[…] are 2 interesting articles at THAT Animeblog. Impz did a great article on the history of the anime blogging community, which shows a chronology of anime blogs past, present and possible future. Another article that […]

[…] good times right there, remembering the bloggers you came up with. Impz had a history post too, and I can’t help but wonder if a timeline or wiki-history could be constructed one day. […]

[…] it seems that some of the great anime blogging sempais are making their comeback, thanks to the almighty OS who woke them from their slumber. While those […]

[…] brief history of the world (or at least all of the world that matters) You can blame Impz, Martin, Bateszi, Hige, Lythka, Author and Michael for this […]

[…] me write and introduction post, because I’ve probably faded away long enough to be found on a historical timeline of animebloggers. Thanks Impz. So here […]

actually Impz I started the same time as you ^^;;

btw, I personally think the big blog explosion began in the later months of 2006

Great post, Impz.

I didn’t know momotato was that popular. o.o

Like I said in the channel already, I like this post, despite the short time of research and therefore the small errors ^^

By the way, I have known Momotato for ages already, but that’s because he did the Yotsubato! scanlations back then. I liked the blog, but it has never inspired me to blog myself - my big inspiration was Memento though.

I read some of AoMM’s old postings and found them nowhere as good and funny as his newer postings (let’s say about 2006 when he had blogsuki and was popular).

*cue Linkin Park song “Belong”

:V

I was definitely inspired by members of the first and second generation during 03/04. “david.anime” was (and always will be) my favorite for episodic reviews, but I also loved reading Momotato Daioh, YSP: Duh and especially Cinnamon Ass; BluWacky basically carried me through Fantastic Children and Gankutsuou. That whole era, when Fullmetal Alchemist, Naruto and Samurai Champloo were airing, was great fun.

Although I’ve completely abaddoned my blog now, I’m one of those mid-stage adopters. It’s strange to think that I’ve been doing this thing for more than a year now…

Great post Impz. =)

I think that now with the mass increase of anime blogs out there that it’s more important to strive to stand out from the crowd. Since mediocre posting and producing similar content as the rest of the body of bloggers will only get you lost in the flood, creating fresh new content in an interesting manner will be more and more critical as the number of blogs increase. That being said, the quality of blogs just may go beyond what has been done before due to the increasing competetion. Of course that scenario would perhaps only work in an ideal world… who knows, maybe there will come a time where the amount of anime blogs would only destroy the whole concept of “anime blogging” to the point where they all die out (hopefully not ^^;).

guess i belong to the mid adopters then

Blogging is so cool, especially since it exposes people to different and new anime.

I wish I had the time to blog. Or maybe I’m just too lazy.

@Danny: O_O really, I remember you are 1-2 months earlier than me, and it is mostly due to lumping a few of the examples that I want to mention X_X

@Jeff: Arr, I am hoping that you can comment to give me a better picture of what happened earlier. I have to admit that my knowledge of the bloggers before me is rather weak. In fact, most of the names up there are perhaps given by some of the bloggers such as lupus, TJ, kuro, mike and a few others, rather than research (even though I also did enough to get a better feel of who’s who).

Arrr, thanks for the heads up on Momotato, I have changed the sentence describing them to be a bit more accurate.

@Michael: Me neither, dude. Me neither @_@ However, I did know that it was a very good blog when it is active.

@Jpmeyer: Arr, Well, when I was checking the history, that is perhaps where I found his archives. Perhaps, he has another blog, but I have no clue then. X_X

@Sasa: Hmm, for me, my biggest impression to start blogging is perhaps sea slugs! anime blog, hop step jump!, hopeless sensei and memento, since these are the wonderful bloggers that I always consider in high regard. Ya, due to the short time of research, I generally will make some mistakes, but I guess it is really important for us to have some chronicles of what has happened in our community.

@Karura: You are definitely noted, Karura, but you didn’t have an archive ( I actually searched high and low in your site and found nothing ;_;). I do want to include you.

@DrmChsr0: Hahaha! good one. The king of one liners.

@Demian: Yep, due to my sleepiness yesterday, I was not able to add more names into the list. Thanks for the feedback, Demian, since you are the one who introduced to the heaven named “nipponsei”

@Batezi: David.anime? Wow, some of these sites that you mention are like totally unknown for me, and I really have to do a bit of searching to update it. Nevertheless, I have to use the google tool to find out.

@Leon: Hohoho, it is something big now. It used to be too small that such a post is merely an e-penor list. Now, it is ermm…a…proper e-penor list?

@Lupus: Ho ho ho, yes, and you are absorbed inTO THAT, wahahahahahah!

@Nekonron: Well, I am pretty clueless myself if you ask me, which is why I am very surprised at the depth of the blogs. I am but merely touching on the tip of the iceberg on the more popular blogs. There are perhaps a lot of other good blogs out there that I have missed due to my lack of reading.

