Anyways, the result of the first match of round 2 is out and we give our appreciative nods for Omari’s Sister, Calamitous Intent, Experiments in Manga and Spherical Cows, while best of luck to 8thSin, Amaenbou Dane~, SOS and Anime Princess for round 3! PS: a small reminder, if a poll link is not working, check out the match date, because the link will be live then only.

121. 見ないで! ひとり言

The look the their site is kind of boring, but at least they didn’t go with the usual white background for wordpress. Though the banners they update with are always pretty current. But seriously, ignore the boring layout and read the posts. It’s worth it. And I meant it when I say it.

122. Okazu

Thoughts: Welcome to the very yuri themed anime blog Okazu owned by a single writer named Erica Friedman. Before the actual review, let me say you don’t have to be a hardcore yuri fan to enjoy reading her posts on anime, manga and the occasional artbook review. That said I enjoyed reading her posts because they are short and to the point reviews so that works for a quick read; each review she posts ends with a rating breakdown category for the art, story, characters, yuri and loser fanboy, which I guess counts towards how moe-ish the series or manga was. While yuri is not my personal choice for anime I feel that Erica’s posts are very friendly towards non yuri and dedicated yuri fans out there.

On design side of things, Okazu uses a simple color scheme of white and grey with a colorful banner at the top. I liked the easy to read layout even though I will be honest and say it wasn’t the most eye catching blog, but layouts don’t really matter a whole lot if the content is fun and interesting…I did like the sidebar stuff complete with a Okazu Glossary of yuri terms along with her own fanclub! So, if you are a yuri fan stop by Okazu and check out Erica’s posts.

123. MASCHERA

Thoughts: Aaah, yes, our second opponent rears his head. The first time you read his blog, you will pretty migh get offended in one way or another. However, before you start flaming some post, let me enlighten you about Poe’s law. It simply states, “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake it for the genuine article.” You can say, Koji Katsuragi uses a higher form of trolling and you can’t really put your finger on his content because it will make you empathize, roll your eyes or even tick you off at different points. This blog is literally his personal diary in a way, where he talks about his life in Japan, where he has recently started working in a school as a teacher. If his words are to be believed, he was fired out of his previous job because they found his blog (KojiOe one), and its questionable content. But then again, can you believe the whole thing?

This is not your usual anime blog and though, you do get reviews of recent anime, manga, visual novels he’s watching/playing in between his personal posts, they are pretty opinionated and always with personal connotations. You can’t usually agree with a guy who thinks Japan should have another earthquake but his thing is trolling and he’s doing a pretty good job of it. In terms of layout, this is a generic wordpress theme that you have already seen in the two of the blogs we have reviewed in round one. Then again, when you are not self-hosted, the theme options are not too many neither the customization. Even when Koji doesn’t use the ‘read more’ option, the blog is clutter free because it’s pretty much text and as posts are not too long, it’s easy on the eyes. Content is questionable sometimes but it’s better that you make your own decision about Koji Katsuragi with a grain of salt, the supposed ruler of shoujos.

124. Rabbitpoets

Thoughts: This week, Rabbit Poets will have their first match in Round 2 of the aniblog tourney. I’ve heard the site mentioned many times in my internet travels, but never actually visited it up until now. At first glance you’ll the same, typical layout that’s present in most aniblogs (white background, banner, column of posts). Although it’s simple, it has a lot of time-saving functions such as a search bar, category drop-down boxes and a function where the most recent posts are larger than the older ones. It’s not a visual feast for the eyes, but it works.

You’ll mostly find episodic posts by one of the three writers there, although there are sprinklings of more creative posts throughout. The episodics only cover topics from the episode that interested the writer, so there’s a range of posts that end up being rather short. It’s better than spewing out empty text, but I wish they would write more for each episode. They’ve all got an engaging and fluid writing style that just begs to be read, so it makes sense for me to be greedy and want more, right?

