While variety is the spice and wolf of life, and while we like always mixing things up here, it’s also good to know what kind of content you guys enjoy most.

In our contest last month I asked, among other things, what you wanted to see more of here at Epic Win. Between that and our recent poll, I think I’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what our core audience is looking for.

1. Funny Stuff

Totali: “Random funnies are the best.”

tj_han: “More funny posts!”

Crisu: “just funny Japanese newsy stuff will do.”

Hiyuu: “The funny stuff. Everyone can blog about anime and review episodes, but only a few can make funny parodies or crack hilarious jokes while at it. So far, I think there’s plenty of it, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was more”

True to form, the voice of the internet has spoken, and according the result of our latest poll “random funny stuff” is what it desires. Really, I shouldn’t be surprised.

Of course, we enjoy doing silly random posts a quite a bit, and try to do so as often as possible. On the other hand, it tends to be the kind of thing that happens only when inspiration strikes. Trying to force things only makes the posts become unfunny and boring instead. That said, however, we do have a few good entertaining posts in the works.

Right now with the new season just starting, a lot of our attention is going to the new series that are airing, but once things settle down a bit we’ll have some fun random stuff for you guys.

We do have a couple rainy day/lazy Sunday posts in queue which we hope will provide you with lulz. We’re saving them for a special occasion, however… namely, when we get around to actually finishing them.

2. Rants and Editorials

xenosagafreak: “Interesting rants! And more hilarity!”

Owen: “Uhh, more wordy analytical stuff. Less pictures. I have no idea, since your blog is really fine as it is right now.”

JRoxas: “I think it’s fine as-is, though a bit more editorial-y or OMG CONTROVERSIAL stuff might be nice.”

Zeke: “More critical blogs of the queer anime that is popular for no reason.”

IcyStorm: “Hmm, maybe some more editorial-ish posts and more epic posts such as the 48 Reasons Why Lucky Star Is Awesome.”

The second most popular choice in our poll was “Rants & thought provoking editorials”. This is also unsurprising. After “random funny”, the internet loves nothing more than watching a good mudslinging flamewar ranting contest.

Unfortunately for them, watching Aria has made me too mellow and happy to get angry at anybody, and Guff is too lazy to do more than just complain verbally. However, I am working on a follow-up post to my earlier flame-inducing complaints regarding Clannad, which I hope to post some time next week.

The problem is that quarreling and debating involve expending tremendous amounts of energy, energy that I don’t have. So rather than wearing ourselves out with vociferous rants, we’d just as soon have a nice cup of sake and say, “To each his own.”

And to us, epic win.

As for editorials, our recent commentary on what makes a good anime OP generated some seriously quality feedback, and we are working on a follow-up to that as well to flesh out the discussion further. I’ve also got several other interesting editorial posts in the works, but I’m pretty slow when it comes to putting together wordy entries like these, so who knows when they’ll see the light of day. OTL

DominicRaze: “I love the tag team style, but I would also like to see some multi-blog posting! Hook up with a couple of good writers in some other blogs and link to each others sites mid rant - tag it off and expand the blogging community why not?”

Now this is a really excellent point and something I’ve aimed for ever since the blog’s inception. I read quite a few other anime blogs, and I like to pick up interesting topics I see elsewhere and run with them. This kind of thing tends to come and go, and it depends on whether something I read catches my fancy.

The “What Makes A Good Anime OP?” post is one of those, although technically it was inspired by a comment Steven Den Beste made here on Epic Win.

Other posts that I’ve done in this vein in the past include the follow-up to tj_han’s “Anime Blogger Subspecies” and our tongue-in-cheek response to all the cries of “The sky is falling!” that were spawned by Justin Sevakis’ recent editorial on ANN about the state of the anime industry.

3. Episode Reviews

The third most popular choice in our poll was for us to do more episode reviews, which I was glad to see, as they make for the “bread and butter” of this site. Episode reviews give us something consistent to talk about every week and help fill in slow periods when we’re too busy lazy to write anything else.

