It might seem early to be thinking about the holidays, but in order to get this ever-growing project off the ground we have to get started! Once again, it is time to call for participants for the 8th Annual Anime Secret Santa Project!

The idea of this project is for everyone who participates to be reviewing a show they might not have normally watched or may have overlooked. Everyone will get someone else in the project to review a series of their choice and in return review something picked by one of their fellow bloggers.

The goal is threefold for everyone involved:

• Mixing up what you watch and review.
• Getting other people to watch things you feel deserve more attention.
• Interacting with others thus creating possibilities for cross-blog readership and other cross-blog experiments.

Here is how this little project works: If you want to participate send us your Name, Blog or Podcast Address, and MyAnimeList Link (or Anime Planet or some other equivalent listing) via e-mail (secretsanta.rt [at] gmail [dot] com) with subject: Secret Santa Participant. Due by Saturday, October 15th, 2016. Make sure that your MAL (or whatever!) is updated as much as possible before you submit it. Also, if you will not watch fan-subs mention that in the e-mail, too.

We will then make a circular list of everyone involved in the project that only we will know the order of. The order of the list will be made completely at random. Everyone will then receive the name, blog/podcast, and list of the person they are the Secret Santa for. You will then suggest three shows and two back-up picks for the person all of which must be 26 episodes or less (yes, you can suggest movies, too). The shows must be subtitled in some fashion. Remember that you are picking shows that you hope the other person will like and give an honest chance. Look over their list and whether they watch fan-subs then try to pick out something good but unexpected.

Once we get everyone’s picks we will then pass on the shows to the recipients. No one except us will know the names of the person who gave you your choices. You then pick the show you are going to watch. Everyone is responsible for getting their own material for the review. You will receive your show choices by November 9th, 2016.

You then have until late December to watch the show you were assigned and write a review. On the week of Christmas, everyone will post their reviews for the Secret Santa Project. We would prefer you to post your review on Christmas Eve but you can alter it as to the schedule of your blog or podacst. On Christmas Day, we will reveal the name of who had who as a Secret Santa along with a small post about the project.

Again: If you want to participate send us your Name, Blog or Podcast Address, and MyAnimeList Link (or Anime Planet or some other equivalent listing) via e-mail (secretsanta.rt [at] gmail [dot] com) with subject: Secret Santa Participant. Due by Saturday, October 15th, 2016.

Just in case someone does not know what traditional Secret Santa is.

Why we don’t do manga secret santa.

 This year we tried something a little different. We have been doing Anime Secret Santa for long enough that we have the basics down to a science. The real trick at this point is minimizing all the little problems that pop up every year. If the Anime Secret Santa were a marathon, we are in shape enough to finish without breaking a sweat. At this point were trying to get our time down. In that regard, we made two major changes that I think helped a lot.

The first was we broke the list into two groups. Usually we put all the participants names into a hat, and then would pull out names one by one to create the Secret Santa List only throwing names back into the hat if we pulled two people on the same blog one after the other. The main problem with the approach is sometimes a fan would maybe only watched a handful of titles would get someone who has been watching shows non stop for over a decade. This year we placed all the normal fans in one group and all the insane monsters in another. I think this greatly reduced the number of people who were completely lost on what to recommend other people. No more forcing bantamweights to take on heavyweights.

The second change was take have everyone give us two back up titles. It is guaranteed that several people will get recommendations have already seen either because their Secret Santa looked up a title they were suggesting by the wrong name or because the participant just forgot to put a title they had already seen on their list. This simple backup really smoothed over the otherwise hectic scramble to get people their titles in a timely fashion.

Hopefully these changes made everything run a little smother for both sides. We are both curious to see if anyone noticed the changes and how much it helped the participants this year.

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