A few brief announcements (june 2020)

Hey everyone,

Things are pretty dire out there lately. I hope you (and your families) are all doing okay in these trying times. Life is only just starting to pick up again over here, but I still work extra-long weeks from home and haven’t been outside much since March. Everything I was looking forward to this year has been cancelled and I find myself falling into my usual dip now that we’re facing yet another world-boiling summer period. Can’t even celebrate pride month, damn it.

I had a few updates to share about the site, so let’s hop to it:

First and foremost, I am very happy and grateful for the fantastic traffic Reasons to Anime is getting lately. I am stoked that people are enjoying my writing so much and that I keep getting notifications about new comments, likes, or people who shared my work. Thank you so much for helping me grow the site.

Secondly, due to the closure of MangaRock and my lack of travelling due to the corona crisis, the Quick manga Reviews segment will be on temporary hiatus while I figure out an alternative way to keep the series going. A shame, because I discovered many fantastic manga through MangaRock and ended up buying those that turned out to be somehow available. I sympathize with their motivations for the closure, but hope they can figure out a new way to open up their library that better fits with their new direction. MangaRock is sitting on a big supply of cultural literature, much of which will be lost to Western audiences if they simply throw it all in the bin.

Until licensing companies begin paying attention to smaller authors, we need platforms like MangaRock to keep these works alive. This is vital if we want more people to discover manga and further expand the medium’s fanbase.

To temporarily replace QMR, I will be starting up a new segment in early July where I’ll be reviewing a bunch of OVA, ONA, and short anime series. My reviews of Dream Hunter REM and Birdy the Mighty showed me that a complete review was often too much for such franchises, so I’ll be applying the QMR format to them. I might also toss in anime movies, but I first want to guage interest in this new idea and see how the first edition fares.

That’s all for today. Have a fun weekend and stay safe everyone.