After almost two years after the actual series premiered, I finally checked out the first episode of Code Geass. Yes, it took me that long. Tired of not getting all the jokes about Pizza Hut and wondering who CC is, who the hell the late Shirly is, etc, I finally just decided to watch the damn thing. Though I still haven’t gotten to the second episode…

Because of the sheer popularity of the anime, I figured I better up my knowledge of Geass. Currently, Code Geass (and its second season) is the most written-about series on Anime Nano! More popular than Haruhi, more popular than Lucky Star, and more popular than Naruto! Sure, the accuracy of predicting the popularity of a series by the times it shows up in Anime Nano might be imperfect, but I think it’s a fairly good metric to use, especially when you have a really big sample size.

I actually wrote about considering watching this more than a year ago but I guess I couldn’t be persuaded. Really, the only reason I finally ended up seeing it was that I loaded it on my iPhone in preparation for a long plane flight.

I guess I should say something about what I thought of the first episode. I realize this post is going to resemble some kind of weird time warp. Like if a recently unfrozen caveman started writing about what he thought of automobiles or something.

Code Geass: the plot is insanely ridiculous and funny at the same time. I like how Britannia (the United States?) attacked Japan and called it zone 11. This must be an alternate universe because I don’t think we’d turn into a monarchy + empire so quickly (by the year 2010 or so?). Lelouch seems like a cool strategist type dude who gets the power to command people to kill themselves (and do other stuff too, probably). Kind of like that Gennosuke guy from Basilisk. I suppose the series will center around Geass leading a rebellion of some sort against Britannia (plot-describing subtitles FTW).

I’m not sure I like it yet, but Code Geass seems to be so integral to a well rounded knowledge of anime and weeaboo culture that I’m basically being forced to watch it. Hopefully I’ll start getting more of DiGiKerot’s unfunny comics.

Since I have no time to watch the new season of anime, and since Anime Nano has a kick-ass charts feature that no one writes about, I figured I’d gauge the success of the new shows by their chart status. Or something.

Actually, for the latest week, it looks like only a few of the new Summer shows are even represented. If you don’t count sequels. Strike Witches is apparently worthy because the girls don’t wear pants. That’s probably a cheap way of getting viewers, but whatever. Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu is probably up there because it follows the same title template as Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu.

Besides that, it looks like second (and third) seasons and continuations of past seasons’ shows are much more popular. This confirms the beliefs of many that the Summer season just isn’t that worthy.

Also, I saw a few episodes of that Akiba-chan on NicoNico. It sure is good for watching raw (I understood like, 80% of what was said) but it’s also really predictable and stupid. In one episode, Akiba-chan steals one of the other girl’s homework to copy it. In another, she tries to lose weight. I’d still watch it though, just to practice my raw watching skills, which are probably waning from non-use.

Just in case, I loaded that Nogizaka Haruka’s Secret and the Mahou Tsukai Important Stuff anime onto my iPhone. Also, from last season, Library War! I probably won’t be inclined to watch them any time soon, though. Sigh.

Basically, the new requirements are: "If you feel you are contributing by your entries being shown only, 9rules is no longer a good fit for you, decline the agreement (or do not respond), please remove the leaf from your site and we will remove your site from displaying on 9rules."

I have no time to spend posting on Anime Nano, let alone 9rules! So this is most likely it for me and the leafy thing. 

I can certainly understand their reasons for wanting members to participate in the forums, etc. But having a "community" means different things to different people. In my opinion, it's naive to require people to participate and expect anything good from it. Conversation should be organic. Nevermind that the forums at Anime Nano are not particularly exciting…

To me, members in a "blog network" can communicate through their blogs. At least, those who have blogs. And the forums are great for a centralized conversation. But look at some of the back and forth that goes on in the AnimeNano blog-o-sphere and you'll see what I'm getting at:

http://bignanime.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/is-anime-deep/

http://www.concretebadger.net/blog/2007/08/03/group-discussion-anime-isnt-deep-its-just-entertainment/

http://animeyume.com/blog/2007/08/03/is-anime-deep-or-just-entertainment-or-both/

http://www.minaidehazukashii.com/?p=415

http://daijoubu.animeblogger.net/2007/08/03/beware-of-false-depth-in-anime/ 

http://giapet.net/?p=221

And that's just a small sample from that particular conversation.

