There’s something that’s been bothering me for a while that I really need to get off my mind. It’s something to do with this blog, and how people mistaken it for another thing when it’s not what it claims to be: either it’s an “Anime Blog”, an “Otaku Blog”, or a “J-Blog”. When I started the blog, I didn’t expect to keep blogging about my gaming escapades on this blog, but on another blog (not on Blogspot, that was for sure), like I did anyway with Wrath of the Nak for my World of Warcraft updates. This also means straying away from the blog’s original purpose on sharing my interests on both MMORPGs and Otakudom, but it was to be expected sooner or later as with many popular blogs today…

It started one day in 2008 when I passed by a World of Warcraft blog via Entrecard that appeared out of nowhere, along with 5 other WoW blogs that seemed to be close with the blog in question…

At the time, I continued to blog about World of Warcraft along with Otaku-related content. So I thought “it wouldn’t hurt to advertise on this blog” since this blogger would also blog about his social life witch evened up to his WoW topics.

The next day I logged on to Entrecard to see if he approved of my advert. He did–but not for long. A few hours later, he rejected the ad with a “not relevant” note. A likely reason: the same day, I published a post that was related to Final Fantasy XI about the game’s cursors that I found in the program folder.

Maybe he didn’t like FFXI (and Anime?), or maybe that he was new to Entrecard and canceled it by mistake… Or maybe it was because I was a Horde player–which is the conclusion I often come to as he was a Dwarf player…

Fast forward to last month when I was approached by the owner of an Anime directory website (which will remain nameless as I don’t want to cause a firestorm or to give either parties a bad name). Like with all other websites I’ve been to where they have welcomed CTM, this one site didn’t. To put it bluntly, he said the content of the blog had too much Gaming content over Anime/Otaku content.

That’s funny… at the time, I had published a few entries: a brief review of the first season of Gundam 00, dreams of getting a Gunpla Kit of White Base, and a Gundam mod for the game Starcraft. (Starcraft is clearly a video game, but when Gundam is involved…)

I wonder what made him think that. Could it be that he judged the content of the blog from my About Page, seeing “World of Warcraft” over “Anime” made the decision on not accepting the blog for inclusion?

When I think about it, it seems that Anime fans don’t like WoW, and WoW fans don’t like Anime. In “reality”, you would think both sub-cultures would be accepted into the Otaku (or just “geek”) category. But to hardcore fans of both cultures, a video game from a totally different country just don’t mix with a similar Geek culture based from another different culture.

After a year and a half of blogging, perhaps it’s time to define what the blog really is about: CEN.TAKU.ME is a blog about Otaku and Anime culture in the US and in Japan (and in other parts of the world, as needed). There will be the occasional video game related post, but it will be related to games based on an Anime series, or a game directly of Japanese origin.

There will be no more posts on Final Fantasy XI or World of Warcraft–unless they are very important to the main topics of the blog, and for personal posts regarding an certain aspect of the games will be posted on different blogs, like WotN.

Of course, it’s my blog and I can do what I want with it. If anyone strongly objects to the past content of the blog, then I’m sorry to hear that. But in regards of WoW content, there’s no reason to talk about it on this blog anymore. Not because one fanbase may frown at the sight of “irrelevant” content, but because the other fanbase isn’t the type you expect to come up and kindly support you once the nay-say of Alliance, Horde and PvP are mentioned in one post. Case in Point: Just think of what would happen if Halo was discussed at a gaming panel at an Anime convention…

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Written by: Sanjo-chan (531 Posts)

Posted on: March 24, 2009 11:16 (Articles)
Tag(s): anime, blogging, commentary
Website: http://centakume.info/