Star Crossed Anime Blog

Heh, I’ve put off writing an about-page for a bit too long now. For those of you who stumble upon this page: hey, I’m psgels, a 20 year-old student of Computer Science, currently living in Amsterdam. If you want to contact me for some reason, you can use psgels{at}yahoo{dot}com (which also is my msn-address).

I started this blog back in November 2005, mostly because of two series: Tales of Phantasia and my all-time favourite anime Mahou Shoujotai. I loved both titles, but none of them seemed to be getting the attention it deserved. At the time, I was very much into experimenting and trying out new stuff, so Star Crossed Anime Blog was born, and gradually grew into what it is now. Back then, I was still on Blogspot, but after a few months I decided to move over to Blogsome, because I wanted more functionality that Blogspot couldn’t offer. (I remember the huge job it was to transfer all my posts from the old blog. One of the few bad parts about Blogsome is that it doesn’t do that automatically, so it had to be done manually -_-)

I tend to watch most shows I blog without subtitles, though I also follow quite a few shows subbed, since my Japanese level isn’t that good and I’m still learning. If you’re wondering where I’m getting the video-files for the latest anime out in japan: I get most of them through Tokyo Toshokan and the program called Share. If you can’t find these files yet, just have a bit of patience as they’ll appear eventually.

I tend to blog a wide range of series, both popular (Death Note, Claymore) and the neglected ones (Sasami Mahou Shoujo Club, Mahou Shoujotai). My opinion is that whether a show is popular or not gives absolutely no indication as to how good it is, and that both popular and inpopular series have an equal chance of turning out good or bad. Hence one of the more important goals of this blog quickly became promoting the underdogs.

Apart from the most recent series, I also tend to blog older series, who have aired a couple of years ago. I started blogging most of them when I first started Star Crossed because they sounded interesting, but I always leave room open to praise some hidden gems that only now are getting subbed. At this point, there must be two criteria for me to consider picking up such a series:
– It has to be very neglected, nobody seems to know of it.
– It must have made a huge impact on me, the best example of this is Strange Dawn.

If I had to give a favourite anime-series, it’d be mystery. I love seeing a mysterious setting explain itself and gradually become clearer. There’s one genre I hate, though: the moe-shows, whose only purpose it is to show cute girls and please otaku. Do not get me started on those, as I’ll start rambling quite a bit about how their popularity takes the attention away from the neglected and really good shows. If you’re wondering about my favourite shows, I recently wrote up my Top 10 of anime, which can be found here.

Regarding the content on my blog, most posts will be episodic, with either a summary, commentary or a combination of these two, depending on my mood. Occasionally, though, I do tend to write special features. These are the most important ones:
Some quick first impressions: At every season, I try to watch the first episode of as many series as possible, before deciding which are good and which aren’t. Most of these episodes don’t really provide enough material for one post, but when I combine three series, and provide a small blurb about my opinion, it works out quite well.
Monthly Summaries: I watch more than just she shows I blog, and that’s one of the reasons I write up a summary at the end of every month about all the shows I managed to see, ranking them from worst to best. It’s also meant to list the new anime that have been announced in the past month and the individual episodes I enjoyed the most.
Anime Reviews: Inspired by Anime Academy. Before I started this blog, I was already an avid reader of the reviews provided at that site, and some of the writers have amazing writing skills. I just tended to disagree with their opinions way more often than not, so I decided to write my own. Most of the site here is filled with spoilers, but for the Reviews and the Monthly Summaries, I try to stay away from any major revelations.
Some quick second impressions: Basically a spoof of the quick first impressions. When I want to really say something about a show I’m not blogging, I use this category. Up till now, these turned out to be eiter underrated or overrated series.