Panadero here.

With the recent season of anime starting a couple weeks back, I actually reverted to an old watching method that I hadn’t used in years. When I first started watching anime online (via fansubs, of course. This was the late 90s.), I’d watch each episode of a series week by week, impatiently lurking in IRC channels until the release was announced and then slamming on the XDCC.

At some point, however - maybe the thrill of it all wore off - I stopped watching on a weekly basis and waited until subs for the entire series came out, then watched them all at my leisure. I’ve been taking this approach for almost a decade now, until this season started.

I was faced with five shows I was interested in and didn’t feel like having to wait until the fall to watch them all. Watching anime online these days is vastly different, with many legal streaming choices and availability as soon as an hour after Japanese broadcast, so I decided to see how things go on the weekly bandwagon. These are the five shows I’m currently following:

• Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai Season 2 - I’d forgotten how much of a bitch Kirino is
  
  
• Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S - I’m a huge fan of Kuroko and Ruiko
  
  
• Flowers of Evil - Creepy and growing on me
  
  
• Red Data Girl - Intriguing and like most P.A. Works stuff, beautiful
  
  
• The “Hentai” Prince and the Stony Cat - I was a fan of Kantoku’s art before I knew who Kantoku was

I’ve already noticed two things since I started this experiment: One, I’ve regained that “What will happen next?” anticipation that I used to have given I now have to actually wait a week to see more. Two, I’m much more likely to understand references made in images on the image boards I frequent given I’ll likely have actually already seen what’s being referenced. It’ll be interesting to see how things progress over the next set of weeks.

Do you prefer to watch your series at will after they’ve aired or week to week? What series from the current season are you following?

Found at a gallery of elementary school student art at the mall.

So we just launched version 2.0 of the site today! There’s lots of new stuff to enjoy. Copying from the site update text itself:

• New design and database backend (because of this, the votes have been reset)
• Updates to the submission guidelines (located in the new FAQs section), including better language for streaming licenses and a switch from gifs to pngs for images
• Expanded stats on pages for series and characters
• Dubbed by buckminst as ‘Corner Cuties’, a randomly displayed character in the upper left hand corner that you can click on to see her info
• A Quick Search box in the top navigation menu, allowing you to find characters and series easily
• Expanded and updated Links section, including links to conventions and legal streaming sites
• The ability to share the site via Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, etc.
• A Poll feature, allowing you to vote on periodic polls
• An expanded statistics page with new and fun stats

Dear HOA,
Thank you for your considerate note informing me of the weeds in my front yard. Unfortunately, I have opted not to remove them, as doing so would require more work on my part than writing the tattle-tale note did on yours.

Thank you,
Panadero

P.S. If you are unsatisfied with the front yard, it would behoove you to not look at the back yard.

It’s so true.

Panadero recently poked at me and said that I should post on the blog more. He needs to learn to be careful what he wishes for, as he just might get it. =)

I was perusing Anime News Networks’ feed recently and noted Media Blasters (Media Blasters! I’m amazed they’re still around, but hey…) had recently picked up the license for a show called Aki Sora: Yume no Naka. I poked at ANN’s show synopsis for it, and found out it’s a short OAV sequel to Aki Sora (which itself was only a 1 ep OAV). It’s also hentai.

Since it warranted getting a license and domestic release even with only 3 eps total to the show, I decided “Sure, what the heck, I’m bored.” and through the miracle of the Internet, watched it.

This leads me to the spoiler-tastic commentary below. If you don’t want to be spoiled on Koi Kaze, Aki Sora, or Yosuga no Sora, don’t click through the jump.

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I started my 1000 piece OreImo puzzle tonight. It took me two hours just to get the border. I also have 520 piece and 300 piece OreImo puzzles, and I’m waiting for 1000 piece puzzles of Sailor Moon and Ouran High School Host Club to be shipped.

As I work bit by bit on the new version of Anime Girl Rankings, it’s remarkable to see not only the progress I’ve made in my knowledge and experience, but in just how much the internet has changed, from its culture to its trends to the technology used by webmasters and website visitors alike.

There are a lot of features that will be added to the new site, but there will be one feature definitely going away - the guestbook. As I spend day after day removing spam from it despite having at least a basic detection and banning system in place - a system that has banned over 3,800 IPs or IP ranges no less - it occurred to me how outmoded guestbooks are these days.

Anime Girl Rankings was put up around December 2003. The idea of “Web 2.0” was around the corner, but the revolution of the Social Web hadn’t really hit full swing yet, so other than forums, most communication between site staff and readers was one way - from site to readers. A guestbook seemed a logical choice at the time, where communication beyond “Nice site, d00d!” wasn’t very necessary. But now between Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and myriad other social networks with their ability to integrate with one’s site, two way communication is dead easy.

In addition to this blog, the new site will allow you to share its pages on social networks, and though there are currently no plans to have a presence on Facebook or Google+, we do have a Twitter account you can follow by clicking on this link. So while an out of date method of communication will be gone, multiple other options will be available.

And so the evolution continues.

Twin catgirl familiars. Gil Graham was a genius.