The Status of this Blog and the Anime Archivist, plus the Survival of the English Language Anime Industry

You may have noticed not much has been going on here before Christmas. To be blunt, nothing good has happened since that time. To be honest I had been suffering undiagnosed depression possibly from the end of 2018. It sort of came to a head in early 2020 when I was forced to have some time off. I pretty much put a lot of the blame on work as it has been going downhill for many years with no improvement whatsoever. Trying to deal with my parent's situation, as they both suddenly required significant care three years ago, possibly did not help either.

2020 has been a bit of a shit year so far. First there was the bushfire smoke which got so bad between Christmas and New Years that I literally could not go outside. On several days Canberra had the worst air quality of any city in the world. Then on 20th January, there was an amazing hailstorm in the city which destroyed nearly 15,000 cars, including mine. I had to bus it to work, in a city that has dreadful public transport, for nearly two months.

In the same week I was evacuated twice from my home due to encroaching bushfires, which eventually reached less than two kilometres away from my house. The second time I could not go home as the surrounding roads were blocked off. This was quite incredible as I live in a relatively urban area and there really isn't any bushland for several kilometres away.

Then came the coronavirus pandemic. I was due to have a three week holiday in Japan arriving on 19th March and arriving back on 9th April, but by two weeks beforehand I could see something serious was going on; a lot of events were being cancelled and I could see other countries starting to struggle with it. I debated whether or not cancel, but decided it was for the best. The federal government issued a "do not travel" advice for tourists on the day I was meant to fly out. Pretty much all international flights have been cancelled, so even if I had of gone over, I wouldn't have been able to return. However as the travel insurance unbelievably did not cover pandemics, I lost just over AU$1,500 on accommodation.

Here we are a month on and pretty much everything is on lockdown. Except for chemists and supermarkets, everything is shut down. I have tried to keep myself occupied, but almost at the end of the third week of my holidays at home, it's becoming a bit tedious.

As I have previously stated before, I do want to reboot the Anime Archivist blog at some point. I really haven't felt up to doing it in the last six months or so due to what has happened. I have instead worked on a website project I had left dormant for about four years. I restarted that project back in late June and after working on it in bits and pieces over that time I have nearly completed all the sections I have always wanted to complete (this was a website I originally started and published in 2007). I have second much larger website project which has laid dormant for about two and a half years that I want to completely revamp and update.

In short this means no Anime Archivist for quite a long while. Recently I have been having a lot of second thoughts about restarting the blog, mainly because there are dozens of people doing similar things in terms of older and obscure anime. There is also a lot of really detailed blogs dedicated to the history fandom, but most of this is on the Japanese side.

Having mulled over things a lot, there are several things I was doing with the Anime Archivist that no one else seems to cover in any real detail; commercial anime music video compilations, English language anime magazines and the anime films of Japanese cult Happy Science (aka Kofuku-no-Kagaku). In addition I have noticed that physical releases of commercial English language anime (i.e. on VHS, laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray) barely get any coverage anymore. Of course the now defunct companies that released the stuff are barely mentioned, if at all. Documentaries are also pretty much ignored too. So maybe there is a niche I can slot into, even if few people are interested in that niche.

Going back to the whole coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent shutdown of non-essential services, I know this going to really effect the entertainment industry; cinemas are shut for god knows how long, same for film and TV production and retail stores are shuttered. While online shops and shipping services seems to still operating, I'm not sure how long it will do so.

In short, I really believe this will kill off some English language anime companies, especially those who rely on physical sales. If factories who press up discs are shut down, stores that sell the discs are shut, then how are these companies going to survive for six months without any real income? I fear it may also be the final nail in the coffin for physical media. Companies may have to start from scratch again, which would be just impossible.

Also as I am planning to go back to Japan in March and April 2021 (this should be all over by then you'd hope), I suspect smaller record and anime stores that I frequented in previous trips (and possibly some niche chain stores) will be long gone. Going forward will be quite difficult, possibly beyond our imagination. We'll see what happens. However as it stands, I possibly won't be updating this blog either for quite some time.