Hey Guys,

So Angel in Shadows (Kagenyan) already did the honors of writing me on stage, meaning I should probably complete my personal intro to finish what she started. I'm a young NEET at the moment, 21 and fresh out of college. For the last three years I've studied international law, psychology and philosophy at school in the Netherlands. But who the fudge cares about my qualifications? For once I'm not writing a cover letter for a job application. I'm writing for the Special Interest Tumblr! That said, what's more important is that for about two and a half years I've been mod of the lovely Anime Forum on neoseeker and with my recent graduation I've been trying to make it shine. And through a lot of efforts from the community, it's become a lot more ebullient than it once was. We've got themed GDs, Season End reviews, Season Previews, NeoEVA anime livestreams, terrible NeoSinger anime music dubs, header/footer contests and crazy fun skype-fueled karaoke sessions.

Needless to say, I became moderator of this anime forum for a reason. I'm a huge anime fan. My current favorite (which I'm sure you'll be seeing more of) was Aria, a relaxed and charming show about three girls who hope to become professional gondoliers in there watery home of Neo Venezia on a futuristic terraformed Mars. My next four, in no particular order, are 5 centimeters per second, Air TV, Haibane Renmei and Aim for the Top (aka Gunbuster). These aren't necessarily my highest rated shows, but they all have some aspect in them that intrigued, inspired or invoked admiration in me, and I'm sure in future posts I'll take an opportunity to explain my high opinion of each one. But let it be know that I have a reputation for being a huge symbolism fag, a slice-of-live lover, and a mouth drooling fan of Gainax, Yoshitoshi ABe, Key and Makoto Shinkai. Kozue Amano, you don't get to be on that list because all I've seen/read from you is Aria and Amanchu. Come back when Amanchu gets an anime. But since Kawaii Eri died I'm skeptical of it being even nearly as good. ;-;

Getting back from that tangent, what exactly am I going to be writing about here? As you might have guessed, the Anime forum. Whether it be about our next NeoEVA livestream, a big new anime we watched or some forum event, I'll try my best to document it here. Right now my hope is to review Makoto Shinkai's latest film, Hoshi o Ou Kodomo. Readers should expect that soon, once I work up the guts to rewatch it like it deserves. I need that rewatch to get screen caps, but more importantly to give it another chance to justify why I love Shinkai so much (don't get me wrong, it wasn't bad at all, just not what I expected). Anyway, I'll get to that soon, but right now I think I'd better explain what NeoEVA is. NeoEVA is a project we started four or five months ago in which we hoped to share our viewing experience of the best and worst of anime. So we created livestream channels and if we have anime that we want others in the community to watch, we set up a streaming date, post it, and watch it together all with a nifty chat box to make commentary and goof off. The experience has been a lot of fun- from wild drinking games to Da Capo and Stardriver, to serious viewing sessions of Satoshi Kon films and Gunbuster, we've had a diverse set of streams incurring very different emotions. If any of you are interested, we've got a subscription system set up in the thread I linked to so you can be notified whenever one of these streams are going down! It's a great way to watch anime that you otherwise might never watch, and you get to do it with others who share your interest. We also invite you to create your own channel and set up a livestream date with us.

The other big forum project is NeoSinger, in which we record ourselves dubbing anime music. Need I say more? The trainwrecks that ensue are far more for comedy than quality, but shut up, I have the voice of an angel. Just listen to the ones Kagenyan posted. They're beautiful and you know it.