125. Bluemist

Thoughts: Before I get into the writing part this time I’ll start with the design. It’s very clean and I love the light blue color scheme, however navigating this site can be a bit of a pain. I have very fast internet connection, but the pages of the blog load so damn slow! >< It doesn’t help that there’s only 3 posts per page either because that means I constantly have to keep waiting, but I’m patient so I don’t mind too much. It could just be my laptop, but like I said, it generally loads pages very fast. Still, I really like the way Bluemist anime blog looks, simple and stylish;

Okay, now the most important aspect, the writing! I feel weird sometimes “reviewing” blogs since I’m a new blogger myself and not the most experienced writer, but from what I read bluemist has very well-written posts that go into great detail about the subject, much further than some anime blogs I’ve seen. (My favorite I’d say was the idolmaster post). His posts are very lengthy sometimes, so it might look a little daunting to read at first, but he seemed to always keep my interest, which might be partially an affect of the topics I read about. What I also like is that it’s both a review blog, but a personal blog as well, a place for bluemist to share very personal thoughts and even his own fiction. His blog isn’t as regularly updated as it used to be from what I can tell, but with a few posts a month it’s worth checking out! Good luck to you and congratulations of your seven year anniversary!

126. Ogiue Maniax

Thoughts: Welcome to Ogiue Maniax, a blog by SDShamsel who is somewhat a fan of Ogiue from Genshiken. While I have not watched Genshiken and cannot enjoy the manga impressions, I do really enjoy reading Shamsel’s editorials as I clicked many a “next page” links. I love an editorial where someone can be super informative and to the point without being overly referential to other material (i.e. bible, ancient history, other anime, etc.), and also doesn’t make me feel dumber than I already am.

Site design, insert every comment about a standard WP blog ever. For real though, it’s standard and clean and Shamsel should probably have an Ogiue/Genshiken category on the top navigation bar; it is 50% of the site’s draw after all. 😉 For blogs that don’t use the “Read More” function, I would like to see something like infinite scrolling on Ogiue. I’m glad I got this blog, cause I’ll be keeping up with it!

127. Nopy’s Blog

Thoughts: Nopy’s blog is run by Nopy (if you couldn’t tell from the title). He does series reviews, magazine reviews (or to be more accurate, he posts pictures of the more -cough- important parts of magazines), and even a (sort of) VN review (and on top of that, a parody of it). The most posts go to his figure reviews though (and that was how he started the blog). For those, he goes really into detail on the quality of the figure and it’s worth reading if you want to know what to buy. As for his more writing oriented posts (and for all of his posts actually), he has this great way of writing where he can write paragraphs, but he puts in a way that still gets his point across and it’s easy to understand/follow. …He’s also amazing at spotting less than quality animation. I didn’t even notice half of what he pointed out in this post.

Once again, a simple site design, but pure white is infinitely better than eye cancer. Also, things are easy enough to find. Really, this guy covers just about everything, his posts are easy to read and they mostly have a good screencap to text ratio.

128. Anime Vision

Thoughts: Maehara writes generic digital anime reviews, Blu-Rays, and manga. Maehara’s articles are short and consistent, which I find to be good since I don’t like spending too much time reading articles (unless they really intrigue me). Unfortunately, maehare’s articles are not attention-grabbing or memorable. They’re not something I won’t remember for a long time. Also, maehara doesn’t download. He watches anime legally, and I think it’s cool that he writes his reviews without having to download any episode. However, that will put some people- ok, me, off because I live in a third world country where it will take hours for me to stream, not to mention face region block, which most stream websites do. Since most of his editorials are involved with stuff like that, I didn’t read them since I don’t get them. However, mehara’s AnimeVision is perfect for those who want to delve more into the legal part of the anime world.

AnimeVision’s has a normal appearance, not simple but also not too outstanding. The left sidebar next to the articles consist of Twitter feed, Latest Comment, and links to the latest articles. A typical sidebar that most aniblog have. The banner has more articles. More like slideshow of the articles, and above it are tabs where the readers can find the other articles.