Image © 5pb/Nitroplus

Last April 16, 2010 marked the beginning of this humble little brainchild of mine which was, by the way if you don’t know, started off as a WordPress campaign with the original members being invited from Twitter. I had no idea of how to blog about Japanese pop culture so we started off just like a totally-random site that posts anything under the sun-we-know-as-anime. Those were also the days when I had totally-zero confidence and my ability in narration was a weak one. So I took out some ideas from JanaiBlog, who was the one who brought inspiration to start the group, to guide me in making my first posts. I decided to write about Angel Beats! episodes. If you would go through them, you’ll see that most of my entries about it was too long compared to my recent entries. Yes, it benefited me with my ability to narrate and write improved gradually.

People, especially Mr.A, who later joined the group helped contribute to the site’s growth and to the improvement of my writing and social abilities. The podcasts also show my gradual improvement. The first episodes had a nervous me, and now we have the (arguably) confident me. Fast forward to November with the University second semester and me adjusting well to the University life, I leapt out of the micro-hiatus that stopped me from a writing bits and the Roundtable Otakus podcast was started which included two new hosts. That month was also when I had my first-time international air travel. Aside from enjoying what Singapore had in offer, I also covered the Anime Festival Asia X that happened last November 13 and 14.

And to the present with the vacation season here in the Philippines, we’re currently covering the Spring 2011 season which has packs of shows. I’m still looking at the coast if it’s already clear to write about some series in the Episode Blogging. The licensing of several series made fansub groups drop them and I can’t access *any* of the licensed content. So far, a fairly-reliable group didn’t drop Steins;Gate and a good (and infamous) group is still doing [C] anime.

With the celebration of the one year, again I’m thanking my staff, active or not, for sticking with me and with the project and helping it grow. And I also thank all my Twitter buddies for those discussions and support. They too had helped me improve a bit.

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