As you’ve probably already noticed, I’ve recently started doing some solo episode reviews after watching the raws of new series. Up until now all of our episode reviews have been tag-team style posts, but since Guff doesn’t understand those hard Nippon words, that necessitated our waiting until fansubs were available before blogging about the episode.

Since Guff is conveniently away on vacation right now, and since I watch everything raw, I went ahead and started blogging about the new shows that interested me, so as to be a bit more timely with the posts. We will definitely continue doing some tag-team style episode reviews, of course, but those posts will unfortunately always be a bit slower coming out.

Oh, rub it in man. Yes, I’m horribly illiterate when it comes to those crazy Japanese moon runes and my spoken vocabulary is somewhere between “baka gaijin,” and babbling infant. Also, I’m actually back from vacation (snowboarding) and it is good to be back.

Oshi-

When did you sneak in here?

4. Series Reviews

DeathToZippermouth: “Perhaps your thoughts on older series”

Ser Jaime: “I’d go with the review of some random old series. But I do like the variety of articles, tomfoolery and whatnot.”

The Worlds Weshest Weeaboo: “More awesome blogging if such a thing can be achieved, what with you being so handsome and wonderful already. Reviews of whole series are fine as well.”

This is something I also have in the works, although I’m not nearly as diligent about doing straight “reviews” of a show as guys like bateszi or Martin. Our style is generally much more suited to random commentary than in depth analysis of the merits or shortcomings of a series, really.

Most likely, I’ll save review posts for slow times when there’s not much else to post about.

I had actually considered on doing a review of one or more of my favorite series; the problematic thing is condensing the myriad of comments and memories down to a cohesive article. I’d love it if this season we were able to do another review similar to our “48 Reasons Why Lucky Star is Awesome” post, though. That was really enjoyable.

5. Stories and Photos of Japan

Martin: “I love the anecdotes and Japan-related trivia that you work into the posts…moar photos would be nice too.”

AS: “Same as above, posts other than anime would be nice time to time.”

TheBigN: “More posts about real-life adventures, since I love that sort of thing.”

xXmikotoNakadaiXx: “More stories about Japan. i really loved your post detailing your noble journey in Miyajima Island and I’d like to see more. :P”

Nekonron: “Random funny stuff related to anime and tales from Japan, but not too much that it affects the other types of posts. Balance is good”

CCY: “Some non-anime posts, like you said, would be a nice change of pace. Japan does spark my curiosity, and since it’s something that not a lot of us can blog about, a nice balanced view on it would be interesting. I would like to see what else there is other than Akihabara and overpriced (but still win) merchandise”

Although this didn’t get as many votes in the poll, it was definitely the popular choice among those who commented.

As I mentioned previously, this is something Guff and I really want to start posting about regularly. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100GBs of photos from my time in Japan, and I always love sharing those photos and reminiscing. We do have a couple of interesting posts in the queue right now, but mainly I’m waiting until the winter anime season gets underway and we can settle into our groove.

Hopefully in the near future, however, Japan-themed photoblog style posts will become a regular feature here, with one or two new ones coming every week.

My colleague has spent considerably more time in Japan than I have and is far more accustomed to the language and culture. That said, some of our travels definitely merit a post or two, if for nothing else than just the photos. Hopefully we’ll be able to roll some of those out in the near future. If nothing else it should convince you that the only way to truly receive epic amounts of win is to travel to the source from which it flows - Japan.

6. Other

korosora: “Erotic literature.”

*ahem*

Our answer… SHOW SPOILER

Now then, moving right along before things become awkward…

Thanks to everyone who took the time to share your thoughts. And if you didn’t get a chance to comment on the other thread, or if you have something further you want to add, please by all means let us know.

We try to take the feedback you guys give us seriously, and to learn what works and what doesn’t work. Also, if you have something you’d like to see us write about, feel free to drop us an e-mail any time and let us know.

As a quick final note - this marks Epic Win’s 100th post. Woohoo!