This makes me come to my honour shoutouts to New Anime Thursday, The Manga Critic, Fourty-Four Fennecs, Terminal Anime, Ashita no Anime, Manga Widget, Otakuness Anime Reviews and the Anime/Manga Harem Brigade, while good luck to Kritik der Animationskraft, Prede’s Anime Reviews, Just as Planned, Yuri no Boke, Continuing World, Yaranakya, Empty Blue and Kuriosity for round two. So, let’s read some new blogs, shall we?

81. Lemmas and Submodalities

Thoughts:  I am back with more blog reviews! This week I start off with the anime blog SnippetTee, which specializes in full anime reviews and lots of editorial style posts. So, how does SnippetTee writes? Well, I would call her posts more conversational rather than a normal play by play review. Each post is filled with a few shots from the episode or you can find fan art throughout the special posts like her BRS post and Silhouettes and Geometry in art. She also has a few full anime reviews like one on Ano Natsu that I really enjoyed reading, so pay SnippetTee a visit and you might find lots of interesting posts and reviews to read.

What can I say about the design? I was quite impressed with the blog layout. One of the best parts about her blog can be found on the right hand side with all those cute Madoka chibi icons for her twitter, RSS and Google+ links. I also liked the other icons for commentaries, reviews, journal, about me, blogroll and projects. I guess little things like that really stand out for me just like her awesome banner at the top of the blog; so design gets a huge thumbs up from me.

82. Interests of a Psychopath

Thoughts: Looks like CyborgCommunist does double duty on this blog and also at AOIA. This blog seems to mostly do episodics with a side order of editorials. They were strong during the Winter season, but I’m guessing exams have slowed things down as of recently. Their impressions are a combo of thoughts/analysis with some summaries and a number of captioned pics; maybe a few too many in some cases even with smaller-sized images.

In terms of design, I find their background choice very bland and ugly. It looks like an early Windows 95 default wallpaper or something. If I were a designer, I’d change it to something that better accentuates the main content area; nothing flashy and something that makes all of the side text easier to read. They have a rotating banner system; some are plain, but I think they should incorporate their logo into all of them like the one of Homura from Madoka Magica.

83. Riyoga’s Ramblings

Thoughts: Riyoga’s Ramblings is an aniblog site that started up in 2011. Riyoga, is most likely a tsundere the only writer for the site and he covers first impressions (or as the site called them, Previews), in a way different than most. Impressions come AFTER the famous 3 episode trial, so if he drops it, there’s a good reason. He also does reviews in general, editorials, some news and some ranting. The blog isn’t called Riyoga’s Rambling for nothing and when the guy has something to say, he says it with a lot of words. However, what he says is coherent and he explains his reasoning well assuming that you bothered to read it all.

Site-wise, his list of things he’s reviewed and why he reviews it that way is extremely easy to navigate. The look of the site is pretty nice too (not too crowded or too empty) and though the banners don’t always connect with the background a lot, in themselves they are win. Riyoga suggests reading his Why There’s No Such Thing as “Objectively Good” post and I’m inclined to agree. It’s something interesting to think about.

84. Marth’s Anime Blog

Thoughts: “Just me talking about anime.” Marth literally means that. In his articles, I can’t help but feeling the “I write what I want” vibe, especially in his Life’s Great Mysteries section. Not that I mind because Marth seems to have interesting topics and questions running through his head. His Life’s Great Mysteries articles seem to spark some interesting discussions too in the comments section. Marth also does episodics and anime reviews, though I find those sections to be uninteresting. His episodics are all over the place, jumping from one topic to another. Marth’s reviews are OK; they remind me of those decent MAL reviews that are actual reviews.

Marth has a simple white theme with some anime background. I can’t see the anime background properly because my screen is too small (or maybe it’s meant to be like that), but it seems that it’s in tile? So far I got two banners from his site. One has character from Bakuman, Angel Beats!, and Code Geass (this dude has a manly love for Lelouch). Math’s Anime Blog has a simple theme that won’t hurt the eyes… Oh, one thing I forgot. Marth solves Rubik’s cubes. He’s a genius.

85. Oishii Anime

Thoughts: Oishii Anime is a site that focuses on anime, cooking and… cute school uniforms apparently. If you’re wondering about the uniforms, chii (the one and only writer for the site) did an anime character of the day back in 2010 for 365 days, so I assume this is just a kind of continuation. As for her reviews, she covers a bit of first impressions, but it seems that her first thoughts on an anime are all that she covers (minus a select few series). The cooking segment is somewhat new, but it’s fantastic since the recipes she uses are easy to follow and sound (not to mention look) pretty great.

