Let me take this moment to write something that I had been keeping for sometime in the public’s eye. Since I don’t have any animes to watch, and my buddy won’t be calling me it seems, I’ll just use this time to write an opinion which I rarely do. Remember: the content you are about to read may come off as offensive, or can be taken with critical regard. It’s not my intention to degrade nor incur any sort of negative understandings. Just take it as my opinion on the matters. I don’t usually target a person’s traits, more on the arguments that I find worth commenting on.

What I am about to write is my opinion on the direction of this site, as well as reflecting the other entities that is surrounding the local umbrella . The dere-moe project has been, for almost more than a year, an episode blogging site. Mainly writing about anime airing in-season, or reviewing past animes that came across my hard drive. There’s very little diversity in the topics presented in this site. This is due to the reason that most of Anton’s authors are not active writers. Even the author himself is not writing, for reasons that I always find insignificant or inexcusable. Studies is not an excuse for not writing at least one blog post a week. We have 24 hours a day, times 7 we get 168 hours in a week. In those hours, you can spend 1 or two hours writing about something and be able to go with your busy duties. That’s fine. I just can’t accept people using “busy” as an excuse for not writing anything. Or using it as an indirect gesture to not wanting to have any of it. Being “busy” is just a pussy way of justifying one’s laziness. I have a day job, and I can still churn post 3 at least a week. I would had done more back in my college days. If you don’t have time to write, it’s clearly that your attention is drawn elsewhere, why not focus on that and just stop making excuses on being “busy”. Just say it bluntly, that you don’t have time.

The Local Geek Umbrella

I’ll take the liberty to talk about other known brands in the local blogosphere and talk about the difference it has to dere-moe and why they can go mainstream where as we can’t. Let’s start to my beloved group: ZEN.

ZEN has grown beyond the mere forum community it once had. We do have our disagreements before, but I have to say, it shaped my perception and principles on what being a blogger is.

The interesting about this group, is that it doesn’t confines itself to that zealous TV-anime worshipping it once had, when those twins and the old Kira were around. JM is sort of my alter-ego on the other end of the spectrum. He’s the sole guy who runs the Zen website and puts the effort in delivering the brand to the public. Although, their post bring little interest in me. I do subscribe to their RSS feed to check on what’s happening in the TV-anime world. I don’t watch TV these days, and I don’t bother checking what’s hot in Hero these days. I don’t find the taste of its contributors in Anime. But that’s just personal nit-picking.

Unlike Zen. The dere-moe project doesn’t tackle on shows that air on TV. It also doesn’t care what other stations are promoting. Most of which are either B rated, or just nothing but old animes that I had watched 4 years ago. Zen can also tackle with media outlets like Animax to provide assistance in promoting what ever anime that is in their PR machine. I tried doing that, with 7 Ghost and K-on, but I don’t feel the joy of doing it. 7 ghost is a bishounen brigade with direction taken from Code Geass and have it directed in a bad way; and K-On being that cancer that crashed the industry in recent years, that is already enough to express how I hate that anime with a burning passion.

But I had this looming confusion on the direction of the brand, or perhaps the lack of understanding on the mission of it. Because I can’t seem to distinguish if They are focusing on the aspect of TV as a medium, or Anime as a TV for its medium. I like the post they made demystifying MTRCB, the punching bag of frustration over  problems with Animes airing on terrestrial airwaves. But isn’t the entire interview focus more on the rating system than its effect in the anime? There are also articles talking about digital transition in the coming years, which is not related to Anime. Though there are mentions of that kid channel that might eventually be replaced with Hero in the future. I don’t know. It’s their niche. I just read it.

Magnetic-rose blog rub me in a wrong way. I disdain site that uses the term geek and show nothing but the skin deep or ever bother talk about the intricacies of the said culture. It’s like if Otaku Elimination Game would still be alive, this blog would had been dead the moment the browser finished loading. Just look at all the post about here. Cosplay – granted it’s a geek culture -, events … cosplay … and cosplay? Oh, there’s also a review of Last Exile, which clearly is just an excuse to win a price from the PR machines at Animax. Really.

