About Me
The Animanachronism is written by myself, Daniel, a literature student somewhere in deepest darkest London (though I was brought up in Southampton). I have a nasty tendency to think too much about things, and The Animanachronism is a product of this. Possibly as a balance to my supposedly refined literary tastes, I like to watch big robots, fighting. When I’m not watching anime or reading, I like to sip tea and then get back to anime and reading. Sometimes I bake cakes. As a child, I wanted to captain a nuclear-powered attack submarine when I grew up; I never learned to swim properly.
About The Animanachronism
This blog focuses on commentary and analysis, leavened with the inventive use of square and rounded brackets, and an entry format which parodies the lighter kind of academic article. It is in essence, to quote someone else, a ‘high-tech vanity press, a place to post my writing because I like to write and it’s more fun if I have readers.’ I’m a proponent of unembarrassed attention directed at anything and everything, provided I find it interesting. I also favour a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to definition (and also to punctuation, transliteration and typography).
I sort my entries into six categories:
- ‘commentary‘ for anything which contains analysis of anime which has finished its run;
- ‘dead tree format‘ for the rare entries which discuss something published on paper;
- ‘fanboy‘ for entries which contain (possibly) unmerited enthusiasm;
- ‘foundational‘ for entries which contain ideas which underpin my analytical approach, or concepts which I will reuse again and again; ‘GAR’ is a sub-category bringing together my extensive exploration of the concept;
- ‘review‘ for the occasional moments when I drop analysis and dare to express an opinion about something’s objective quality;
- and ‘running commentary‘ for the analysis of anime which is still being broadcast.
Naturally, these categories often overlap. Specific series are usually tagged onto my entries.
Comments are very welcome and I do my best to reply to everything. Spam, and comments which are entirely off-topic (as in, completely unrelated to anime, manga or the topic of the post), will be deleted.
In Defence of My Blogroll
My blogroll is a problem. Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought regarding blogrolls: some have a few select blogs which reflect their own specific approach, and others prefer to have a very long list containing every blog they read. I’m a fan of the second approach, believing in serendipitous research and promiscuous linking. But I’ve attempted to provide a brief version of the first type of blogroll as well.
Of course, one problem with a long blogroll is that eventually you might as well link to an aggregator or just a Google search for “anime blog”. I have attempted to alleviate this with my annotations, giving you (in some cases) an idea of what each blog is like.
The other problem is that, inevitably, some blogs won’t be on it through my own ignorance or laziness (or, in very rare cases, their lack of quality). But such is life. Blogrolls only generate a minimal amount of traffic in the otakusphere in any case - we don’t have any blogs which are big enough to provide a steady flow of new visitors via their blogrolls.
