Has It Been That Long? (Year Five)

So, the Otaku Author is five years old, which means it’s time to reminisce and reflect. Year four was full of surprises including a record number of views. Let’s find out how year five compared! Has it really been that long?

Five Years of the Otaku Author!

Well, it’s been five years and I’m still here, and according to the numbers, I’m still going strong. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that blogging is dead! I know! It was a real shock, especially as I had more views in 2024 than in 2023 despite publishing only 444 posts compared to 687 the previous year. Of course, it’s not dead, but it is different to how it was even when I started this blog. The community is smaller with many prominent bloggers disappearing or reducing the frequency of their posts. Comments and likes are down as a result… Well, that’s what I thought, but it would appear that I have had more comments this year too. Likes are also up based on the average per post. Basically, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Blogging is not dead… it’s alive!

So what’s the secret? Honestly, I have no idea, but I am trying to work it out. My best guess at the moment focuses on finding an underserved niche. Now, you might say that anime and manga are pretty niche to begin with, and you’d be right. However, let me give you an example of focusing even more. I published at least one post relating to forty-four different anime series in 2024. Most of those were a single season review and each one got a good number of likes and comments. However, in terms of views, they were pretty insignificant, mostly falling outside the top one thousand posts. Maybe, I did better with episode reviews? Again, it’s about the niche.

I reviewed Solo Leveling and the second half of Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End episodically. Both are among my favourite shows I watched this year and were generally well received. Still nothing. I mean they got views, likes, and comments, but in the big picture, they didn’t add much to the overall view count. Here’s where the niche becomes apparent. While reviewing Frieren and Solo Leveling, I also covered Chained Soldier – the anime adaptation of Takahiro’s new series. Same number of episodes – twenty times more views. In fact, Chained Soldier is now the eighteenth-ranked series on Otaku Author by views. If you can’t see the niche yet, don’t worry all will become clear shortly.

Who wants some statistics?

I realised that I didn’t reveal the total views on this post last year, but I am going to now as I think it gives a little more context to what I just said about Chained Soldier, which had over 10,000 views (all in 2024). Also, I hope you don’t think I’m bragging. That’s not the idea here. I just want to show that blogging is still a thing… and I am also incredibly proud of the growth.

Year	Views
2019 (Dec 17 to Dec 31)	1,518
2020	51,133
2021	75,173
2022	312,217
2023	548,312
2024 (to Dec 16)	558,760

As you can see, growth slowed in 2024, but getting more than half a million views is still nothing to sniff at. Just maintaining that in 2025 would be a great achievement.

Now, let’s look at the percentage share by series. Hopefully, this will solidify my comments about finding a niche. Here are the top ten series by percentage of views on the Otaku Author.

#	Category	%	+/-	^/v
1	Why the hell are you here, Teacher!?	32%	-5%	–
2	Overflow	9%	+5%	^3
3	Tsugumomo	5%	+1%	v1
4	The Testament of Sister New Devil	5%	-1%	v1
5	My Life as Inukai-san’s Dog	4%	+2%	^9
6	My Wife is the Student Council President!	3%	0%	^1
7	Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid	3%	0%	v1
8	Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba	3%	-1%	v4
9	Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World	3%	NE	^6
10	Mother of the Goddess’ Dormitory	3%	0%	v1

Amazingly, Why the hell are you here, Teacher!? continues to maintain the top spot with 32% of the views. However, the interesting thing is that it lost 5% which appears to have been gobbled up by Overflow. It’s actually a good thing since I was getting increasingly worried that my views would completely tank if Teacher started to slide. It’s never a good idea to have all your eggs in one basket.

Once again, the abundance of ecchi titles (and one hentai) is instantly apparent. This is the niche that Chained Soldier fits into and shows why it vastly outperformed two far superior series in 2024. In fact, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Akame ga Kill! were the only non-ecchi titles in the top twenty!

Anyhow, let’s look at who dropped out of the top ten and where they are now!

#	Category	%	+/-	^/v
12	YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World	2%	0%	v2
13	Cat Planet Cuties	2%	0%	v5

They dropped in the rankings, but both maintained the same percentage share, so that’s not really anything to get concerned about. I mean the top ten series account for 74% of all my views (excluding the home page). It would appear that I will need to watch more ecchi if I am to find another show to take some of the pressure off Why the hell are you here, Teacher!? Obviously, this is terrible news…

Plans for Year Six

I’ve actually got something big planned to celebrate the five-year milestone! For the next thirty days, I’m going to be completing a thirty-day anime challenge where I will be answering each question based on the last five years with an answer for each year. Think of it as a thirty-day anime challenge times five! The reason that I’m doing it by year is that I’d like to make it an annual thing, especially as it will give me a break over the holiday period each year. Hopefully, that will save me from burnout and give me some time to do some other things. I’m already thinking of doing a similar challenge based on my manga posts, possibly in the summer.

One thing that I am absolutely determined to get going again is my writing. There’s been a lot of false starts over the last five years, but I need to put those behind me and start publishing stories once more. I think having two thirty-day periods each year where I’m just focused on the challenges will allow me more time to do that. I need to get to the point where I’m not chasing the next post or dealing with work and the ever-increasing number of real-life family events. I need to find a period of calm and make the most of it.

As far as choosing what to post about, the smart move would be to go all in on the ecchi. However, there are still too many other shows that I want to write about, so I will continue to mix things up. That said, I will be catching up on some of those ecchi shows that I haven’t had a chance to watch before. I’d also hazard a guess that posts about anime do better than posts about manga, but I haven’t explored those statistics yet. I might look at that before my mid-year thirty-day manga challenge. Anyhow, I’ve had a blast keeping things going over the past five years and am already looking forward to the next five years. Thanks for visiting!

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