On the flipside, I’ve also been the target of several puzzled looks and questions on why I am spending my time with older series, which everyone can presumably watch for themselves.

For me, that's exactly the whole point. After I finished watching Petite Princess Yucie, I looked to see if anyone else had watched and wrote about it. This was before I found any anime blogs, then I came across one sort-like-a-blog with posts about the Petite Princess Yucie episodes. I went through them in backwards-order (from the final episode to the first), and enjoyed reading this person's thoughts of the show as they watched through it. From me reading through it, there were moments of, "Oh, you didn't understand that part? I thought it was plain to see," and "Wow, I thought the same thing about that!" and "I…didn't even consider that. That sure explains things…"

I understand that if you're just writing episode summaries and nothing else, then it's only worth it if to other people you're watching something new that other people cannot watch for some reason (or, perhaps, something raw that other people will watch without understanding). If you write more than just an episode summary, if you write your thoughts on what is happening or will happen, or if you make observations which others might miss, if you put something extra into it, then it's worth reading for anyone currently watching or having watched the series, no matter how old it is. And if it's something a person watched long ago, seeing the posts and reading their contents might be enough of a push for them to re-watch a series they loved.

"Moe Check!" was one of the first anime blogs in a time when I almost couldn't find a single anime blog in a Google search, in 2007. How could I extensively search Google in early 2007 and not find a single anime blog? Because I was doing searches for blogging about Petite Princess Yucie, about Seven of Seven, about series I had seen. I don't watch the latest out of Japan, so I would never have found a single anime blog which covers only the latest raws/fansubs. "Moe Check!", on the other hand, was a relatively easy find for someone like me.

And I'd roll a DB scrapper if you could get blades looking like that. Heh.