Introducing NSE

I'm not the best at introductions or talking about myself, but I'll give it a shot.

I've been a reader of weekly manga for more than five years now, and it has become an important part of my life. A long time ago I was embarrassed about this and kept it a secret amongst my friends,  but since entering college I've met fellow fans who I can't just talk with endlessly about series we love. I think I might be slightly the odd man out in that I much prefer to read manga over watching anime. When I do watch anime they tend to be original series rather than adaptations of manga; though that's not without exception. I can't really pinpoint my favorite series, although One Piece and Hunter x Hunter are both definitely up there. I mostly read Shounen series, though I tend to enjoy Seinen as well. People that know me in real life or have read fiction of mine have often seen me as a pessimistic or cynical person, but, the truth is, I tend to prefer series that edge towards the idealistic side of the sliding scale (yeah I'm a troper too). In general I like happy endings, but I want to see people really struggle to earn it.

I love writing too, and am an avid play-by-post roleplayer. More than anything I love storytelling and worldbuilding, with my goal being to eventually become a novelist although I'm still far from confident in my writing quality. For a long time now, I've been planning out various book series that I intend to write and try to get published. I've had numerous setting ideas over the years that I've gradually expanded on. It's worth noting that I've extensively planned out several of my own manga series as well, that I once intended to publish as web comics, although my absolute lack of drawing skill makes it unlikely that that this will ever happen. Lately I've been thinking about turning them into text, and have considered releasing one of them on this blog as an experiment.

Sometime within the last year I discovered the manga/anime reviewing community on Youtube, and found the concept of reviewing pretty interesting. My favorite reviewer is LuffytheDragonSlayer, although I'm not particularly a fan of live reactions unless the chapter/episode itself has some sort of bombshell.One gripe I have is the tenancy for some reviewers to simply restate the events of a chapter in their review without actually analyzing them. Another thing I dislike is when the reviewer simply gushes about a chapter's quality (or lackthereof) without actually giving any thought-provoking observations. I don't say that as if I know I can do better, this blog will mostly involve me writing down my thoughts, but that's what I prefer when watching/reading other reviews. I never thought about making a youtube profile to review these series myself , however, because I'm not very good at talking.

Recently I started keeping a journal about a certain subject, and was surprised at how interesting it was. Whenever writing fiction or roleplaying posts, I am constantly focusing to make sure that I'm properly conveying the story I want to tell, and it tends to take me a long time, but in this case I was just jotting down my thoughts about a subject that interests me. I found it fun, and started to think about other subjects I could expand into another journal. Manga reviewing came to mind, and I decided to start jotting down my thoughts on new chapters as they are released. From there, I decided to turn it into a blog.

I have quite a few ideas for what I want to do with this blog, so there will probably be quite a bit of experimenting. As I said, the main goal is to publish reviews of weekly manga, but I'm also considering doing whole volume reviews, series reviews, arc reviews, and also updates about various manga-related subjects that might come to mind.

The weekly series I intend to do as of this now are - One Piece, My Hero Academia, Fairy Tail, and UQ Holder. Possibly Toriko and Tower of God (although I realize its not a manga) as well. Volume Reviews I'm thinking of doing are Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, My Hero Academia, and UQ Holder (all starting with the first volume). I may do Attack on Titan and One Piece volume reviews, starting at the new volumes as well. A friend of mine recently asked me to review a certain anime series, Tatami Galaxy, so I'll try to do that as well.

One subject I've been thinking about is a series on in-universe power systems. Discussing different systems such as Hunter x Hunter's Nen or One Piece's Devil Fruits, for instance. as well as talking about WIP systems from my own series.

As I wrote above, I'm also considering turning a certain manga/webcomic series I had planned out into text and publishing it here as well. Mostly I'm just thinking of it as practice for other novels I would like to work on, but it is a story I'm excited about too. I may discuss it more later.

Anyways, that's about it. I hope this all sounded interesting. Please look forward to my reviews!