I should probably make a good impression of myself and this blog with this post, and probably within this first sentence.  However, I am not going to do any of the following because that would completely go against what Sekijitsu wants, what I want, and what our blog is all about.  In that sense, I’m doing what Sekijitsu wants.    Wait, what?  If you want to read something funny, just go all the way down to the section.  Otherwise, prepare to read a… rant?  A semi-decent post?  Click to read Part 1

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Sekijitsu and CSW

In terms of our blog, I’m probably the one who tries to interact with other bloggers the most.  Before Twitter, I knew Bass during my time at Bokutachi no Blog and a little before that just at the time when Sekijitsu was starting out.  Even at that time, Sekijitsu had an amazing site design and a flora of fantastic writers – while Bass and I would talk about our football careers (neither of us are American, remind you), we would often talk about what anime shows we watched and what we thought were good.  After that, Bass and I became busy with our IRL activities and just went on like that.  We still occasionally talk as Bass is one of those people who you always have fun with.

After a while, I needed someone to interview for my mini-series where I talk to different bloggers and when I wanted to talk to Sekijitsu, somehow Tofu volunteered.  I was a bit skeptical at first since I was not a big K-ON fan like he was, but we had a fun conversation and even after, he would come troll on my anime/visual novel stream about random things.  Tofu’s a great guy and it’s great to see him lead the charge for Sekijitsu this time around as I am doing for Chocolate Syrupy Waffles.  Although that mini-series has ended, here’s just a list of people we got to chat with:

Ghostlightning

Executive Otaku

Blog Suki

21st Century Digital Boy

Tofu

Altair and Vega (With Vocub and AJthefourth)

And who can’t forget awesome man himself Fosh

I’m looking to get a second season of this started this fall.  If interested, just hit me up otherwise I’m just going around.

Chocolate Syrupy Waffles – the Goal

A lot of our blog teams are in their second to third year of blogging while Jubbz and I try to keep tabs on everyone’s activities, making sure everything is going along fine, organizing podcasts, keeping the site updated, and most importantly, ensuring the fun casual environment for our crew and viewers who come to Chocolate Syrupy Waffles.  My goal for Chocolate Syrupy Waffles is not to become the go-to anime blog.  I love watching anime and I love what the aniblogsphere has done to everyone who wants to express their passion for this phenomenon, but I want to head in a slightly different tangent.

You see, a lot of blogs aim to please through the use of personal satisfaction and a growth of viewers.  Whether you are RandomC racking up tens of thousands of viewers daily or an up-start anime blog within a group of friends, you will always enjoy watching anime and blogging about it.  Many great bloggers have come and gone (Omni, 2DT, etc.), but many more take their place.  Every week I end up following a new anime blog because of their interests and desire to do so much for only ten to fifty people to read what they’ve written.  I’ve been blessed with CSW’s viewership and it only makes me strive to do better and better things for the site.

Yes, my goal is to make Chocolate Syrupy Waffles the ultimate anime  site where people can set to as their homepage and just chill.  Not with only anime reviews but with insights into Japanese culture and a new project just starting, a visual novel/gaming stream-based center.  I want to create the awareness of anime in the real world – anime has always received a negative “tsk tsk” from mainstream society, even in Japan, and I want to get rid of this.  Anime is an art more so than television is.  Anime is a passion more so than any other activity.  Anime requires a lot of talent and hard work, and I want to make CSW the site that people can freely browse.  No longer will you high-school students have to hide your tabs from your parents, no longer will you hardworking working bloggers have to limit your time reading anime blogs simply because of the criticism you might face from the rest of your coworkers, and no longer will anime be looked down upon.  It’s a long-term goal but with an undying passion and understanding how many people love anime, I am moving towards the direction of exposing anime to the general society not in only terms of episodic blogging but commercial acceptance.  We’re doing extremely well on this half – some of us have Twitch.tv contracts for anime/visual novels and we only look to expand more and more.

Another thing we’re working on is our otome game, which quote random testers “should be better than Katawa Shoujo”.  We have a lot of volunteers musicians, programmers, and artists so a big shoutout to them.  Hopefully, we can get an open Beta released by the end of this year.  Yes, we’re slower than Blizzard with Diablo 3, problem?

Chocolate Syrupy Waffles – the Now

We have a fantastic team of writers and streamers.  Everyone here makes everything fun and every post fun to read.  We do podcats, playthroughs, and random Skype conversations how Ghost’s friends have a crush on Chaps, how Martinman wants to beat me in DOTA, or how Jubbz gets trolled nearly every day by some crew members.  My family is fantastic, and I can’t even link amazing posts they have done – just use the Search box at the bottom of our home page to search.  Voila, here’s your amazing Crew page and here’s the list of streamers who I haven’t introduced yet (we’re still recruiting more!), but only because our Visual Novel/Anime gaming project is still in development.

So you can vote for us or you can check out Sekijitsu.  If it turns out you like them more than us, feel free to vote for them.  In honesty, I would love to get further into the Aniblog Tournament not because I want the popularity but because it would be a great way to help my vision of expanding anime awareness to the general public.  Even if we lose to Sekijitsu the first round, I will have no regrets.  Sekijitsu is a great group of people and with their partners METANORN, they could go long ways in the aniblogsphere.

My ultimate goal of expanding anime will not die though.  It won’t even slow down as any result of this match-up will motivate me to just do better and better.

“But SPIRAL, you’re too boring if you just let it slide like that!”  Alright, so here’s my guest, NotSPIRAL doing the next few exclamatory thoughts.

“So yeah, we’re going to crush Sekijitsu. “

And as a little fun, if we win against Sekijitsu, I’ll dance to Thrillville’s NEVA EVA and post it on Facebook/Twitter/CSW. 

[pro-player width='530' height='453' type='video']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfjOtR1ErpM[/pro-player]

If we lose, I’ll play Han Zimmer’s “Time” and give a speech about life.

[pro-player width='530' height='453' type='video']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srrAm9Eiqcw[/pro-player]

Either way, it’s sure to be entertaining so have fun, check out Sekijitsu, and have a great day!

P.S. I shamelessly voted for O-New!