Hello, friends. I just got back from a week-long business trip, and while I was gone I had a lot of free evenings to think about different approaches to things on this blog. Now that I’m mostly finished with first impressions, my typical “next step” would be to start tackling the follow-up posts – posts about the subsequent 2-3 episodes of all the series I didn’t find completely off-putting during the first round of reviewing. One thing I didn’t really realize until I’d had the chance to really think about it was how much I sometimes dread these follow-up posts. To be honest, I find them to be a chore, the reason being that they’re so formal and that they force me to use a lot of mental energy writing about series that I find decent, but which I’m not really passionate about. That’s difficult enough when writing about one episode, let alone several additional ones.
Rather than continuing to force the matter, I realized that I’d rather spend more time writing about the things that I’m actually choosing to watch, whether they’re current season shows or things from the past I’m catching up on. I also want to write less buttoned-up content rather than just first episode or other reviews, because I feel like that conversational style better reflects how I talk about anime in “real life;” not necessarily less analytical , but not quite so focused on formal summaries, production information, or formatting into certain blog post templates.
What I’m going to try to do is post more throughout the season, checking in on certain series that I’m watching when I feel compelled to write about them. It’s kind of like a follow-up, but less beholden to a format or timetable – it’s just some thoughts on things that I’m watching at the moment, whenever I’m driven to check in. It could be after 2-3 episodes, 6 episodes, or after watching a particularly dramatic or interesting (or problematic) episode. I feel like this gives me a bit more freedom and I’m less likely to give up partway through as has been an issue in the past.
I think the lesson to be taken away from this is that one should never feel too beholden to a format that’s not working for them, especially if it’s attached to a personal project. Write and learn and write some more!