@Shokkeru: Ya, I completely agree with your statement but I do not believe that the concept of anime blogging can ever be destroyed. The thing is that readers, despite their attention being extremely limited, stick to a blog as long as it can provide decent content for them. They are often lazy (assumption) to find something new once they stick to you. The thing is…of course to get them to stick.

@Author: Chizumatic @_@ ? Well, the limitation for this article is that if a blog has no archives for me to be easily dig out the age, I cannot list it decently accurately.

@Bj0rn: hahaha, I guesss so @_@;; I am not too sure myself too.

@Whispered.Hope: Seriously O_O. I know that anime blogs exist a long time ago, but I never really read them until I had my own anime blog. It is logical because I am not interested in anime until the past year. It is perhaps accurate to state that I never knew many existed now too until I did this entry.

@Kyokii: Very much so. Blogging can be rather cool, but for me, it is always to hear feedback.

.. how many times can you use blog in a sentence?

Nice article. Reminded me to update my blogroll.

Funny how this is making me feel nostalgic.

What about Tempy’s Journal? His blog is extremely underrated. He started using the “short episode review + screen shots” formula in early 2003, and he reviewed a lot of obscure anime that other blogs didn’t touch. I’ve been obsessed with anime since Fall 04, and I have Tempy to thank. Checking out all the screenshots on his journal influenced me to seek out the fansubs.

David.Anime was *the* Naruto blogger. After watching a new Naruto ep, you went to David’s blog.

I also want to mention a short lived blog called Gin Sweater. It appeared in early 05, when AIR TV was first airing. It was the first blog I know that applied cinematic criticism to anime. Rather than talking about AIR episodes and how awesome/not awesome they were, he discussed symbolism, and storytelling techniques, and created unsubstantiated theories about the way certain characters act. Blog died very quickly, but it was a refreshing change of pace. Other people have tried to mix anime and academia on the internet, but Gin Sweater was the first of its kind.

Satoshi’s Corner was another very popular, meticulously written blog.

Matthew was the first Western blogger to embrace moe and all things cute.

The funniest, most cynical, and brutally honest anime blog was Lovely Kitsune. That guy just ripped some anime apart, but he was obviously intelligent and obsessed with the things he loathed, so it worked. I remember him complaining about female characters who have that one hair that stands up on their head, eventhough their hairstyles look like they just used up a years supply of hair spray. Still unknown because he refused to embrace the online community. The only anime blogger that actually linked to Lovely Kitsune was Bluemist. Anyway, a lot of the more “humorous” anime blogs right now are Lovely Kitsune-lite. He was also the leader of the “youth appreciation” movement.

I for myself own a german blog about anime/manga for two years now and I think your post is an interesting introduction to get a picture how blogging about anime developped in the english-speaking part of the web. However, I had to chuckle a bit about your introduction where you write the anime community was supposedly in its infant stage and blogging played a very important role in bringing the gerne to the net. I suppose you mean bloggers made anime popular among blog-communities, because around 2003 anime was already *hugely* popular in the net. It already was in the mid- to late nineties (Narutards didn’t exist back then, but you had the moonies, the dragonballz nerds, the crazy utena and eva fans, and so on). You had tons of websites about specific series or creators. In short: Anime was already very popular in the internet long before blogging started.

From what I remember Momotato, Hayama, and Jascii were in the forefront. I loved the one-liners in Momotato and Nowhere. I REALLY miss Momotato.

YSP, as an anime blog, started around the same time as Sea Slugs and as with Matthew. I’ll never forget my first link from Sugar who ran the now defunct BLurry Eyes. The other females who started around the “era” ran TokyoJupiter (Reika), Itsumo (kawaii a.k.a. maya), and Spokey Dokey. And one of my favorites was david.anime. His Naruto posts were — still are — the best there is.

Also, we should give big credit to Maestro, the admin of animeblogger.net. He was the first one who offered major hosting for loads of anime blogs.

yeah I know impz lol

But yeah, I started in July (on MSN spaces) and moved to animeblogger in august I think

Any chance that this history will be updated anytime soon for 2007?

I’m glad to see I’m familiar with most of the blogs mentioned! A lot of that would be in part to the aggregators and also the growing use of RSS readers. But I do have to agree with Ataru on his points out the larger anime online community…blogging is still a very small part of it, IMHO, and not as influential as this history makes it seem. I think it’s created a great community but there are so many great communities out there that it would be nearly impossible to compete without the aggregators.

I’m definitely a newcomer in terms of having my own blog but I’ve been lurking off and on for about 2-3 years. I don’t expect to become influential within the community but if it happens, I won’t complain. (I’m also not sure if I qualify either….)

@Caitlin: of course, but it’s always good to have a pretty history post about our blogosphere.

@Lolikit: JPmeyer’s 見ないで! 恥ずかしい… is a runaway success in the infusion of theory and anime during its early days.

