As I grow farther away from what is known as the Youth Market, I realize that technically I should not be as obsessed with all these things which are meant to appeal to a target audience about a decade younger than I. Still, I react to that assertion with the sort of indifference which marks either acceptance or escapism: being grown-up does not bring with it maturity as much as greater disposable income.

I realize that I'm certainly not the oldest anime fan around, or even near to that qualification. I am still in the generation of Newfangles, and our Snappers are Whippered. I have had occasion to hastily remove myself from a surprising variety of virtual lawns.

And yet, it is a minor shock to realize that it is possible for a young anime fan to ask me "so how long have you been watching anime?", and thanks to a relatively early start, I can honestly reply "longer than you've been alive". (If you're wondering: counting only the time I was aware that it was anime and not just a random cartoon, about fourteen to fifteen years; I forget exactly.)

Anime fans above the target age of the Youth Market tend to have a certain reputation, deserved or otherwise: curmudgeonly and crotchety, liable to express views along the lines of "in my time". To be fair, this applies to more or less every community that is predominantly under the age of 25: I've seen it in all sorts of situations, and the flamewars start to look the same after a while. I suppose this is also something that comes with age, in the sense that it is more rightly associated with experience; age merely provides more time for this experience to happen in.

But age seems to be of great concern in certain discussions, especially in touchier situations. I have been told that my habit of rambling on in complete and complex sentences is a sign of some elemental concept of Maturity lacking in Young People These Days. Few people seem to believe me when I point out that I've always communicated like this on the Internet, ever since I found out about the Internet in the first place. (Which was, incidentally, around the time I discovered anime as anime. Figuring out what these strange cartoons were categorized under helped immensely.) I'm not sure how it happened; it just turned out that way.

Conversely, I've also been accused of being far younger than I am, or at least more immature. I cannot comprehensively dispute the "immature" label, since it's not something I can self-diagnose, but the chronological aspect is easily disproven. From context, it appears that I am part of the Newbie group entirely because I like current anime. These anime are not targeted at my age group, I admit; perhaps this is why I am assumed to be of the age the anime are targeted towards.

It's a little odd to make such assumptions, I think. After all, just because I like Card Captor Sakura doesn't make me a ten-year old girl, as novel as that would be.

A common analogue I've seen would be a certain sort of gamer decrying people who like Final Fantasy 7 or later, claiming that they Have Not Experienced Better. They point to the Super Nintendo era as the True Classics; seeing as I started gaming on the old Nintendo Game And Watch and Atari 2600, I think I may be misunderstanding the criteria for "True Classic". I like Final Fantasy 6 more than Final Fantasy 7, but I still like Halo more than Doom. When people say "remember the time when games were better than today's" I have to honestly reply "no, I don't remember, sorry."

Nostalgia is perfectly acceptable, and reminiscing about stuff I've seen before in happier times is not an activity that is inherently deplorable. However, saying that they are objectively better because of their age, occuring in some sort of Golden Age of Anime, is simply incoherent and bizarre. I recognize that the whole "moe" thing may not last, and if everything swings towards a Darker and Edgier and Angstier style, I'd probably stick to my happy shiny fluffy moe bishoujo harem comedies. But that is preference by genre, not by age, except by coincidence.

After all, it's not like I can claim Ranma 1/2 to have any objective superiority to To-Love-Ru.

For some reason, once you become an established blogger who does okay-ish in terms of site hits, nowhere near the Big Guys but still kind of ego-boosting, a great many people start wanting to recruit you into their blogs.

I'm not entirely certain why. Maybe it has something to do with having developed your own style, or showing that you actually know how to spell, or something along those lines. Why I was not so scouted a few years back when I was blogless (well, I had and still have a Livejournal, but it's more for slice-of-life) is a mystery.

I turn these invitations down. The chief, primary, and overriding reason is because I have enough trouble writing my requisite posts on this blog, much less come up with something new and different for someone else's. It's the time factor, mostly: so many things are happening in Real Life that require my attention, largely because they tie kind of directly into being able to eat, preferably while watching anime with an Internet connection. I have this chunk of hobby time which looks substantial, but quickly gets consumed by all sorts of things, mostly due to stuff I agreed to do during the less hectic times. They're still technically hobbies, but being responsible for them turns them into obligations which I have to do, whether I continue enjoying them or not.

Blogging about a subject in general takes up more time than simple typing speed would indicate. For one thing, I have to keep up with both the anime I want to blog about, and the anime that everyone else is blogging about, and the anime that may or may not be blog-worthy. (These may be the same thing.) While I am doing so, I also have to find something to say about them, rather than the usual "eh, it's good" or "eh, it's not good".

Other stuff like GamerS I treat as a test of my improvisational abilities. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So it goes.

All this has left me surprisingly little time for my other hobbies; I've been meaning to continue my long-abandoned Card Captor Sakura fanfic, but unless I can justify it by posting it in instalments on this blog (which I doubt will be welcome by anyone), it will have to wait. And then there's the whole genderbending thing to work on, sometime.

I mention all this not to whine, but… well, maybe just to whine a little. But the original intention was to illustrate why I always seem to be posting Things Of No Substance every week, both sometime on Saturday evenings.

