a while, and there's likely to be weeks, if not months, where there's not a whole lot of New Stuff™ out there, and this was already looking like a kind of light season, which is rapidly being made lighter as broadcasts get canceled and the number of shows being delayed or canceled mounts up. I see blogging/blogs/social media in general as mainly a device for talking about New Stuff™. Sure, there's Deep Thoughts to be shared on occasion, but this is not the kind of medium for philosophical ramblings, and I discovered long ago that grades were the main reason I was willing to decontruct art. Also, always kind of felt like I was crawling up my own ass.

Still, rectal-spelunking tendencies aside, it would be good to come up with a plan for the rest of the season, especially considering that there doesn't look like much I really want to watch airing in the Tuesday to Friday span. One thing that I'm definitely going to start on is doing some updates to the blog itself, like fixing comment threading, which broke on a WP update a while back. Maybe something in the sidebar I can use to replace the 2-3 sentence random posts I occasionally make, although as I think about it, I realize that I'm essentially describing in-lining a Twitter feed, so maybe just that. Lord knows I have zero desire to engage with the actual Twitter platform or user base.

I did have the thought of trying to go through about ten different subgenres, one a week, and watch a show in them, subjecting myself to things that I otherwise would not and seeing how the other 95% lives. Or perhaps some kind of bingo-like setup. Then, over the last week, I sat down and tried to watch things I had only vague memories of, like Kemeko Deluxe, Another, and Giant Killing, and regretted it immediately. I struggled to stay engaged through this week's episode of Not-Zetsubou Sensei, hence the giving up on it. I don't know how I'd survive 12-13 episodes all in the span of a week. I suppose there's a lot of silly dreck that's more to my general tastes that I've skipped over the years which would likely be more palatable, especially if I took a similar approach as I do to game reviews, that of the sarcastic hyperbole about everyone's love of the protagonist's genitalia, but I fear that would lead down the path of trashy, fanservicey magical girlfriend shows and naught much else.

Other options include trying to get into the game reviews or playthroughs again, like I tried for Material Brave and Princess Witches, but I can't stress enough how much time even the simple, casual ones of those take. Japanese games are nothing if not wordy, and they've gotten exponentially more so in recent years, and I'm always skeptical of the value of taking screenshots or the like. Even just putting together a review of a demo of things, or the first little introduction bit, takes as much time to play through as it would to suffer through an entire 12 episode season of things, even before it comes time to organize and put down thoughts, and go back to scour for interesting screencaps. I've considered some kind of running weekly walkthrough of translating a game interface, but since most of that is gated by a lack of tool availability to begin with, and would require both doing the work and then documenting it, that seems like it would be a compounding amount of effort requiring even more motivation that is already scarce.

Which is a lot of words to say that I don't really have a good plan for what to do with the Tuesday through Saturday span of this season, and my initial efforts to do something with that have so far not been fruitful. If you've got feedback, fire away. I think for this week, I'm going to try to dig up a fix for comment threading. After that, I'm not sure. Watching some semi-old terrible popcorn dreck doesn't actually sound like too bad an idea at the moment, although that invariably changes once I sit down to actually do it. Or my mood changes. Or I'm fed. Or I'm not fed. I genuinely wonder how much of my past watching habits were influenced by the time that AT-X had an anime bloc that ran shows right after my dinner. I miss those.

Posted in Unimportant Crap | 4 Comments »

4 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Marmot says:

    Whatever you find to do, I’ll read what you have to say about it. I don’t know anything about the types of games you translate/review, but it’s always fascinating to read about the process. Your writing is great and your opinions are always interesting.

    I wouldn’t mind a run down of some of your favorite anime. Often when reading your blog I find myself wondering what shows you actually DO like, haha. Maybe an analysis or comparison between good story telling vs bad, good action scenes vs bad, etc?

    Wouldn’t mind more thoughts on translating games, either!

  • elior1 says:

    Some anime blogs already started old shows while this virus and anime cancelled started getting worse so it a good idea

  • The Phantom says:

    You have a unique-honest view of Anime and I would like your site to get more attention as it really deserves it, I am sick and tired of every blogger sugar coating every freaking anime, they need a dose of reality.

  • elior1 says:

    I have a suggestion. This show might have lots of episodes but i think you should try do review about inuyasha which have lots of action