Hello everyone,
As you may know, this week is devoid of anime series to cover (due to the holiday pause) and while waiting for the hour-long Guilty Crown special on tuesday I decided to dedicate more time to some particular arguments that all bloggers will face sooner or later.
I'm talking about the willing choice made by some anime bloggers of covering/reviewing a totally unpopular anime series on their own blog.
I'm not talking about series that generates lots of rage around the net or hate-posts (Kamisama no Memo Chou or Guilty Crown), but more silent series who just get ignored by the great majority of the blog readers.
Be warned that blog readers is very different from anime watcher. There are tons of people who loved To Love Ru (I know personally 7 only in my city), only few of them are actually blog readers/writers.
The series that I'm talking about are something like Phi-Brain (or even partially Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon) who aired in this fall season 2011.
Before delving into my opinion or point of view in this situation, let's try to understand what are the implications of covering such a series on your own anime blog.
Doing an episodic coverage of an unpopular series (if you aren't over the critical mass of readers like RandomC) is like talking to a wall. You won't ever get any kind of feedback or heated discussion with anyone.
Unfortunately, as we all know the basis of the concept of a blog is made by two subjects, the writer and the reader (who sometimes becomes commenter).
I heard more than once in these last years as a reader about bloggers who quit writing about a particular series because just "wasn't worth the effort" due to low readership and pretty much non-existent commenters.
At the same time I read many bloggers (category who includes me as well) who continue to blog series like Phi Brain or Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon without caring much about how "popular" will a particular post be.
At this point I started thinking and I found myself questioning the existence of the so-called boundary between "useful" and "useless" anime coverage.
From my point of view, covering and expressing your thoughts about anime series (any kind of series) always generate an "useful post" regardless of the popularity of this series or how many readers you'll get.
When I covered Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon last couple of episodes, I was excited to write down my impressions over the episode. I was delighted to see how far such a series was going with all the emotional romance and drama and how much I found myself liking it.
It was GREAT to write a post for it, something that happens so rarely recently (Do anyone remember my "moderate raging" at Kami-sama no Memo Chou lameness?) and is definitely something I'd like to do again in the future.
While Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon is one of the less popular series of this blog (together with Persona 4), I firmly think that in the end we need to continue writing about what we really like without restricting ourselves.
If we just try to follow the flow of popularity we will end up with half-assed posts lacking any kind of emotion and by consequence any kind of quality.
And you? Do you cover unpopular series on your own blog? What do you think about "useful posts" and "useless post" debate?
See you soon,
feal87