This site speaks to me like it’s nothing but a band-wagon machine that only spits stuff that the pop-culture dictated. It also rides as a cosplay pampering info drive that is promoting cosplay at its worst form. Thankfully this is not an Alodia shrine like that bluetooth old guy, with his harem collection of jailbait beauties. It has class when it delivers its articles, and it certainly holds a standard to its quality. Still, the target audience of this doesn’t event know any other website besides wikipeida, google and facebook. Their readers are not those people I would find reading about anime and why they are what they are. These people are busy with the facebook drama than loosing hair on what on earth just happened with Penguin Drum. Yep. This is the reason I dere-moe won’t hit mainstream.

Oh. On a plus side, whoever organization sits in that brand, are good in organizing events. From the looks of it, these people do it for a fee. How much, I don’t care. At least they do a good job and I don’t have much complaints when these people are running the show.

I like gamertotoy for bringing the other side of the cosplay fandom to a new perspective. Sadly, thing just went downhill with his brand. We rarely see anything interesting in his post these days, the usual banter on how the cosplay fandom is evil and its a cancer that is killing the art. Which is true, with all the weeaboo geeks that is loitering the convention halls. Aside from the Tokusatsu and the Sentai geeks; I’m creep out by them.

He doesn’t cover anything anime related, but he has a spy network of agents that will give him scoops on the evil things that is running around the cosplay scene. We surface RG, Abundo, Siopao master and those perverted photographers who gives no appreciation to the wonderful beauty for the male body. Not that I’m frustrated with these kinds of people lurking around the convention halls. Like those people minding their own business, hitting under age girls in broad daylight. I rather spend my time appreciating what is left to appreciate in the cosplay scene. Which by the way, I like the group cosplay competition last Toeeeeeeeeeeeeinty five a couple of weeks ago. I have videos, uploaded them, I’ll have my partner fix it, because I’m lazy. This is the reason dere-moe won’t hit mainstream.

Otakultura is just like Magnetic-rose but actually run by real geeks. Which is fine by me and all, and I like reading their event reporting since its taken by a con-goer perspective. I just can’t make up it people are really reading their stuff.

Although I can’t figure it the influence it has with the community. They’re  bunch of lazy ass bloggers who write little to nothing for an entire month, still you can hear their name being advertised in some of the conventions. They have those once-in-a-bluemoon show called radio otaku that I don’t listen but it was able to brought Himitsu Heiki to the booking list of convention organizers. These guys have the potential to be a great centre of a community that is able to mix the mainstream and the in-depth audience at large. But the distance between their works is so great that the momentum just dies off. It’s just a waste of potential. But understandable that the people running the show are either professionals focusing their career or family man of some sort. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have someone, maybe a passionate geek to keep writing stuff in the site. Also, their site is incompatible to IE9 and that’s just wrong!

Ah I like this blog, but I don’t read it. Ghostlighting should be the prime example on how to be a geek and a blogger. He knew his craft and he doesn’t go shy on putting it for everybody to read. I kinda admire that, dedication he had. His brand just organically became what it came to be, being visited by mostly foreign geeks who knows what they are talking about. Passion is great, and its one of the driving force of people to make it through the day. It certainly was my saving grace when I was in that horrendous outsourcing business environment. But unlike him, I do want to go up in my career. I am not a wash-up COE or being just a salary man until retirement. The business blood flows to me as my parents were entrepreneurs, and my IT knowledge ever so expanding – just like my weight. My business side of me tells me that he would had made it if he focus in his bran full-time. He can profit with the audience he has. There’s nothing bad in earning money, as long as you don’t shove it to their throats, or play dirty to them.

Still, life in this country is fickle and unstable. For a family man, he has to stick where it has the less risks. I guess that’s what you get when you have a kid and a wife. Your self-attainment goes at the bottom of the priority list and it just about making your love-ones happy.

His uber niche genre is also a reason that I don’t read his blog. I don’t find mecha sexy, nor I have an exuberant enthusiasm for the genre. I also don’t want to consult dictionary while reading, since he sometimes uses words that I would never heard in a normal conversation. Still. His blog is a success that its owner is proud of and raise my arms applauding and admiring his dedication and skills. Which is a reason his blog won’t be known to the mainstream and why dere-moe won’t either.

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