Seasonal Orders: Winter 2018

Why is it so frigid outside???


Happy New Year one and all! I hope that your 2017 ended on a high note with festive greetings, fond family moments, sleep, and looking back on the past year with nothing but fondness. Personally, I really loved 2017! It had tons of great things to talk about, some horrible things, and I personally just had a great time doing some traveling and getting a consistent schedule out for this site. Speaking, of, let's talk about what you can expect for the new year, starting with...

NEW SITE?

I've been thinking about this for a while, but I've come to the decision that by the end of 2018 I will be leaving Blogger. I know that I have been here since the beginning way back in 2013, but I think that by my 5 year anniversary I'll move on to a different site and greener pastures.

That isn't to say that I'm going to stop reviewing. There's no signs that I'm going to stop anytime soon and I'm going to keep chugging away at new content for you. However, there's a bit of a snag that ties directly into this goal; Patreon. I established Patreon some time ago in a effort to get some extra pocket change out of all of this. I do have some money in coming from it, but at only $5 a month, it isn't exactly enough to support buying a new domain, designing the site, and managing it. I've been trying to figure out how to best allow people to support the site through Patreon, and I've come to a couple of decisions.

1) I'm going to remove all perks and benefits from Patreon. I had plenty of tiers with different rewards under them, but instead I'm going to have one tier. If you donate a dollar to my Patreon, you'll get exclusive access to everything. You can vote for the next review I'll do, which is going to be a quarterly thing, if not twice a quarter, you'll get reviews a day early on Sundays while everyone else will get a review on Monday, and if I have any other side projects that I create like podcasts, videos, or anything else that I decide to do.

2) These changes are going to go into effect once I return from my vacation. I'm going to take January off again and unwind, but when I return in February I'll start this new format of delivery.

3) Even though the Critical Order is completely free and I'm going to do it no matter what, especially with the recent Patreon scare where people were being charged extra for their payments, I can understand why someone would be hesitant to donate a dollar and be charged a bit more than that. It makes total sense to me and I certainly don't hold that against you. But I want to deliver the best experience possible to my readers and if that requires a bit of extra money, I want to be able to give that to you all.

Bottom line, please consider donating to the Patreon to help fund the new site. I can guarantee that it'll only make your enjoyment of my stuff better, easier to follow, and it can hopefully reach out to more people and create more discussions. The link to my Patreon is here. Even if you can't donate any money, please consider sharing this with a friend or someone who may be interested. The new site isn't going to pop up overnight and you'll have plenty of time for preparing for the new change.

BEST OF 2017 LISTS

As is the case every year, it's time to look back at the best and worst that 2017 had to offer! I'll be following the same format as previous years where each entry is three days apart. I'm pushing the first post back a little bit just so I can have the time to catch up on a few extra games and movies before I start posting, so here is when you can expect my Year in Review lists!

1/5 - Top 5 Best Anime of 2017
1/8 - Top 10 Worst Movies of 2017
1/11 - Top 5 Best Games of 2017
1/14 - Top 10 Best Movies of 2017

After I get all of those out, it'll be break time again until the end of January, beginning of February. Well, with on little exception...

ONE PIECE

As you can see, I failed at getting the end of the East Blue arc by the end of 2017. Things just got a bit too busy around here for their own good and I had to put the series on the back burner... again. However, I can safely say that I am over halfway done with the post and it will be done shortly... if it wasn't for the Year in Review lists.

So during my vacation I'm going to finish getting the East Blue arc completed. It'll be done by the end of the month and we can keep on going with the original plan of starting the Baroque Works arc by the end of March. Expect it to get done when it's done, but it hopefully won't be all that long.

MOVIES

As I've said plenty of times before, I'm taking my yearly vacation for January. Nothing much of interest comes out anyway, so it's a fair compromise while I recharge myself. Once I come back though, there's a surprising amount of movies that are coming out that I actually want to talk about. Some look great, some look like garbage, and some I'm genuinely curious about. With only so much time to talk about them, here's the tentative schedule for now.

2/4 - God Particle
2/11 - Fifty Shades Freed
2/18 - Black Panther
2/25 - One Piece: Unlimited Retrospective - Baroque Works Pt. 1
3/4 - The Banjo Kazooie Retrospective
3/11 - A Wrinkle in Time
3/18 - Tomb Raider
3/25 - VIEWER VOTE (Pacific Rim: Uprising, Isle of Dogs, Mary and the Witch's Flower)

For those of you wondering, whatever doesn't win the vote for the Viewer Vote can still be reviewed by me, but much further down the line for a Triple Feature. So the Viewer Vote is pretty much for what you would rather hear me talk about first. Voting will go live a month before the review and you will have until three days before, March 22nd, to vote on it. And as always, there is going to be a little post talking about the Oscars after they air in March.

VIDEO GAMES

After an outstanding year in gaming, it only makes sense that 2018 looks like it's going to be a slow one. There aren't that many stellar games announced and the ones that are aren't slated to release until later in the year. So really, there's not much for me to talk about this winter for games. I mean, maybe we'll get Kirby Star Allies before April, but that's a stretch if anything. I'm personally just waiting for more Bayonetta 3, Kingdom Hearts III, Huniepop 2, and whatever the hell Team Salvatto is cooking up. So... yeah, stay tuned for later on I guess.

ANIME

Winter is starting up, a bunch of shows look pretty interesting, and I don't really know how to segue into talking about these shows. Maybe they'll be better than last winter but I can't tell. Here's what I plan on watching at least!

The Ancient Magus' Bride
Darling in the FRANXX
citrus
Beatless
Violent Evergarden
Overlord II



And that's all she wrote for this update! I'll see you all in a few days for the annual lists, then I'll see you all again in February with God Particle (if it actually releases).