The Traditional Catholic Weeb Speaks: Two Year Anniversary Special

Boo, 2020 sucks arse. But to be fair, it could be worse, just ask myself from 9 years ago this very time. But yay, on the other hand, my blog is now officially two years old! Continuing in the tradition of my last post one year ago commemorating this event, here’s a short piece to look back at how far my blog has grown in the last 12 months!

Come follow me, and I will give you dank posts on anime and Catholicism

YEAR IN REVIEW PART II: THE TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC WEEB

All things considered, the point from September 10, 2019 to today can be summarized in only two words: growth, and despair. As I try to be an optimistic person, let’s see what I mean by growth first. For those of you who have seen my earlier posts, especially those back from 2018-2019, they were quite all over the place. Some posts, such as my Anime Review series, were quite long and plentiful with words; but for most of them, they were quite terse. I had no idea what the direction of my blog was going to be about, and the quality of my posts showed for it. The fact that I posted on Friday evenings didn’t help either, since usually that meant rushing home from school or work, rushing up a post for the day, and then publishing from there. Fast forward two years later, and things have changed; now that I’ve got a full-time job, I’m a lot more relaxed with this hobby, and as a result I’ve started writing posts earlier and publishing them on time more consistently. In addition, I’ve put considerably more effort into my posts and the quality of the images, and I’ve made sure to carefully think through what I’m going to write about rather than just pick one out of a hat (A post about what if anime was real, for example? Really…)

Here’s a short summary of the types of posts I’ve written over the past year:

• 23 editions of the Anime Review series
• 10 Navem Eos shipping posts
• 8 posts from the Traditional Catholic Weeb’s Corner
• 8 Catholic analyses of anime from the St. Pius V Corner
• 4 tales straight out of Convention Tales (f**k you COVID-19)

Last year, I told myself that I was going to try and do more posts related to anime. I think I made good on that promise! I’ve seen an increase of not only four more Anime Review posts from this year compared to the last, but with things such as the recently instituted Navem Eos sections for my favorite anime shippings, and the St. Pius V Corner becoming a place for anime and Christianity to mix, my blog has begun to take shape as a true haven for this (albeit at times, struggling) Traditionalist Catholic to write about anime. Speaking of the latter, my St. Pius V Corner has also evolved quite significantly in the past year, even if I didn’t write as much for this category as I thought I would have at the start of 2020.

I founded this category because initially, I used this as a place to write solely religious reflections – but then everything changed after I watched Vatican Kiseki Chousakan. I began to see the anime that I watched present a place for veiled references to Catholic motifs, such as the Rosary in Sword Art Online II or just like last Monday, the connection between St. Mark 8:36 and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. As I’ve been reading up on several pre-Vatican II theologians and the various moral, dogmatic and spiritual theology books they’ve written – a beautiful testament to the Unity of the Catholic Faith in dogma, seeing these themes reflected in anime gave me something to write about, and hopefully things that I can pass on to myself in my personal life. Seems like I won’t be merging the Traditional Catholic Weeb’s Corner with this part anytime soon.

I was pretty surprised that my St. Pius V Corner has become what it is now: a haven for exploring anime from a Traditionalist Catholic POV. Pretty nice.

In addition to these I also wanted to bring up the number of followers has risen dramatically over the course of these last 12 months! On September 10 the previous year, I only had 20 followers. Now, that number has risen to 97 – a 385% increase from the past year. I’m quite surprised that this blog was even able to reach 3 away from 100; ask me this last year, and my best guess would have been 50-60 by the time today rolled around. Again, thanks be to God for this excellent growth, and I would like to take this time to thank all of those who have been followers of my blog, and have enjoyed my posts and interacted with them over the past year. I’ve always enjoyed reading your takes on anime on your blogs as well as on my reviews and other posts, and I look forward once again to seeing them once more as I head into another year on this blog, and for giving me inspiration on what to write about through the form of these “Blog Awards”!

And then, there’s despair. Granted 2020 has not been a good year for anyone, and even this blog has had its share of downsides. Take a look at the number of Convention Tales that were made this month: only four. No places to go like Anime North or Fan Expo meant that I had to rehash a few stories from the past about certain shenanigans that took place from those conventions. I reckon that there would have been maybe an extra 3 or 4 were it not for the current situation, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers. Thinking about it makes me miss 2019 even more – the litness of Anime North, the fireworks of Canada Day (the best that I’ve had in a while to be honest), being with friends without restrictions, and to top it all off, seeing Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors slap the Golden State Warriors to bring the NBA championship to Canada. (Please God if it be your Will send the Raptors back there again)

THE FUTURE AND ONWARDS

Next stop, the future of my blog. One thing is that I hope things begin to get better and that a cure can be found for the ongoing farce of a pandemic, because I have not enjoyed how poorly the folks have mishandled it. However, sometimes it’s best to make something out of this situation, and one thing that I’m planning to do is find a way to get more involved with working on other software projects outside of my 8-4 timesphere. Rather than sit around and mope that there’s nothing to do, I might as well find a BS fluff job to advance my skillset and make some extra money on the side. Should this come to fruition, and I hope it does, I hope it will be worth it – bring on that 50+ hour work week, God willing.

Now in my last Anime Review I said I won’t be watching any more new series until further notice. Well, I decided to cheat a bit on this one. I’m announcing that Shigatsu Wa Kimi No Uso will be the last anime series I will be watching until further notice. This series has been described by many as an emotional roller-coaster, a heart-breaker, and a series that tons of tissues have been spent over. So I figure I might as well play a game with myself, and see how far I can get before bawling. Or not. (Yeah I’m kind of a “heartless scumbag”)

Peter Schaeffer’s Amadeus (1984) is probably better than this. Fight me scrubs

As to the future of this blog, I think it’s becoming a lot more stabler with regard to content as compared to last year. For example, the Traditional Catholic Weeb’s Corner has basically metastasized to a place for personal reflections and blog awards. You can also expect to see a lot of anime movie reviews – something that I’ve been massively lacking on, and as a result I’ve decided to shift my focus for the next 10 or so Anime Reviews to this facet. Furthermore, I think it’s high time for Navem Eos line of posts to be coming to an end soon. I haven’t found much shippings to write about that I’ve cared plenty with. I probably have room for two more, and then it’s time to pack it up with this series, but not without a quick thanks to everyone who’s read and enjoyed my posts. It’s about time that I find a new course to write about though.

One thing that I’m looking forward to writing more about, are the St. Pius V Corner suite of posts. I feel like there’s so much topics that I can write about regarding the linking of Christian themes and anime stories together, especially some that haven’t been addressed by anyone else, and I’ve already got a few ideas brewing in my mind for this category. A few Convention Tales here and there would be great too, if those darn conventions would come back up. But fore-mostly, the timing of when these posts come up have been subject to a lot of change since the last anniversary – going from Friday evenings, then to Friday mornings, before checking out on Mondays since last April. Guess that’s what the “new normal” brings around these days. Once the old normal comes through, fair warning, I’ll be back to posting on Fridays.

Overall, while the last six months haven’t been too pretty to look at, there’s always tomorrow – and who knows what tomorrow holds, especially with regard to this blog. If anything, I’d say these next few months will be quite interesting to see how much further my blog goes with regards to content. Once again, thanks to everyone who’s been following along the ride this blog has been going through, and I most especially look forward to interacting with you once again over the next 12 months, and however long God keeps me around to write here!

24 months down, and a truckload more to come…

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