Ten years ago I was in 2nd grade, watching Digimon on TV and trying to beat Mario Party 2. Considering that the decade started in what feels like a different universe to me, I can’t reflect on it without monotonously listing the standard life experiences that occur over such a significant ten years.
Thankfully, New Year’s Day is more about looking ahead than looking back. Without further ado, I bring to you my personal list of goals for the year, filled with as much starry-eyed dreaming and inevitable cynicism as you might expect from a self-proclaimed Passionate Anime Fan™ who spent New Year’s Eve on 4chan.
In the year 2010, I will attempt (or attempt to attempt) to…
- Achieve Privileged/Contributor status on Danbooru. (That was seriously the first thing to come to mind).
- Beat another Touhou game on Lunatic. I can’t run away forever.
- Stop throwing in the words “actually” and “really” where they don’t belong.
- Stop throwing in words where they don’t belong, period.
- Find a synonym for awesome.
- Sleep less, and set an alarm if I need to.
- Stop waking up on time to turn off my alarm and go back to sleep until 11:00.
- Play ef as soon as it gets translated and write an extremely long post filled with burning passion.
- Play Rewrite and excrete varying amounts of bricks at the inevitable Ryukishi07 killer lolis.
- Play Love Plus (I guess this one is out of my hands).
- Start learning Japanese so that these things would stop being out of my hands.
- Memorize more stuff from the ErogameScape database, including staff of games that aren’t translated or adapted into anime.
- Read more manga. My Days Completed is <10!
- Learn more old memes.
- Not become one of those people who tries to swear off internet slang. They’re terrible.
- Not become one of those people who tries to swear off eroge. They’re even worse.
- Watch some good Western movies that everyone watched decades ago, like Citizen Kane.
- Read books that are not in any way related to anime or school.
- Not get caught up with school to the point that I can’t read anything else.
- Figure out how to use a washing machine. (I’m probably a little late with this one…)
- Figure out how to drive with one hand. (Not recommended despite seeming easy)
- Figure out if Beato exists. Uu-!
- Watch some Gundam and Macross.
- Watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes. All of it.
- Watch Soul Link so that I’ll get the joke when people make fun of it.
- Find an anime worse than True Love Story, which, for some reason, is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
- Take part in a fansubbing project in some way, shape, or form.
- Finish most of the translated VNs so that my moe withdrawal will force me to study Japanese.
- Stop making self-depreciating comments.
- Stop doing things that force me to make self-depreciating comments.
- Finish Sepia Tears, or at least come close to it.
- Find something better to do on Christmas Eve than working on a visual novel scene set on Christmas Eve.
- Pull a Keitaro Urashima and become awesome after leaving his harem to dig up fossils.
- Pull a Tomoya Okazaki and become the greatest harem lead of all time. OF ALL TIME!
- Find a harem? Nah… but find a Good End.
- Keep using visual novel and gaming analogies to describe real life scenarios.
- Clear 10th Dan in Beatmania IIDX. I’m stuck at 8th!
- Play some Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 and not get utterly destroyed.
- Learn to play BlazBlue and compete with the anime club, Genshiken style.
- Join the anime club, Genshiken style.
- Pull a Kohsaka and- no. Pull a Madarame and increase my power level!
- Increase my power level no matter what happens.
- Learn some more MTG and play semi-regularly.
- Learn Riichi Mahjong and play with anyone who is willing (preferably using my weeaboo Shuffle tiles).
- Play Poker with my weeaboo Yoakena cards.
- Play in a band with my weeaboo Yui castanets. (No, not really).
- Keep getting involved in the blogosphere, maybe do a podcast or start a revolutionary team metablog.
- Make an online friend from Saskatchewan, New Zealand, or Poland.
- Find some cool people to plan a trip to Otakon.
…And above all, I’ll pull a Honey and Clover and search for that elusive thing, even if I never find it.
- – -
In a year’s time, I’ll be a different person, having finished my first semester at university and experienced life away from home for the first time. In a decade’s time, I’ll be a completely different person, working towards my career goals and doing whatever it is that old people do. But when it comes down to it, it’s the small, tongue-in-cheek goals like these that say a lot about yourself as a person, even if all they say is that I spend more time around Japanese cartoons and 2D girls than can possibly be healthy.
At any rate, I might joke about spending the holidays on the internet and hitting F5 on /jp/, but I feel far more satisfied than you’d think. Thanks for a great year, anime blogosphere, and I look forward to joining you as we experience what 2010 has to offer!
~ ETERNAL
つづく
