A Truly Burning Gattai Sequence
Author has it backwards. It’s Ani-BURN not Karma-nouto. I mean, seriously, one is actually cool (in a STRAIGHT FROM JAPAN sort of way), where as the other is the biggest bunch of self-referential act of hypocrisy ever. And can be easily confused as some Death Note slash.
DS wins a cookie for starting up the idea, but you know, as usual I would like to prod my favorite blogger: Zepy + Momotato blog would be one hella gattai. That is whenever they’re finished with SF4. Canned Daioh maybe.
On a more serious note, I’ve been looking around for good news blogs–those that report crap from whatever filters out via PR, 2ch, retail news, academia and the net in general. The consequence of this is that a lot of them just regurgitate the same bit of news. I mean, that’s expected, but also kind of boring and it becomes who does the “original” bit better. It’s almost like picking between the same zillion blogs that review Naruto manga chapter-by-chapter. Except when it comes to reporting, you do have to rely on the blogs to frame and condense the issue into words, and you can’t really go and “read it for yourself” like you could with a manga or anime.
I don’t know. Maybe this is why diversity is good even at this early stage of the development of press-level blogging, where a lot of interesting news bits get lost in the void and we get a lot of borderline-commercial that ought to be filtered because they don’t fit. I guess I just want a Moon Phase or something, in English. Someone who has all the juicy stuff (and not-juicy stuff) and reported in a way that doesn’t feel like reading a tabloid. Just the facts (framed correctly), ma’am.
Great read, omo.
Regarding your desire for an English MoonPhase, one of the intentions for my site for example is to be that sort of clearing house in the vein of my work at PhoneNews.com: That is, digging up dirt and confirming details before anyone else can grab the confirmation.
Stuff like that is easy when you have people hounding for attention and people desperate to break news for other people that love cellphones. It gets exponentially more complicated when you have a scene like the anime fandom that is very insular.
In my case I’m the outsider and I have to work harder to get people to listen and I’m getting closer to that balance between actual news and weeding out fluff that seems to dominate coverage, but I have noticed that a lot of people enjoy that fluff, so I end up at a crossroads in terms of what is worthy of coverage and what needs to be canned.
Of course what then ends up happening is that things that I would consider fluff are considered hard news, and things I would consider hard news are seen as fluff.
A confusing mess this can be sometimes.
Why not just read MOON PHASE then? Back when I was still blogging anime news, I had the opportunity to do so–even though I lacked the linguistic skill–because Japanese just love to do shorts for some reason, or someone else shortens it soon after. ANN does very factual reporting these days, but they mix in other information that I’m not interested in, plus I get all my news from Japan directly.
I think Saabedra really hits the sweet spot. No blogger wants to do short factual posts because it doesn’t bring in substantial traffic. Daily digests make sense, otherwise it’s the Twitter way to go. Very little investment, no expectations whatsoever.
Having a news source like Moon Phase, but in English, is not just for my benefit–it’s for the community’s benefit. Words and news get around just fine without having to go to Moon Phase. But obviously the language barrier is more than just a nuisance for most people (well, it is really annoying for me too!). I say this more because MP is a nice, centralized source.
I understand where Humberto is coming from, and that is why I think it’s good to have a variety of blogs reporting the same stuff. My underlying assumption is that some people prefer a lot of fluff, while some people prefer very little fluff. Having all kinds of blogs promote variety and people will get something that they like somehow. But I don’t even think we are at the point where the amount of fluff is a problem. We’re still kind of stuck at the whole “some news-worthy things are still not reported!” stage. We’re still at a point where plain old advertisement gets passed as news; the info is not stripped down and repackaged.
And having a more centralized source for news might help with that, more than just everyone getting the same news from the same source and spin it slightly differently. Of course having more people reporting on stuff (like what Humberto is doing) we will also get more coverage since someone will pick up something someone else missed.
They are two contrary concepts but I think we need both.
The two concepts are more complimentary than you think, but very few people are willing to undertake the work to make it possible.
I’d be extremely happy if I had five more people under me so I could focus on vetting new news and other aspects to get the site to grow to that point where people look at it like an English MoonPhase or an English Ultimo Spalpeen.
I should really put out a call for more writers since I have more pressing responsibilities for PhoneNews coming up that need more urgent attention.
I don’t understand why you want one centralized source for news. AnimeNewsNetwork has been trying to do that for years, and it’s a good thing they haven’t completely succeeded (though they are frighteningly close), else everyone would just unquestioningly believe whatever they spin out of their presses. In fact, I think the rise of independent otaku blogs have played a big role in keeping ANN in check. There is no one single Japanese source of otaku news, so there shouldn’t be one single English source either.
I do agree with you that there’s a lot of otaku news that’s falling through the cracks and being missed. This is really unfortunate. In recent times, there appears to also be an increase in blogs that enjoy sensationalizing Japanese tabloid “news” (if you can even call it that). This is equally, if not more, distressing since it presents a skewed and doctored view of the happenings in Japan, plus it detracts from the appearance of real otaku news that people actually care about.
It’s a matter of community. I think right now even ANN, which by some standards could be considered a primary and centralized source of news, is too insular and doesn’t really know its target audience. Or maybe it does, but it’s focused too narrowly.
When I say “one centralized source” I don’t mean to the exclusion of others. In fact I think “many centralized sources” would be ideal. Of course at this point I don’t think the community have even one centralized source–it’s not a centralized community, that could be a problem. Without that, it’s just much harder to call out bullshit, it’s easier to drop the ball on some news one site may not care about but someone reading another site that does essentially the same thing may bring to attention, etc.
Right now, the job of passing the news baton from 2ch to moon phase to whatever else is done, but from there it’s all just … what? Bloggers and forums.
Sorry for not having enough knowledge of the task at hand to comment on the meat of the post (although DS’s suggestions cracked me up) but I can’t not speak up about the choice of image. Death Note X Pink Floyd is an unlikely combo but that pic is AWESOME. Where do you find these things?
You can find the pic I cropped from here.
http://danbooru.donmai.us/post/show/107428
In genera, just internets. Google, danbooru, moe.imouto.org, even pixiv. whatever.
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