Greetings everyone,

This is the second post of hopefully many more to come, so please continue to read and support Yumestate! The end of March signified the conclusion of winter 2013 anime, and April kicked off with a whole new set of series for the spring season. This month we’ll take a look at some of these shows that finished, as well as discuss some classics that made it in my books in terms of quality.

I’ve compiled the list for anime that I finished in the month of April as well as some that overlapped in the end of March. In no particular order:

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Cover Art by Nuri-kun

Personally speaking, I have always considered the light novel as a genre of its own. It is not merely the amalgam of fantasy and sci-fi, coupled with romance at times, that stock the Young Adult shelves of today. Granted, I read them not in their intended form, which is that of Japanese text, but it is with the essence of the novel that makes for me the biggest difference. I attribute it to the specific literary nature of the Japanese – a style that is their own; completely common-place to them yet, to the eyes of an outside reader, a relatively new and unfamiliar sight.

An unfamiliar sight indeed, being shared by what I would assume as, a relatively small niche of fans of Japanese media in general. It may even be pigeon-holed as being only for fans of Japanese media in general. Anime and manga fans are a more casual bunch in that regard I should say. To watch a story unfold in anime, as supposed to reading one in a novel is in theory something that most would consider more fun to actually do after all.

Is it really that hard to transcribe that experience, that of anime and manga, into a book?

Author Miko Limjoco wishes to do just that.
With his own spin on writing light novels, he welcomes readers into the land in darkness; Kuro.

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I mentioned in an earlier post that I would be focusing less on reviews and more on the general state of anime and rants. The anime blogging community has tons of reviews written every day, so there is ample supply of that if it’s your thing.

I want to talk about some of the series that I’m following this season. Of the seven I’m watching, five of them are Slice-of-Life or contain elements of Slice-of-Life:

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Greetings Everyone.

I haven’t been writing a lot lately due to the fact that I have been working on Yumestate’s third layout, titled “Midori”, or Green in Japanese. Instead of blogging on anime this time around, I wanted to share a little about the thought process that went into building Yumestate:Midori. Feel free to scroll through the screenshots if developer blogs don’t really interest you or is not your type of thing.

After coming back from a hiatus, I wanted to give Yumestate a fresh start for the year, and that meant choosing a colour theme that matches the current season of anime: winter/spring. In most places Spring has officially arrived (even if there’s still lots of snow), so naturally Green would be the choice of colour to base the palette and overall design. Here’s where it gets interesting:

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Most of my free time is spent at the computer checking emails, visiting websites, playing games, coding, designing, whatever. While doing all these activities, 90% of the time I have music playing in the background. For the past year or so my playlist has consisted of songs and tunes related to anime, with the odd English pop sing inserted here and there. If you look at my playlist now, maybe like 10% of it are songs NOT related to anime.

 Nekomonogatari’s OP, Perfect Slumbers
Sung by Tsubasa Hanekawa’s voice actress, Horie Yui.

It was only in a span of 2 years that my playlist did a complete overhaul. If you asked me back then what music I listened to, I would have told you artists such as Justin Timberlake, Timbaland, Usher, Black Eyed Peas, and so on. I still like listening to American Pop artists, just not as much as I did before.

So why the change? Why listen to anime music now?

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Greetings readers,

Awhile ago, there was a point where things just weren’t going my way in regards to free time and how much I could devote to the website. Finally with the state of my life circumstances slowing down, I find myself watching anime to pass time. While I won’t be posting every day, or even every week for that matter, I want to at least get back into writing. I’ve taken a look from a broader perspective on anime blogging and feel that there’s already many that do the “anime review” spectrum. Instead, though I will still be blogging and reviewing, I plan to take things easy.

What this means is that I will try my best to follow a regular schedule of watching anime, and then writing my thoughts on the anime in general. Rather than do the full-blown anime review with a score/rating at the end, I plan to just talk about what the anime means to me at my current stage in life. With a more personal overview and opinion, I feel that this may attract viewers to see what I see in an anime, even if it’s something they may not enjoy watching. I welcome you all with open arms into my state of mind, and thoroughly hope you enjoy reading from the perspective of myself.

Here’s a list of anime I’ve been watching or have watched recently:

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I know I stated that Yumestate will be taking a break, and yes, unfortunately it still is. However, I couldn’t help but notice a fanart drawn beautifully by FF Sade was posted on the League of Legends (LoL) Reddit page.

As for the wallpaper, I’ve edited the original to fit a 1920×1080 resolution. There is a lighter version, and a darker version. Unfortunately, I did have to scale the image down as the height was too much for the 1080. Some of it was still cut off however.

Original PNG:

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Greetings everyone,

It is with regret that I must announce Yumestate will be going into a hiatus for a while. No specific time frame has been set, so until further notice, it will be frozen indefinitely.

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