The design of the site is… kind of overwhelming. The front page has headlines and videos thrown on there and the bright purple doesn’t exactly help. Oishii does have a mascot though (if you look to the top right corner of the site. She’s hard to miss.) and I’ll me damned if she isn’t moe. (According to chii, her name is MoMoKo.) So yeah, this is a really cute site once you get past that first page~.

86. Seventh Style

Thoughts:  Next up! We take a quick look at the anime blog Seventhstyle! This blog is owned by a writer named Seven and he specialize in posts about art, first episode impressions, videos, figures, manga and doujin, gaming and random articles. Sounds like a lot, huh? Yeah at first glance it seems like a lot of work for just one blogger, but somehow he can pull it off. So what kinds of writing can you find? In the first impression section, you will find lots of episode reviews usually filled with lots of detailed information with several screenshots at the bottom of the review like in the first Haiyore! Nyaruko-san review for example. One thing I did like was the wide variety of posts like the art themed ones, but they are mostly in the NSFW related stuff. Under the videos section there are trailers and previews of the latest anime headed our way. Overall Seventhstyle is a good blog for anyone that might be into first impressions on anime episodes, artwork, figures, manga and gaming.

Design wise I really liked the slick layout for Seventhstyle. They use a combination of black, bright neon pink and white for the text; while it does look cluttered everything is easy to find and I really liked how every category was filled with all things anime. So yeah, I liked the layout, so I can say the overall design impressed me.

87. All About Manga

Thoughts: All About Manga is really all about manga. Daniella Orihuela-Gruber dedicates every article to manga only. All About Manga’s theme is very plain, having no banner or fancy picture as decoration. It does have a little box at the sidebar that is used to display the manga Daniella recommends (and she recommends good stuff).

Being a freelancer editor who used to work for Tokyopop, Daniella has heaps of knowledge when it comes to manga world. Her articles are professionally written but are also casual at the same time, giving a friendly impression of the writer. Being a professional, Daniella makes great recommendations and reviews, pointing out the positive and the flaws of the recommended manga (or even genre). Moreover, Daniella is a classical reader, making most of her recommendations to be older manga. You know, when manga was actually good. Unfortunately, anti-shoujo and shounen peeps won’t find her recommendations useful. Sometimes she also writes about her job, telling her readers her experience as an editor. All About Manga is perfect for those who want to be more involved with the publishing world. And I seriously don’t know Daniella’s gender.

88. Illogicalzen

Thoughts: Illogicalzen is an aniblog site written by Illogicalzen. The guy does editorials, episodics and a few first impressions, but he manages to combine summarizing the episode with delving into certain aspects of the show. Illogicalzen explains that he’s  a post graduate who focused his studies on the culture and society of Japan, so a lot of his posts focus on things he probably picked up on his studies. His post about the role of female characters in anime is a great example of this. Illogicalzen even did research for this post. With actual books on the topic. Holy crap. Even without that though, you can tell that he puts a ton of effort and thought into writing these posts and making them coherent.

I don’t know if it’s just my computer or not, but the background to the site design keeps getting cut off. All I can see is 1/5th of some blond girl’s head, which is kind of distracting since I keep trying to figure out who she is, but it’s nothing major. The articles are pretty text heavy as well, which can make some of the posts a bit hard to get through, but the episodics have a good screencap to text ratio that keep it from becoming a giant wall of text.

89. A Product of Wasted Time

Thoughts: Did I waste my time checking out this blog? No! TJ blogs a number of anime and manga regularly and does the classic summary/impressions combo. His fomula falls somewhere around 1-2 paragraphs for manga and 2-4 for anime, though I think he should shorten his summaries a touch. You’ll notice mostly action shows covered, but for a solo blogger, he covers a myriad of content quite regularly.

Blogspot isn’t the most customizable and flashy blog host you can find, so blogs like APoWT are somewhat limited in what they can do. Post presentation is standard, nothing stands out in terms of design to report.

90. Spark Blog

Thoughts:  I was a little bit disappointed when I didn’t see any sparkles or a sparkling vampire. I know, I know, Spark Blog is just the name… But still! *sigh* Anyhow, Spark Blog has this cool slideshow banner with pwetty pictures and self-promotion sentences along with the pictures. But does that even matter? The banners SLIDE! So cool! … Except that empty space next to the banner. I was itching to shade my screen because of that empty space. It would be preferable to put something there to make it look neater.

SparkNorkx’s articles are all right. They’re really really short, but that’s the whole point I guess (“Short read impressions from Spark Blog allows you to have time with someone else”). His articles are great of mindless and fun conversation. The article I like the most is the one about Spark Blog’s mascot. Yeah, Spark Blog has its own original mascot, and she’s CUTE. Sliding banners and original mascot. This is just too cool.

