Has It Been That Long? (Year Three)

Last year, I forgot all about the Otaku Author’s birthday so this year, I’m planning on making things up to her with a quick recap of the first three years of this website. Three years! Has it really been that long?

Three Years of the Otaku Author!

So, I’ve been blogging since 2010… Over that time, my blog has undergone a number of transitions, but I’m happy to say I think I’ve found my groove. I will probably continue to adjust and tweak things, for example, next year, I’m really stepping up the amount of manga I will review. Thankfully, these are fairly small changes and fit under the Otaku Author umbrella. It was three years ago today that I decided to fully embrace the Otaku Author brand and moved my blog to this URL, losing all my SEO rankings in the process.

After the first year, I had successfully returned things to the way they were before the switch. So, how have the following two years gone? Well, despite there being a global pandemic which shut the world down, I have managed to keep things going. There have been changes back and forth about reviewing seasonal anime. There was the great Web Hosting Disaster towards the end of 2021 where my site was lost for two weeks. Those were some stressful times, however, I bounced back from that and have been delighted with the progress since then.

During the last year, I published my 1,000th post where I talked about the finale of the Attack on Titan manga series. It’s a fairly contentious subject as the community seemed to be pretty split on the outcome. Anyhow, I had to throw my two cents in and what better post to do it than with number one thousand! I’ve also slowly transitioned many of my posts from Ecchi Hunter to here. That site was unrecoverable after the Web Hosting Disaster of 2021, although I was able to back up the text and of course, I keep all images stored too.

I also stepped away from seasonal anime reviews once more to focus on catching up on some of the shows that I’d never gotten around to watching and some that I wanted to rewatch and record my experiences. This has allowed me to schedule posts well ahead of time. At present, I have more than two hundred scheduled posts and the rate I write them, it’s going up not down. That was part of the reason I decided that I would expand into manga and post more frequently. Don’t want to get too far ahead of myself!

Who wants some statistics?

So, here are some numbers to consider. In the first year of Otaku Author, I had fifty thousand views. The following year, I had another seventy-five thousand. That felt like some amazing progress. Well, in the third year, I am about to hit three hundred thousand. I was not expecting that at all, so, as you can imagine, I’m delighted. I have no idea if I’ll be able to keep this growth up, but the next year could be incredibly exciting.

Rather than looking at the most viewed posts, I’ve compiled the statistics by category. As you can see there is one series that has done incredible. The search for another series like that continues. Am I the only person who reviewed Why the hell are you here, Teacher!? Anyhow, here are the top ten categories by the percentage of all-time views.

1. Why the hell are you here, Teacher!? (20%)
2. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (6%)
3. Fruits Basket (5%)
4. The Testament of Sister New Devil (4%)
5. Tsugumomo (4%)
6. Akame ga Kill (3%)
7. Fire Force (2%)
8. Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid (2%)
9. Cat Planet Cuties (2%)
10. YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World (2%)

As you might note, it’s an interesting mix. You can see why I’d been keen to find another show that hits as hard as Why the hell are you here, Teacher!? I know it’s out there, I just have to find it!

Plans for Year Four

Recently, I’ve been getting back into writing my own stories and it’s been a lot of fun. I say this most years but I’m fairly confident that this next year I will get back to publishing books. It’s been four years since I published anything, so it’s well overdue. I’m also planning on reviewing a lot of manga alongside all the anime. As I schedule posts, some of this is already in place. I have sixty-four series that I have started looking at. Yeah, sixty-four! Exciting times indeed!

Part of me thinks that I would keep blogging regardless of the views and interactions, and that may be true, however, it’s so much more fun when there are people to talk to and other posts to compare to. As someone who played a lot of fantasy sports and text-based computer games, there is definitely a gaming element to watching the views on posts climb, trying to work out why one is doing better than the other, and then applying that knowledge to future projects. I love reviewing and discussing the shows I watch and the books I read. It helps me solidify in my mind why I think it works, which is something I can bring into my own work.

So, this has been three years of the Otaku Author and I have no plans to slow down. If you’re reading this, thanks for your support and for taking the time to read my posts, whether you leave a like or comment or not. The fact that you’re here means the world to me. Well, I had better get back to work, there’s lots to do and another year to enjoy! Arigato gozaimasu.

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