The numbers are in for 2010!

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Since we moved over to WordPress.com in March I have seen a distinct growth in our readership so Narutaki and I thought you might be interested to see how the site has grown as well. As always what is popular on the site still remains a mystery to me and might very well do so for all time. I hope to see more growth on the site and hope that you, our readers, continue to provide us feedback so we can best serve your needs while writing what we want to write with passion and energy.

I had no idea WP did this round-up thing, but I figured why not post it. We’ve seen great growth since moving over to the official WP site and I’m happy to see by their standards we are in a “wow” category, who would have thought! The stat about picture uploads can be ignored since we use our Photobucket for most things. I’m pretty happy to see Gosick as one of the top search terms as well as our own name. Anyhow, just a little post to let our readers see some stats!

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

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January’s Manga of the Month: Afterschool Charisma

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I will admit I have little understanding of what is actually popular on this site other than Narutaki talking about graphic design and Narutaki talking about sex. This explains the fact that when we retired the Manga of the Month last year we discovered it was apparently extremely popular. It just so happened no one ever mentioned it. Ever. So as Natalie Merchant once said we give em what they want. In 2011 Manga of the Month rises from the ashes like Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix. The Final Denouement is being retired as we try to put out more solo articles on Tuesday through Thursday. Since many of them would have been final denouements in their own right the Final Denouement has become somewhat redundant. Also like a phoenix the tears shed by Manga of the Month have immense healing powers. Hopefully these articles will get everyone to pick up some manga they might have easily overlooked considering how much there is to choose from.

Afterschool Charisma (放課後のカリスマ) by Kumiko Suekane

IKKI has always been VIZ’s attempt to try to broaden the manga market by letting people sample some more offbeat seinen series that would otherwise go over looked. With a few exceptions  what sells in the U.S. is shonen fighting and shojo romance. So while adults might read manga so far most adult manga has not caught on here. Afterschool Charisma is a quirky manga that has some appeal of the popular genres that sell books in the US while still distinctly being off the beaten track to hopefully broaden some reader’s horizons.

St. Kleio is a most unusual experiential school. All the student are the clones of famous historical figures who have been gathered together in hopes that with proper care they can surpass the accomplishments of their originals. Along side these luminary and sometimes infamous copies is Shiro Kamiya, the only student who is not a clone. When the clone of John F. Kennedy is assassinated Shiro learns that everything at the school is not exactly what  it seems. There are crazy cults, Byzantine conspiracies, and deadly experiments lurking in the shadows. Maybe even Shiro himself is part of some greater sinister machinations.

I usually see this manga compared to the old Clone High cartoon on MTV. They are both set at government controlled high schools that have characters who act silly in humorous contrast to their original  historical personas. But at the same time despite all the wacky hi-jinks in Afterschool Charisma we see from the first chapter there is a disturbing  undercurrent to the events at the school. This manga seems like a bizarre and goofy Hetalia at school but quickly turns into a taut thriller. It is definitely worth a look if you want something different that is able to mix humor and intrigue in equal measure.

Reverse Thieves 2011 Mission Statement: Be Even More Awesome

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As always the year just seems to fly by once the holidays hit. There have been big changes in 2010 for Reverse Thieves, but know that we always have more ideas up our sleeves. We’ve started a couple of new article series, but really expect them to take flight over 2011. No Case Too Small is an attempt to bring more detective related material to the blog. While technically we are just detective-themed, we do indeed love mystery series and want to bring more of that coverage than ever before. Our Otaku NYC pieces are just a fun bunch of articles aimed at anyone coming to the area or even those who live here. Hopefully we will alert people to well-known places but also a few surprises now and again, expect to see stores and food among other things talked about. Also, we are also jumping into the fray, we are trying an episodic review of the upcoming winter show Gosick. And finally, the revival of Manga of the Month begins in January! Since we are posting more solo articles, Final Denouement is taking an extended vacation. 2011 is going to be another big year for Reverse Thieves!

We are also making some big changes to the Speakeasy podcast as well. First and foremost is that for our 1 year anniversary I decided to upgrade to some real recording equipment. Up until now we had been using the most generic and basic Logitech USB desktop microphone with no other audio equipment. I upgraded our microphone to a Blue Yeti microphone and got a Belkin TuneStudio portable digital multitrack recorder mixer. I don’t know how much of a difference this equipment will improve our audio quality but I am making steps towards improvement. The mixer is portable so we might start doing live podcasts from conventions as well. If all goes well I might get a compressor down the line, too. We are also looking into bringing on guests to the show. Narutaki and I wanted to run the podcast for at least a year without guests to set a tone for the podcast. But if you have any guests you would like to see on the podcast or would like to be a guest yourself just leave a comment and we will see what we can do. Other than that we are always open to suggestions and feedback about the website and the podcast. We hope to entertain and inform our fellow anime and manga fans next year even more than ever.