About

Name: Alexander “moyism” Moy
DOB: Year of the Dog
Occupation: Technical support for a web hosting company
Other: Read the resume or other blog

The five Ws of Anime:
I think like most individuals borned in the early 80s, my first taste of anime was through TV. Of course at the time I did not know it was anime but some favorites I still remember are Voltron, Thundercats, Transformers, and Silverhawks. The first time I watched anime and realized it was anime, or at least something completely different from American cartoons, was probably at my cousin’s house when I was in late elementary school. Shulato, Macross: Do you Remember Love?, Guyver OVAs, and the original Appleseed movie were series I saw part of but had no clue what they exactly were.

Jump a few years later to late middle school when one of my best friends (and also my arch-nemesis) showed me the awesomeness of various Ranma 1/2 OVAs and later on, Gundam 0083: Startdust Memory. It was then I was without an doubt hooked on the genre called anime. High school went without much fanfare other than slowly learning and buying more anime; the same cousin that initially showed me anime also opening the only comic store in town didn’t hurt either.

Definitely around college was when I went head first into the world of anime thanks to fast-arse internet connection and a lot of free time (only got cable internet at home mid freshman year of college after bugging the parents enough). Getting a stable job during the school year also helped fund my anime needs and create the monster I am today. “The rest is history” as the saying would go.

How about blogging?
I honestly do not remember how I stumbled upon anime blogs in the first place. I only remember Matthew’s Anime Blog being like one of the first blogs I found and constantly checked. I think this was around my late junior year of college (2003?). By then, I more or less had my act together and had more than enough time to bum around without failing (much).

I think I decided to blog roughly around the time Mai-HiME started. I know I was a diehard fan of the series from the beginning and waiting on the dozen or so anime blogs to show screencaps and reviews of the episodes were killing me. More so when I knew bittorrent links for the newest episodes were already out! This would also start my watching of anime raw as the wait for reviews finally became too much. With nothing better to do at the time, I took to the task of fully blogging Mai-HiME episode 10; which ironically started my short-lived reign as “King of Massive Screencaps”.

From there, things just slowly took off. Just like enjoying anything new, I went at blogging with everything I had. If you look at my beginning entries, you’ll see how constantly I used to blog. Back then it was still fun and exciting. People actually commenting only spurred my motivation further. By the time I purchased my own domain, “life line by line” was semi-popular and I was the go-to man for massive screencaps.

Moving to my own domain definitely had its up. No more uploading to imageshack.us one by one. Moved off of MoveType to Wordpress. No more taking up the bandwidth and space from the old server I was on, which was iistix.com for those that remember. So now between my personal blog 11~15% suki and anime one life line by line, my blogging time suddenly shot up more than I thought. I know I never had to update constantly as blogging was and still is a passtime of mine, but I felt I shouldn’t let my 2.5 fans down.

Unfortunately like most things in life, doing something constantly will start to get tiring. More so when it feels like work instead of fun. Hitting my senior year of college I became insanely lazy in general and anime blogging took the hit as well. Especially during my last semester at college where I had to make sure I graduated on time, one can see on “life line by line” how random my posts became. It only got worse once I graduated and was jobless (thanks in part to my laziness). I tried to blog again but everytime I started, it felt like an huge effort to try to pull a half-way decent post out of my arse. I even tried changing my “blogging style” which had limited success. At the end of the day however, I still did not want to actively blog.

Finally finding a stable job in late December of 2005, I decided to close down “life line by line”. I knew the new job would eat up the majority of my time plus at that point, I wasn’t even blogging much if at all. I did jokingly give the small hope that I may come back but at the time (three months ago as of this writing), I never thought I would go through the hassle again.

Three months later and surprise surprise, I’m currently back. Even though my grammar and sentence structure are horrible. My thought processes are random and mostly perverted. And whatever is left of my sane self is screaming at me I shouldn’t be blogging again, I re-opened the doors to anime blog starting fresh again with “zero thoughts”. With another new format of just blogging once a week on any anime related topic, I figure even as lazy as I am, even I could do four post per month. The new format should also allow me to experiment with new post ideas I may never have thought of if I stuck to “standard” blogging.

I guess the question for now is how long will I last until I’ll want to “quit” again.

On anime spending:
Apparently I’m pretty infamous around the english speaking anime blogging community for being a big spender as proven by Jason of “Anime on My Mind”’s post over here. I know there are tons of heavier spenders than myself in the anime community, but I guess I stood out more for two reasons. For one, I was still buying anime when I was jobless for a good six months and raking up a decent sized debt. And secondly, I complained about said debt to anyone and everyone.

If you want my view on how an individual should spend when it comes to anime, or a hobby in general it’s pretty simple. Do not spend what you cannot easily pay back. Credit cards make purchasing items you want but don’t need very easy. One must have some self control or s/he will end up like me before finding a job: anime wealthy but financially poor.

The easiest method is to set up an alloted limit of what one can spend on their hobby. Once you have a defined amount of money you can spend, you will find it much easier to restrain yourself in not buying that $120 Natsuki in swimwear PVC when you have already bought two other PVCs instead.

So you must understand Japanese well, right?
In my dreams. I don’t even know my own native language Chinese! So I can’t read or write a lick of Japanese. My verbal understanding of the language comes from a decade of watching raw and subbed anime. I can watch and understand usually 70+% of a given series mattering how difficult the Japanese may be. Any harem comedy series probably 90% while something like Noein 50% at best. Odds are my level is the same as of a three year Japanese born baby, however sad that is.

Yes that is how deeply devoted I am to the hobby. I willingly buy merchandise I do not completely understand, if anything just for the beautiful images that accompany said product. The Japanese economy must love foreigners like myself, eh?

Er… the top image of yourself (removed now)…
No I’m not a ninja on the side. Boredom when I was jobless was truly a terrible thing. As for the money? I think like $200 in 20 bills? If I remember correctly, I was going down to NYC the following day and had to pick up some things for “friends”. Elizabeth Center, where one can find the majority of anime goods in NYC, only takes cash so…

Anything else?
Don’t become like me?

Seriously, thanks for reading this far if you have. I may sound uber cheesy but without readers like yourself, me starting up anime blogging again would be meaningless! Thanks for the support! Hopefully this time around I won’t disappoint everyone!