It’s episode 4, and Renji decides to ask Chihiro if she wants to fulfill her dream of writing stories, but how will she respond? Also, will Miyako forgive Hiro, and will the sudden space between Hiro and Miyako give an opening to Kei to step into the fray?
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Hot Step Jump shows just why I dislike passing judgement on a series until I’ve seen most or all of it:
After watching the first episode of Mokke a few weeks ago, I wrote, “The first episode didn’t necessarily grab me as much as I would’ve liked, but I think the show has a lot of potential.” Yet, despite my optimism, I proceeded to put the show out of sight and out of mind, almost to the point of forgetting about it entirely. This past weekend, however, I sat down and watched a few more episodes and discovered that my initial impression of the show was pretty much on the mark. In fact, I’d even go so far as to now label it one of my favorite shows of the season. I’m glad I gave it a fair chance.
Even a series like Myself; Yourself, in which I wrote that I wasn’t necessarily impressed with the first episode, I decided to keep watching, and now 4 episodes into it, it’s starting to grow on me a little.
First episodes might give you an idea of what a series is about, but it won’t necessarily tell you how well the series will turn out. A series may start off with a bang, then go down hill, while others may start out slow then have a fantastic ending.
Kannazuki no Miko, while hardly the best anime I’ve ever seen, is a good example of a show that got better as the series progressed. Then there are series like His and Her Circumstances which I think start off really strong, then collapse near the end. You could not get a proper impression of either of those series by merely watching their first episodes (or even first DVD volumes).
Thus, I think it’s always good to reserve judgement, at least for a little while, while watching a series.
Yes, it is here again…the post no one but I and a few other people in the known universe care about….the web stats post!
This month was a month of basking in glory of several days with over 100 hits a day…before crashing and burning by the end of the month (actually, it was more like a gradual decline. I have several theories as to why this was the case)
In any case, the stats:
Visits: 3,071 (+49.4%)
Page Views: 5,983 (+33.7%)
Unique Visitors: 2,187 (43.2%)
That translates into 99 visits a day (so close!), 193 pageviews a day, and 70.5 unique visitors a day.
In total, over the past two months, my improvements have been thus:
Visits: 107.5%
Page views: 61%
Unique Visitors: 91.7%
Pages per visit is down once again, falling from 2.17 last month to 1.95 this month. This could partly be due to more people visiting, but doing so in a one-and-done fashion.
Now, as to why my numbers did what they did (I had 13 days with over 100 hits between October 3rd and October 17th, then dropped and stabilized to between 70 and 80 visits a day by the end of the month).
As some may recall, I took part in the ProBlogger contests at the start of the month. I’m sure my leaving comments and the like on such a popular blog lead people to visit my site, and thus why my traffic was probably driven up at the start of the month. Also, I’ve gotten a little behind on posting some of my episode reviews, which may cause people to not visit as often.
Since Blue Drop is the series which everyone seems to be visiting my blog about right now, and the fansub group who is doing that series has been a little slow, that could be adding to this.
Also, this is the first full month that I added a plugin which handles the google analytics code in such a way that I don’t get counted in the stats, which is nice since I’m not always sure how much of my traffic is me.
Due to the high traffic at the start of this month, I may get a drop in numbers in November, but I’ll still look back at the numbers in September and August to see how much I am improving, overall.
In any case, my top 5 days in October were:
1. Wednesday, October 3 (177)
2. Sunday, October 7 (170)
3. Friday, October 5 (137)
4. Thursday, October 4 (135)
5. Tuesday, October 9 (134)
The top 5 sites, other than search engines, from which I got traffic are:
1. Sea Slugs! Anime Blog (102)
2. Ani-Nouto (101)
3. ProBlogger (99)
4. Rollchan’s blog (68)
5. m33w Fansubs (54)
Last month I noted that I had gotten over 1,000 hits from Google Searches. Well, that increased to 1,750 hits this month, with those searching for the show Blue Drop finally eclipsing those finding my Fall 2007 Anime Preview.
This month I add 10 more nations to the list of places that people visit from, increasing that list to 83 nations. Eight nations get into the triple digit visits this month: The United States, Canada, the Philippines, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and the United Kingdom. This month I got visits from 48 states and the District of Columbia (same on Montana and Wyoming – who is now an offender two months in a row). Also, the number of states with double-digit visits increased to 26 this month.
The share of people who use Firefox to visit my site dropped, but still remains the majority at 51.7%. IE still remains second and Opera third. The number using Windows also dropped slightly, but is still an overwhelming majority at nearly 92%.
Finally, the top 5 visited posts (ie, not the homepage and not category or archived pages) are the following (I’m not sure how much this was effected by my changing the permalink structure mid-month, however):
1. Blue Drop – Episode 1 (132)
2. School Days – Episode 12 [END] (70)
3. CLANNAD – Episode 1 (59)
4. 7 Days of Prizes Giveaway (not from me though) (55)
5. Keeping Up A Good (anime) Blog (51)
Meanwhile, awstats says that my podcasts were downloaded 361 times last month. Here are the top 5 episodes downloaded:
1. Episode 47 (62)
2. Episode 46 (45)
3. Episode 45 (33)
4. Episode 44 (23)
5. Episode 48 (16) – Note, this was released on the 30th.
Well, I guess it’s a good trend that, at least through episodes 44 and 47, the number of times it was downloaded increased for every episode.
Two days ago I put up on post saying that Lucky Star had been licensed, then started to hedge a bit, since it hadn’t been independently verified.
Well, now it really is official.
It’s time to announce the results of the 6th of 8 groups in Round 3 – Group F. That’s right, I’m 3/4 of the way through this round as I’m really close to narrowing down the field to 64 songs.
The songs which advanced to the Fourth Round are in bold. I’m also now entering artist/anime information into the next round match-ups on the bracket as they’re determined:
“Red Fraction” by Mell – Black Lagoon vs.
“Mahou Shoujo Magical-tan” by Yukari Tamura – Moetan
“Kirameku Namida wa Hoshi ni” by Sachi Tamura – Fate/Stay Night vs.
“Moonlight” by s.e.n.s. – Kurau: Phantom Memory
“Saa” by Surface – Mamotte Shugogetten vs.
“Farewell Song” by Lia – Air
“Virgin’s High” by Mell – Sky Girls vs.
“Time Waits for No One” by WAG – Project ARMS
“Takaramono” by Yoko Ishida – Ai Yori Aoshi ~Enishi~ vs.
“Kaze no Hana” by Hana*Hana – Someday’s Dreamers
“Under the Blue Sky” by The Indigo – Someday’s Dreamers vs.
“Naraku no Hana” by Eiko Shimamiya – Higurashi no Naku Koro ni
“Fugainaiya” by Yuki – Honey & Clover II vs.
“Duvet” by Boa – Serial Experiments Lain
“Raspberry Heaven” by Oranges & Lemons – Azumanga Daioh vs.
“XTC” by Psychic Lover – Witchblade
A few difficult ones, and few easy ones this week. The first difficult one was, amazingly, Red Fraction vs. Mahou Shoujo Magical-Tan, given how different they are. However, I went with Red Fraction because Magical-Tan was, how should I put it, “kiddy” I guess is a way to put it.
Next was Saa vs. Farewell Song, and while I was leaning towards Saa to start with, I think it was just too 70s/80s for me to advance lol.
Group G match-ups for next week are listed after the jump…