Karandi James

And we’re back with inquiring minds and I’ve got a fun question to answer today (and a couple more that I didn’t get to before my holiday for the next couple of weeks). As always, if you have a question for me, feel free to complete the survey here or at the bottom of the post.

Do you refresh older posts and if so do you set aside regular time to do so?

Lynn Sheridan

This is such a great question and whether to refresh older posts is one lots of bloggers have to ask themselves as their blogs get older and they start looking back at some of those older posts and realise they’ve changed their minds, they’ve changed their writing style or format, or they just plain hate what they used to write. Also, a lot of advice sites about blogs tell you that you should update older content and not just have stuff sitting stagnant in the background of your site unseen and unread.

Personally I have a couple of different answers to this as I’ve been changing my approach around over the last twelve months (mostly my third year of blogging as prior to that updating old stuff didn’t seem that urgent given nothing was all that old).

For a little bit I was reposting some of my old anime series reviews. Things like Shiki that were reviewed in my first few months of blogging that had practically no views, used various layouts I’ve since retired on my blog, and basically just needed more exposure. However, my original approach was to actually duplicate post and make a new post with a heading explaining it was a repost with some updates.

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The problem I found with this approach is that some people had originally commented on the first review and their comments were essentially lost back with the first post, plus when searching my site for a review it was now unclear which review to read of the same series.

Plus, it meant the only posts getting any kind of update were full series reviews and I write a lot of other content.

I actually stumbled upon my current approach while trying to figure out how to use my twitter account more effectively and following a few steps in a guide I found just to see what happened. My regular followers may have noticed that in November last year I suddenly started having five tweets spread throughout the day promoting content on the site. These were tweets that were pre-scheduled and were to ensure that regardless of timezone something was coming out on my feed fairly regularly. And the experiment continued more or less until my trip in April and you may have noticed my twitter is currently a lot quieter just at the moment (but so are my views, amazingly this actually works at boosting exposure).

However, in the process of setting that up, I realised I didn’t really want the tweets to all be about the same content, and content coming out was already automatically announced on twitter, so I started looking at older posts that either had gotten a lot of attention or had been over-looked at the time of posting to promote on twitter. The standard approach was to pick a month and go through the archives and look at the posts and how they’d gone and what content was there that might still be relevant or interesting, or that I didn’t just want to keep hidden.

But, there’s no point trying to repromote a post that is still using an old signature or isn’t linking to newer content and then just reading some of my old posts made me wince. So before I schedule the tweet for a post, I revamp it. Sometimes it is just a formatting tweak, sometimes entire sections get rewritten. And then, once I’m reasonably happy, I promote the link to it.

As to a regular time, I was spending about two hours on either Sunday or Saturday selecting the older posts that I was going to promote next and then I’d chip away at editing them in small moments in between newer posts and the like throughout the week before setting them for promotion in the next week or so. It wasn’t an exact schedule as such but it was just something else to work on as part of growing the blog and so I made sure I gave it a little bit of my time each day.

That said, I’d love to know what other bloggers are doing in terms of refreshing older posts so please share your tips and strategies below.

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James

Right, I’m not entirely sure I understand the question this week but we’re going to give it a great effort and see if we can answer it. As always, if you have a question for me, feel free to complete the survey here or at the bottom of the post.

What is the most important thing to make Anime and why?

Mr Cat

Okay, as I said in the introduction, I’m not 100% certain I understand this question. For instance is it asking what is most important to make an anime watchable or interesting or it actually asking about the technical side of making anime. If it is the latter, I’m out of luck because I’m pretty much clueless as to the specifics of what goes on behind the scenes to make an anime happen (okay, I get the usual writing, story-boarding, production process but nothing beyond the fairly generic).

So, I’m just going to assume it is the former and look at what makes an anime work because I’ve probably got a better chance of getting to a sensible answer with that one. Better chance. Not a guarantee.

Now, I’ve always said on my blog that I primarily watch anime, and engage in most of the forms of entertainment that I dabble in (books, movies, video games) for the story lines. For me, that’s what will make or break something. Whether the story fits together neatly, whether it builds to an interesting climax, whether it moves me emotionally. I’m aware that some people aren’t so concerned about whether something has a strong narrative and are happy just watching characters interact or comedy skits, and that works for them, but for me what makes an anime truly great and memorable, is when the story really sticks with me and the journey the characters have gone on really connects.

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However, ultimately I think an anime just needs to succeed at being what it wants to be. If it wants to be a slice of life, than it should be and not try to sneak some plot elements in and push for character development that doesn’t fit. Mostly because people looking for a story probably won’t be happy and people wanting a blissful slice of life won’t appreciate the intrusion of these other elements (unless they are well integrated and balanced). Same with comedy or harem or any genre. Whether I like it or not, I appreciate a show that manages to be exactly what it sets out to be and doesn’t try to pretend to be something it isn’t. Using the tropes and standards from a given genre and using them well usually results in something highly entertaining, at least for fans of the genre, and for everyone else, they probably weren’t going to get on board regardless.

Meiji Tokyo Renka is probably a great example of this. It isn’t doing anything new, visually it isn’t amazing, the music is pretty great though and some of the characters have been really charming, but Meiji Tokyo Renka isn’t trying to break new ground. It is just being this cute reverse-harem with a bit of time travel thrown in, and while there are some fun plot elements afoot, for the most part it hasn’t really stepped outside of its genre box (though the camel showing up was still a bit on the weird side). The anime works, it is entertaining, and ultimately while it won’t get a lot of attention in a season full of more impressive or dramatic works or amongst works that had a lot of pre-season hype, it is a fairly functional anime and one that most people wouldn’t be too upset about stumbling across in their quest to find something new to watch (it won’t work for everyone but nor will it horrifically offend).

That probably didn’t answer the question you intended and I’m sorry but I tried.

Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James