91. The Untold Story of Altair & Vega

Thoughts: Third on my list of blogs we take a look at the anime blog Altair and Vega. This blog was created by the team of Ajthefourth and VucubCaquix; together they posted some great Mawaru Penguindrum posts and shortly after that series ended they gained several new writers a bit later. So, as a team blog you will find that each writer on the team has their own unique take on the world of anime. Also, you can find episodic posts for Mysterious Girlfriend X and Mouretsu Pirates. Other than episodics, you will find several creative posts from each writer on this crazy team. Alright maybe they really are not that crazy, but with every post you can get the feeling that everyone on the team really loves anime and adds their own flavour to it.

Design wise Altair and Vega uses a dark purple background white for the center and bold black text, but I always like looking at their really cool banner at the top. On the right hand side of the blog you will find some of the usual additions like recent posts, categories, recent comments, author links, topics, blogroll and every writer’s twitter feed. That sounds like a lot of clutter for one blog, but somehow Altair and Vega makes it work quite well. So, to wrap up if you are into detailed posts about anime or you enjoy reading interesting posts, you should pay them a visit.

92. One Minute of Dusk

Thoughts: One Minute of Dusk (OMoD) is an anime blog that has generic reviews of… well, anime. My favorite posts are du5k’s Top 100 Characters posts (they’re Anime-Source’s, but du5k also writes there) since the pictures are so pwetty there. Except that one list where Belldandy is in it. God, Belldandy. People have bad taste… Anyway, I also like that reaction section in his reviews. Those memes are just gold.

OMoD’s layout is decent with its gray-ish color. That subscribe bar is definitely catchy and cute. I’m pretty sure some of the readers are itching to press that subscribe bar right now. The banner with its beautiful background and Miku’s interesting pose is definitely lovely. Though the layout needs a bit of work. Anyways, do check du5k’s blog out!

93. The Neighbors Club

Thoughts: Sergio is a multilingual guy. He can speak 6 different languages, which is very helpful for communicating with English and Spanish readers and also in reading Japanese light novels. He doesn’t seem to do complete translations, but his summaries are great reads if you’re wanting to know what happens next on Haganai or OreImo among other series whose anime ended early in the course of the light novels. He’s also an unabashed ecchi as most of his impressions are related to ecchi, moe or loli girl animes; many shows which other blogs don’t want to cover. It’s right up my alley!

I like his site design. The color choice (pink) fits well with the site’s theme and also the comic-sans font; it’s nice to see a wordpress blog theme designed by the blogger themselves rather than “just another wordpress theme”. I also like how the comments section is color-coded with his responses in pink. His light-novel posts are familiar to that of Baka-Tsuki, but his post formatting is easy to read and pictures are included and not too big.

94. The Otaku HQ

Thoughts: And now the last of my blog reviews for The Otaku HQ. Things are run by Jordan here but seeing the forums, there are some other moderators who participate there but not sure about posts. I noticed there was a podcast called the Vodcast; so what does this blog offer for the readers? I found some full series reviews on some old school anime movies and a few posts on music and a creative hottest girls and hottest guys of 2012 anime. Aside from posts like that there really wasn’t much to find on this small blog… The review for Metropolis wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t a massive block of text to read through.

Design wise I really did not like the layout of this blog because it felt somewhat lazy and it wasn’t the most easy to navigate. I think the home and blog buttons were messed up, but I did enjoy the various banners for the blog that changed with every refresh… Overall blog looks barely alive and it could really do with a massive overhaul sometime.

95. Abandoned Factory Anime Review

Thoughts: Some of you might recognize Joojoobees, from commenting on Metanorn from time to time; however, he’s also the writer for the Abandoned Factory anime blog. He does episodics, but he doesn’t just summarize the episode, he talks about things that interest him in the episode. These topics are pretty insightful and while he doesn’t always cover all of the episode, he does manage to get a lot of what went on while talking about a subject. He also does predictions about a particular season (what he thinks will be good and why), first impressions and final thoughts.

The design of the site is simple, but it works well with the colour choices. General things are easy enough to find (he lists posts by the anime name) as well and the posts have a good screencap to text ratio. There is no search bar though so it can be hard if you’re looking for something super specific on the site.

96. Mon0r

Thoughts: mon0r is a hodgepodge of anime and game content; a celebration of japanese otaku business, you might say. There naviagtion bar says it best; app reviews for different smartphone platforms, all gaming systems covered, cosplay, gaming, anime and much more. They have a unique line of character reviews which I’ve read a few of. I’m quite fond of Tomphile’s tsundere of the… posts, and all of their reviews across the site give detailed analysis of what to expect from such and such.

mon0r has a good site design. It has a navigation bar that stays wherever you scroll to on the page and the author info follows you also. The only thing that’s a bother is the featured area at the top. There’s a banner (oh Hobby Japan) behind a rotating content banner which probably should be taken out. Even on content pages, half of that back-banner is covered by the navigation bar.