So here's my question: What do you think is the best way to encourage "participation" without forcing it? What's the best way to help the anime blogging community grow? I know I haven't been the most visible webmaster lately, but this move by 9rules has made me think. I could probably help the community by clearing out that queue of pending blogs from Anime Nano.

Just for the record: I'll never require anything other than a good blog, a clean feed, and maybe some payola for inclusion into Anime Nano. Oh, and all the other requirements in the FAQ.

Anime Nano, my anime blog aggregator community thing, turned 1 year old this month! I was going to write a post about it, but I wanted to wait until I got a new feature finished. It’s been a while since I added anything to Anime Nano.

There’s already a popularity cloud thing in the footer of Anime Nano, but I wanted to make something that had more potential for discussion. Since people like charts, I figured I’d introduce some kind of weekly top ten chart that ranks the popularity of anime based on how many blog posts are written during the past week. Hence the name, Anime Nano Popularity Charts!

The charts auto-update every Sunday and make a top ten list showing the most popular anime. Only the blog posts that are “tagged” with a series count. Though it’s only polling a subset of the anime blogging community (the blogs that are in Anime Nano) I still think it’s a pretty fair representation of which anime are popular.

In one week, the charts will update, though you’ll still be able to go back and see the previous charts, too. Let me know what you think!

So I was checking out the nifty footer popularity cloud thing that I wrote for Anime Nano, and noticed that lately, Code Geass is totally kicking butt! It even has more entries (in the past two weeks) than Kanon (36 (make that 37 once Anime Nano picks up this post) to 32)!

To be honest, I haven’t even watched the first episode of this anime yet. Should I? I’ve noticed a lot of buzz about Code Geass, but I never felt the need to watch it. Apparently there’s mecha and Pizza Hut in this show?

Can anyone recommend or unrecommend this anime? Is it any good? Geass knows I need another anime in my backlog…

So this Anime Nano Podcast, jpmeyer and Hinano were eloping or something. So I got Os and Problematic to co-host instead. People were asking for different guests, so there ya go. I think they did a good job of bringing a different perspective to the ‘cast.

We talked about general anime stuff, like some new licenses. The mail bag was answered with probably the highest amount of sidetracking ever. That’s cool though, it’s just how we roll in the Anime Nano Podcast.

Also, I kept on violating Problematic’s privacy so I had to go in later and bleep out her name and place of residency.

Check out Anime Nano Podcast #14: Asian All-Stars!

It’s totally beating every other Fall 2006 anime into the ground! The anime series popularity tag cloud thing that I implemented on Anime Nano shows how many times a series has been written about in the past 2 weeks. Kanon has already been mentioned 66 (make that 67) times! That’s almost 5 posts a day!

I’m guessing this anime is gonna be waaaay popular. Maybe even more popular than The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi… I for one welcome our uber-moe overlords. Uguu~

The Anime Nano gang and I just finished our 4th podcast! This one went pretty smoothly, I thought, and it lasted really long. Like twice as long as our previous record! Hinano was absent, but Problematic reluctantly took her place. She did a good job, even if she says she didn’t.

After having done 4 of these things, I feel like I’m getting the “hang” of it. Oh man, yay for making puns using my own name… Seriously though, the podcast feels like it’s flowing better. We spent a lot of time answering listener questions, and I think it’ll probably continue that way. This is because we can’t come up with good topics ourselves…

The thing about listener questions is that they’re stuff we wouldn’t think of ourselves. That makes it fresh and more interesting to answer. I could rant all day about how I like ninjas, but I already know I like ninjas; there’s nothing to think about.

This episode, we talked about a bunch of stuff including the (non) Licensing of Haruhi Suzumiya. We were also tricked into thinking there was a second season of Haruhi Suzumiya! I rectified that in the show notes. Utawarerumono was also discussed. I seriously love the “Ultra Ray Romano” way of saying it. Both because it’s just funny, and also because I imagine a super beefed up Ray Romano! Everybody does love Ramond, indeed.