Riuva sounds cuter than Not Dotq seriously.

Comes what?

Have fun.

This is just in a span of what, 5 or 6 years? How much we’ve grown…

I guess you were one of the few who recall my older anime blog before I joined ab.net (and that makes me feel even older lol). Huge props go to Maestro indeed for the awesome hosting all these years.

I’m glad to have a bit of a part in all this. Thanks for the nostalgia.

@Hige: Blame your pull down archive. It confused me badly. Anyway fixed, and also added tokyojupiter.

@Bluemist: HO HO HO, yes, kinda. ^^ anyway, it’s a short time. I won’t say that the years are distinctively different, but more of a chronological measure. Dont’ think too hard on the names like innovators. It’s mostly for glitzy appearances.

@Hinano: heh thanks for blogging?

I love this post Impz, and I really regret not having read it wayy back (and I mentioned about this in our blog anniv post, but gack! I thought I linked to this T__T).

Posts like these that reinforces this anime community spirit, and serve as a great Animeblogging 101 for newbies too~ *bows to sempais* ^-^

I thought jascii predated all of them. Ah well, it was kind of long ago.

I still remember the great influx of summer 2006, fun times.

I find it really hard to break out of my comfort zone with the blogs that I frequent and explore new ones though, most of which surfaced within a year of my own, force of habit I suppose. The Anime Blog Awards certainly helped with that in its nomination stage though, where I added a few new ones to the list.

Wow, somebody knows I was around in 2006

I am totally the old granny of the anime bloggers.

Get off my lawn you young whippersnappers!

What?! OMG, I’m not the first to comment! ASDJHAS!! But anyway, you better do a 2008 one and include me!

Man, it’s been forever and a day. I remember when I was reading Momotato and watching Princess Tutu. Now it’s 2008 and I’m watching Shugo Chara, while I have my own blog. Time flies when you’re having fun.

It’s like watching the growth of webcomics, except on a smaller scale, yet closer to my heart and fandom. :3

Well that was an interesting read, showing a) I’m getting “old” b) I don’t know a 1/10 of the newer blogs since like ‘06. Guess I need to lurk on animenano and animeblogger one day…

LOL thanks for putting me with the the “oldies” but I think I actually came a bit after everyone else mentioned (~2004-2005); Matthew, Momotato Daioh, YSP: Duh, Jascii, and David.anime were a few I remember asking to link to my blog back in the day ^^;;

Honestly beside being one of the oldies (aka having free time back in the day LOL), I think the only two claims to fame I have/had were being the blogger who screencapped like crazy (until I got overthrown like a year later) and spending 200% of his annual income on anime merchandise.

Anyway enough of my reminiscing, once again thank for the great read and good to know the anime community grows stronger every year. I guess you know it’s getting biggerr and better once you can’t start naming the major and upcoming players of the aniblog scene like *that*…

… that or old age is kicking in XD

Actually I’ve been writing for a long time already than you think I have. Just that I’ve been moving around over the years. xD

Os: “I dont know many if only two or three of the 2007 blogs…”

I’ll smack you if I wasn’t one of them.

Haesslich: “Anyone else feel old now?”

I know I’ve said this before, but why don’t you have a blog yet? D:
And I started commenting myself in 2006 as far as I remember, but maybe there are some things earlier than that.

Cameron: “Wow… I got mentioned in an official history. Does that mean I made it?”

Same here. And I feel like it kinda gives me a little burden in terms of a standard to uphold, especially when I feel like all I’m doing is rambling. But it’s not that serious so don’t worry about it. I’m glad that I’m considered to have had a hand in how things are now. Of course the Anime Blog Awards helped with that as well. :3

I’m also glad my earlier comment came to fruition. It’s great to see how far we’ve come. :3

Why, thank you for recognizing that we started in 2006–though under the name “Scattered Cels”! It always surprises me to find out just how recent anime blogging as a subculture really is, considering how tech and net savvy anime fans tend to be.

I’d like to note that while we are primarily episodic now–and I started the blog in part so I could write about “Welcome to the NHK”’s final episodes–it was equally started as a base for the podcast, which was the second post on Scattered Cels after the “Welcome, everyone!” first post. The podcast is, to me, equally close to the heart of Anime Diet as anything else on the site; the idea for the whole website was inspired by Hung, jpmeyer, and Hinano’s Anime Nano Podcast, which entertained me greatly during the summer of 2006. I actually pitched the podcast to Ray before the website, in fact, and had originally imagined that the blog would be secondary to that (I was thinking of only posting once a week, max). How things have changed since late 2006!

Thanks for the mention! We’re grateful to be part of history already.

Ah, so I’ve been stalking the community for two years now huh.

In order to make myself happy, I even targeted you in one of my comics, Impz!

Oh wow, this certainly is nostalgic.

Makes me want to return back to anime blogging, lulz.