I have also received a rather more compelling offer to write for another anime blog; the extra compulsion is because the offer was extended by Real Life friends. In the fevered contemplation that ensued, I was wondering what the reactions here would be if I moved all my standard anime reviews there, and kept the "side" stuff like the CCS episode summaries and Nanoha GamerS here. I could link or crosspost the review-type stuff back here, as a lazy shortcut. There shall be the place for the more respectable face of anime blogging (relatively speaking); I am quite certain that nobody else on the Internet is going to want to host these weird screenshot comics of questionable legality.

Knowing these guys in Real Life and interacting with them on a regular basis allows for some extra accountability: if someone seems to be slacking off, we can commence with the "wtf mate" and smacking each other upside the head, like a peculiarly injokey Stooge troupe.

Honestly, what I'd really like is a year off from all obligations, so I can work on what I want to, when I want to. There's a zillion stories I want to write, but life is not so easy. I should have called this an anime and creative writing blog. I'm still tempted to do so, but the decision never seems to stick, especially in the cold light of dawn.

Time shall tell how it will all end.

Where's My Cow?

Is That My Cow?

It Goes "Mooeee!"

It Is An Otaku!

That Is Not My Cow!

According to anime, from whence I get all my wordly knowledge, it is considered a Good Omen if you dream about certain things as your first nocturnal imaginings of the New Year. The list, obtained from my handiest source (Lucky Star, natch), goes, in order: Mount Fuji, a hawk, an eggplant. Miwiki Miyuki adds a fan (as in a cooling device, rather than an obsessive), tobacco, and a blind man. You do not have to dream these in sequence or frequency, although the more items you dream of, the luckier you will be.

That said, I am uncertain what the year will bring when my first dream of 2009 involves a samurai dwarf king with a jazz band.

Because I have nothing remotely resembling a social life, I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day itself fighting snow monsters and rescuing disturbing infants.

There are no pictures. There will be no pictures, mainly because I didn't feel like pointing the webcam at anyone and I'm not going to install the Nokia PC Suite after what it did to my computer the last time.

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Being a Chronicle of the Events that Took Place during the First Day of the Anime Festival Asia on the Twenty-Second Day of the Eleventh Month of the Year Two Thousand and Eight of our Lady and Saviour Kyonko the Flat.

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This Saturday, I shall be headed to Anime Festival Asia 2008 in order to hopefully do something remotely related to anime.

Truth to tell, the primary reason I am going in the first place is for the chance to meet fellow bloggers, especially considering Singapore appears to be disproportionately represented in the Anglophone anime blogging scene. I have yet to figure out the reason for this, since every time I bring the subject up, the discussion quickly descends into snarkiness, sarcasm, and general unhelpfulness.

I wish to meet my fellow Singaporean bloggers to determine if it is true that their offline, Real Life personas are not as abrasive as their online ones. Because damn you people can be nasty.

If you should find yourself there, I am not sure how you may be able to recognize me among the teeming crowds. If there is anything to do with blogging and bloggers, I shall likely be there, since of all the Featured Content trumpeted thus far, none have really piqued my interest: I have no interest in May'n or Ichirou Mizuki, largely because I am unfamiliar with the source of their fame. I am not a competitive gamer by any means (those familiar with my postings on the CoH/V boards will remember my intense dislike of anything resembling PvP), and so the various arcade-gaming competitions aim outside my demographic. I am, as the title of this blog should describe, one of those plebeians who likes the influx of moe-blobs that have inundated the realm of popular anime in recent years, and so the suspiciously psychadelic gruesomeness of Studio 4C's Genius Party is likely to be anathema to my tastes. (I'll still check it out, but I'll not stay long.)

This does not leave a lot of anime festivities for this anime lover to participate in.

Then again, I heard u liek mudkips that various anime will be screened… sometime. Somewhere. I don't know where, since there is nothing resembling a timetable on the AFA site, although I could just be blinded by the OMG BLINKING PICS. Still, Shakugan no Shana and Tora Dora may be in existence, however briefly. Maybe.

If all else fails, I can make one circuit of the festival resisting the temptation of swag (after Mass Effect, Spore, Fallout 3, Command and Conquer Saga, The Witcher, and Sins of a Solar Empire, my budget for this year is well and truly drained). I have this faint hope that the heavens will turn their favoured face to us, and provide us Singaporeans with a veritable cornucopia of bishoujo games. I do not even ask for the ero version of these treasures; just the ones with the original Japanese voices (since I do not trust the voice acting industry for these games outside of Japan), all-ages version.

When I get tired of it all, I may depart to the Arts House, Earshot Cafe, to continue salvaging my NaNoWriMo. Or something.

The astute reader may note that all this is making it increasingly unlikely that I will be blogging AFA 08 at all, apart from this. This is also because my camera does not work, so I am stuck with either using my cellphone (with space for maybe three photos) or my Eee PC's webcam, meaning that you may spot me by looking for the idiot holding an Eee PC trying to take webcam pictures.

Apart from that, I shall be wearing a shirt that may render me invisible. No, really; it's a shirt with "Shirt Of Invisibility +2″ written on it. I have the feeling that this may backfire.

So it goes.