There are several areas of anime and Japan-related fandom I enjoy a lot. First is that it’s a “big tent” that holds many smaller bubbles of fandom, allowing them to co-exist side by side. Like mecha shows? You have a dozen or so series to choose from each year. How about romantic comedy series with yuri or BL comedy overtones? You’ve got plenty of options, too. Another thing I like about anime is how long it’s been with us, going back to the 1960s. It’s an ongoing continuum of popular culture that links generations together in ways few other media could, allowing me to bond with my son while watching classic Gundam series when he was small. I recently posted a graphic to J-List’s Facebook page asking what their first anime was, and enjoyed reminiscing with everyone about how they were first attracted to the world of Japanese pop culture. So, what was your first anime?
The year is finally at an end, and today is a good opportunity to look back and reminisce a bit. 2015 was a very hectic and busy year for us, what with many English visual novel releases, a massive website re-launch and our usual convention schedule. We experienced many happy events, including my daughter’s graduation from high school in Australia and successfully laying the groundwork that will enable J-List to serve our customers over the next decade with a modern mobile-friendly site (though many improvements are still coming). Thank you for all your support!
Now it’s time for me to head home, eat some soba noodles with the family (which the Japanese eat because they believe it gives them long lives, as the noodles are long), and fight with my family over control of the TV remote while we watch all the interesting year-end music and comedy programs on Japanese TV. Please have a safe and fun New Year’s celebration!
2015 was a big year for visual novels, pushing out some quality titles, like the super fun Littlewitch Romanesque, the Sei Shoujo masterpiece Starless, run yuri dungeon crawling RPG Raidy III. Another big release was Shiny Days, the sequel prequel to the smash-hit School Days. Unfortunately software development doesn’t always go smoothly, and there were some bugs left in the game, but we’ve now released the version 1.1 patch, enabling people to enjoy the full version of the game. (The patch will show in everyone’s accounts if you downloaded the game from us, or grab it here.)
