After doing Anime Suggestion Sunday for sixteen straight weeks -- basically this being it's four month anniversary -- I have to pump the breaks on the series for the time being. I know there might be a couple of follows that have probably only followed for this series, but I do want to explain myself in detail, so there isn't any confusion.
First off me retiring this series, doesn't mean it will never be back, I just want to make some improvement to the format and do need some suggestions -- for a suggestion series, yes. I have some ideas, but it would be nice to hear from people that enjoyed the series.
So, lets skip all the fluff, and get to the explanation.
Time is Precious
This one is probably the biggest for me; if you didn't know, for most of these posts, I've been watching the full anime -- or at least most of it -- before actually writing anything about the anime. It was mainly to refresh and familiarize myself with the anime again, and not sound like I don't know what I'm taking about, for those two to three paragraphs.
The time spent, on these posts, kind of got out of hand, and I didn't feel like I was focusing on this season's anime as much; I was trying to get through this weeks anime, just for this single post. So that was a flaw of myself, dedicating too much time to something that ended up only requiring me to watch a few episodes, in order to write.
However, I really do like re-watching the old anime; as I've grown, my preceptive of how I view an anime has changed, and that really felt nice to see those minor -- or even major -- changes in my preceptive. The one anime that was probably the most obvious to that fact was Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, with my Transparent post -- this has spoilers, so tread carefully.
So I need to find a balance of watching an anime enough to write and enough to enjoy it again, which has proven to be difficult.
Less Text, More Ignores
I originally made Anime Suggestion Sunday as an entry point for people to get accustom to my writing style, without having to read larger amounts of text. Ironically, these posts are never or rarely getting clicked on -- probably because of the lack of 'read more' link, since it is short -- but based on note count, there doesn't seem to be much interest in the series.
Since I don't ever get any feedback, I have nowhere to improve, to get people interested in these posts. Some just like the idea of anime recommendations/suggestions, but I guess don't really trust me enough to steer them to a really good anime -- even if I do explain why I like the anime in each post.
I end up being stuck in a routine that doesn't work, expecting a different result, and that is the definition of insanity.
Tagging Sucks
I do want people to find out about these anime gems, that not so many people have seen. However, because of the way tagging works on tumblr, only people that are looking specifically for the anime, are finding these posts.
I'm fine with people getting excited for suggesting an anime that they don't see people talking about. However, if I want people new to a series to become interested, there isn't really a proper way to spread the message further, unless I have large amount of eyes willing to check them out, and they might end up liking it. So really this is a flaw with both tumblr itself and me.
This is more of a waiting game if anything, since I don't really have that many people who regularly look at my content -- not even 1% of my current follower count -- starting a suggestion series so early in my blog's progression, wasn't that great of an idea. It was a pretty nice experiment going in, but at this point in time, I think it is more of a wasted effort on my part.
Series Improvements
I've had some very basic ideas on how to improve Anime Suggestion Sunday, but would like to see some ideas coming from the people that actually looked at the series.
The small list being:
- Compare suggested anime to a more popular one
- Change the time it is being posted
- Scrap the trivial explanation paragraph, in favor of the MAL page, and
just list why I liked the anime
Signing Out
For those who actually read most, or even all, here are my top five from the sixteen anime suggestions I've posted.
Thank you to those that have been keeping up with the series, and I really do hope to see a speedy recovery for this style of posts; but for now, it will be laid to rest, and I will end it like I have begun most of the posts.
For this week of Anime Suggestion Sunday, we will be retiring the series for the time being. If you missed last weeks, it is located here.
Thoughts?