Behind The Scenes: February 2021

February has been a bittersweet month for me. Reasons to Anime is doing better than ever before, its owner not so much.

The isolation and loneliness felt by many in these trying times has struck me as well, but I consider myself fortunate that none of my friends & family, nor myself, have had to suffer the worst that Covid 19 can offer. Instead, it’s my professional life that has taken a turn for the worst. I tried to take a vacation this month, but was repeatedly called in to help out and had a weekend shift looming over me that nobody seemed willing to take over in my absence. It has put a strain of my promise to take better care of myself and has demoralized me from engaging as much with my hobbies.

Too many evenings and nights I am just dispassionately clicking between a few things. I’ll drop a new game I was trying out an hour in and feel I’ve already wasted too much of my evening to watch a good anime. Everything always feels too big to start on with the amount of energy available to me.

But, for the bitter, there is also the sweet.

February has been terrific in terms of traffic and engagement. The School Days review far outperformed even highest my expectations for it and so did the tie-in article, which coincidentally released on the same day as a similar piece by Karandi from the 100 Word Anime blog.

Its success was followed by a surprise, courtesy of Google. Apparently Reasons to Anime is now on their radar and has been directing a massive stream of new readers to various reviews across the site. This happened before with Cleopatra in 2020, but this time it covers a broader range of shows and has lasted longer as well. It effectively tripled the amount of daily readers and has led to a number of new subscribers. Welcome to you all!

School Days was always going to be my big hit for this month, so I chose to experiment a bit with the other reviews. Video Girl Ai was a golden oldie and its follow-up article was one I was very proud of. Croisée was a bit of a gamble and did alright, but it was the Top 10 Insert Songs that really got to shine that week. I was very pleasantly surprised by the amount of people who read it and I enjoyed the little discussions I got to have in the comments.

Concluding the Month of Love on a hentai review was a cheeky move on my part and one I expected would bomb, but Dragon Knight did well enough.

I intend to experiment a little more throughout March, but I got some exciting reviews coming up, including a new manga review. I am also going to complete the last of the maintenance and rework I had planned for Q1, though that does mean I’ll be taking a week-long break soon.

To round this piece off on some recommendations, I enjoyed quite a few OVA series this month. Legend of Lemnear was a cool action-fantasy story and Download: Devil’s Circuit is a nice cyberpunk anime if you the atmosphere of a sci-fi world is more important to you than the accuracy of its technology. In terms of manga I found a new shounen favorite in Kiriwo Terrible and I managed to fit in Killing Me, recommended to me by Al’s Manga Blog, at the tail end of this month.

Thanks again for your support & readership. If all goes according to plan, then the next Behind The Scenes will release on March 31st.