If you haven’t already, please take a listen to the Anime Nano Podcast and let me know what you think. If you like it (or don’t), could you write a review on the iTunes Music Store? I think that’d help us up our listenership.

Hey! It’s been a month since Anime Nano was launched, so I thought I’d commemorate the occasion by uh, writing about it. I’ve added a few things to Anime Nano since I last wrote about it, so here we go:

Just in case you’d like to help support the ‘Nano financially, there’s an affiliate shopping link list. If you shop at the places listed there (using the links provided), Anime Nano will get a small cut. I don’t really expect to get very much from it, but if I do, it could mean server upgrades and stuff (yeah!). If you shop regularly at another online store and would like to see it added to the list, please let me know and I’ll try to get a link put up. Thanks to everyone who has used this so far!

I just added a new user option that lets you specify your time zone. So if you’re in Russia and you’re tired of seeing time presented to you in California time, this feature is for you! Just go to the user control panel -> edit options. I’ve tested this with my own time zone and it appears to work…

Since the last time I wrote, quite a few of my most wanted blogs have joined. Samazama briefly came out of retirement to join, as did Equivocal Resolution! Thanks gals, it means a lot! Just don’t disappear on me again, alright? Heisei Democracy also joined, adding sweet news directly from the heart of Japan itself!

New features-wise, I’m kinda running out of ideas. I wanted to try and implement some kind of anime database thing for each series. Kind of like animenfo or anidb. Would anyone want something like this?

Overall, I’m very pleased with how the community has responded to Anime Nano. Please continue to contribute to discussions in the forums and the irc channel. Thanks for all of the support this past month, and in the future!

Ah, two weeks have now passed since the release of my baby, Anime Nano, and I thought I’d give a quick update on its status and whatnot.

Lots more bugs have been squashed. The hardest one for me was the unicode disaster bug. Let’s just say that if you’re ever debugging something that’s being scheduled on cron, make sure the crontab has your environment paths set correctly. Whoops! That probably didn’t make sense to anyone…

Anime Nano now has its own IRC channel, thanks to that super hyper busybody, lolikitsune. I thought at first that using IRC to communicate was kind of analogous to using two cans and a piece of string, but I guess it’s not really that outdated, after all.

I drop by every so often to make sure they’re not taking the Anime Nano name in vain (or something), so yeah, join in on the fun. We’d love to see you there.

/server irc.rizon.net
/join #animenano

I made up an about page, just in case people are confused about Anime Nano’s true nature. It has a lotta text.

I also made up some link icons for Anime Nano. They come in three colors (including transparent!) and there’s also a mini (or should I say, nano?) one. So if you’d like to link to Anime Nano, but never thought you’d have the bandwidth to host such extravagant images, just use these!

We’re now indexing like, 60 anime blogs, up from the 41 a week ago. There are still quite a few I’d like to see added, though. I’m gonna stop being coy and just beg now:

• Anime on My Mind: Jason, I love Anime on My Mind. It’s so bad! In a power-glovey kinda way. Please submit it, pretty please?
• Equivocal Resolution: Hey Problematic, is there a chance you’ll return to the wonderful world of anime blogging? If ya do, there’s a place here at Nano just for you!
• Heisei Democracy: Heisei Democracy is seriously an awesome news source for all stuff otaku. Shingo, care to join?
• Random Curiosity: It’s always fun to see who will get their post out first, Memento or Random Curiosity. So Omni, don’t let Memento get the last laugh on ‘Nano, keep the competition alive!
• Sama Zama: Hey Saria, I guess you’re like, on a temporary hiatus or something, but once you get back, would’ya join in on the Anime Nano fun?

These are the great ones that I could think of off the top of my head at 2:30AM. My brain isn’t working at 100% right now. No offense meant to thost that aren’t on this list.

If there’s an anime blog you don’t see here that you’d like to see on Anime Nano, you can leave a comment or contact the author yourself. Hey, wait a minute, that’s a good idea. Maybe I should’ve done that instead of publicly prostrating myself. It woulda been a lot more direct…

Anyway, that’s basically all that’s happened in Anime Nano news, so until next time, keep the site suggestions and comments coming!