I will finally be able to live life like the Galactic Hero, Siegfried Kircheis, and have a light snack of black beer in a large glass, sausage, potatoes, a sauerkraut. The dream is real.

I’m going on my first major vacation (that does not involve an anime convention) in years. I will be spending a week and a half in Hungary, Austria, and Germany. It’s my first trip to Europe so I’m a decent combination of nervous and excited. If anyone has any tips of food I should eat, places I should visit, or basic European travel advice I am eager to hear them.

I will be gone from the 11th to the 20th of July. That means the Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup is going to have a bit of weird schedule while I’m gone. The post on the 11th will go up as normal (although it will probably be missing any Saturday news), there will be no post on the 18th, I will be posting a catch up post on the 21st, and then there will be no post on the 25th because I will be at Otakon. After that everything should be back on a normal schedule. I know the readership of the News Roundup is hardly colossal but the fact that I have been posting in on a regular schedule for two and a half years means a lot to me.

Other than that we have squirreled always enough content that the rest of the blog should generally appear unchanged (other than my half of the APB posts being a little less tied to current events than usual.)

Other than that Kate is usually the more responsible member of the blog so I have no worries.

I’m mostly just looking forward to eating good food, seeing historic sites, indulging my hidden history major, and expanding my general perspective. I will talk to you all again when I return!

-Alain

Since traditionally 8th anniversaries are centered around bronze and pottery, we are expecting gifts of bronze Gunpla and Kuroko’s Basketball-themed plates and cups. If you’re in the modern anniversary camp, then Alain will be accepting Saber figures with real lace as part of her dress.

(This year we actually remembered the anniversary of the blog and did not have to scramble to get this done. OK. We might have had to scramble a little because this post comes out between AnimeNEXT and Otakon and in the middle of a new anime season BUT not because we forgot it this year.)

In 2015, we came one step closer to being “real” bloggers as Lauren Rae Orsini interviewed us for her book: Build Your Anime Blog. It is always a little weird to see oneself listed as a successful anime blogger. Our section of the book expressed our general philosophy for the blog and what we love about blogging and podcasting.

Our Monday reviews and editorials remain the bedrock of Reverse Thieves with the APB and Type-Moon Weekly News Roundup going strong. And our consistent posting schedule has led us to more than 1,700 published articles. We will almost surely have over 2,000 posts between the two of us by the Reverse Thieves 10th anniversary which certainly sounds incredible to us.

On the new front, we did our first season-specific anime awards post for winter 2015 and we’re continuing that. Anything that gives us a chance to highlight more great series is worthwhile in our book. We have a few other things coming down the pike, but we can’t give details yet.

Podcasting has become a bigger portion of our content in recent years with the success of our SWAT Reviews for the new seasons and our Case Closed Reviews to finish out each season. The big change for Reverse Thieves in the last year lays with the format of The Speakeasy Podcast as it happens. We both missed the Ongoing Investigations post as a chance to talk about things we have been reading, watching, and doing without having to make a whole topic out of them thus it was added to the podcast. It also frees the podcast from being about a specific topic unless we have a big idea on our minds.

Speaking of more podcasting, we do have a new feature coming . . .

In honor of the U.S. BD release of Cowboy Bebop, we are pleased to announce our Cowboy Bebop Rewatch Podcast. We’ve been watching episodes one at a time and recording an in-depth podcast about every session. Currently, we have half a dozen episodes in the can but we’re waiting to have a larger queue before we start releasing them weekly. We hope to release our first episode soon after Otakon.

If the reaction to this rewatch podcast is well received (and we don’t utterly hate the process of doing it), we may continue the series with other nostalgic titles.

Thanks for stopping by Reverse Thieves whether this is your first time or your hundredth over the years. We really appreciate all of the people we’ve met through this ongoing endeavor.

-Alain
~ kate