vijei / Gintama daisuki

Hope everyone’s been doing ok. I’m bringing the blog to a close(personal reasons) and for the last post I want to do what I had initially set out to do, which is help Gintama hit the Worldwide Twitter trending topics. It may seem impossible but it’s not that hard if we time it just right and if we have 200 to 300 people. While the blog has 219 subs, not all of them will be up for the task. I expect about 50 to 60 at the maximum. We are short 240-odd people and I’m spreading the word on some forums and hope I can get as close to that number as possible. You guys can bring in your friends too into the fun.

I’ll tell you all about ‘the what’, ‘the how’ and ‘the why’ in a separate post which I’m working on right now. I should have it up here sometime later today or early tomorrow. This blog’s been a fun ride, and I hope I can end it on a high note :D

Got questions for me? Hit the chatbox below.

Cheers.
Vijay. 

Ha! I like how you guys are as undecided about what to do next as I am - 50% want to continue while the remaining 50% want to pause/stop. And since I’m confused, I haven’t voted in the poll myself.

Folks in the chatbox as well as in the comments section of that post raised some very pertinent points which essentially boiled down to this - continuing to be normal is the best way to get through a crisis. This is true. That’s why movie and music sales soar during a depression cycle because that’s how people escape their miserable days. In this case, they make valid points that continuing to entertain people with funny Gintama posts as always, will only lighten the mood and even bring smiles to grief-stricken faces. I can totally get this.

But there’s exactly 50% of you who think it’s better to wait for things to cool down a bit. Although I was on the grounds as part of my college’s Relief & Rescue team when the disastrous 2004 tsunami hit South India and can tell you horrible tales of that side of both nature and humans that you can only see during unimaginable disasters, I’m still an outsider as far as this Quakenami is concerned. So I understand the sentiments of the 50% who want to hit the pause button.

So, what do we do next? Here’s my plan:

1. I’m gonna push the pause button on my posts, but I’ll accept community submissions (For example, Nijibug just submitted a really good post here) during this time. As usual, submissions need to be good, great, awsm, rare etc so people who visit this blog feel that it is worth their time to visit this blog again, and again, and again. 
2. Meanwhile, I’ll use this time to bring the Mind=Blown Image Macro Generator out of ALPHA and get it ready for launch.
3. ???
4. Profit!
   Kidding. The last part of the plan is that I hope to resume the blog when it feels like the time is right. And when I do, I’ll update this blog of-course but also, the Gintama LJ community, my twitter @vijei and also this specially crafted status page.

Other small changes that I plan to make are: 

1. Add a ‘Donate to RedCross’ button so people can be encouraged to help the people of Japan living through this crisis.
2. Finish that damn footer. It’s been long overdue but between my work schedule and the blog posts, it’s been neglected so far. Not anymore. I want to use it to thank the people who supported me while I was setting this blog up.
3. Put a sticky link to this post somewhere on top.
4. Work on the Chat area.
5. Tie up miscellaneous loose ends.

That’s pretty much it. Sometime later today, I’ll be having one last post before I leave - a thank you post for all the people I had the good fortune to meet during my short stay here. 

Ever since the quake, I’ve been thinking about how to carry this blog forward. The purpose of this blog is to introduce Gintama to as much people as possible. In fact, if you click the little circular i icon on the top-right, you’ll see the original purpose of this blog was to get enough fans together so we can all hit the twitter trending topics so that more people will check the show out and see for themselves what they are missing out. 

To this end, I’ve worked like a maniac for the last 2 months thinking up new ideas for games, jokes, stories, parodies, posters, observations, LOLGraphs as well as posting historical facts scoured from the remotest areas of the net, that shows the depth and breadth of Gintama. Next time you hear someone say ‘Gintama is pointless’, just point them to these links and they’ll be hard-pressed for a comeback.

In short, this is a light-hearted blog aimed at spreading the love for an anime show. And right now, Japan is having one of the biggest crisis in recent memory - Earthquake, Tsunami and a potential Nuclear event. The two things are so opposite to each other that I can’t continue to post as usual without coming across as douchey/offensive which is the opposite of my original aim, i.e., to unite the Gintama community together, but more importantly it just doesn’t feel right - over 10,000 people feared dead and I’m posting silly anime stuff? It really sounds petty to me.

So now that we have over 4000 monthly visitors + over 200 tumblr subs, I think it’s time I asked what you guys thought about how I should take things forward. To help you with this, here is a summary of the blog’s purpose and what my short term plans for the blog were.

Blog’s original purpose:
To help Gintama hit the Worldwide Twitter Trending topics.

Short term plans that I had in mind before the quake:

1. Launch the Mind=Blown Image Macro Generator to help Gintama go viral.
2. Launch the World’s First HTML5 anime game. It ties into twitter for scores and achievements to help Gintama go viral. It is also the World’s First Episode-as-a-Game(EAAG) - every level in the game is the story of an episode. Level 1 is abt Gintama epi 1 where Yorozuya hunt Kuromi-chan etc. See a basic skeleton level, level 29 which is the story of Episode 29 - help Gin-san crush the ‘Gorou’ queen cockroach.
3. Finish work on 3 AMVs and market them to get at least 500,000 views total
4. Post: Lake Toyako and how Gintama and G8 put the search term “wooden swords” on the map.
5. Post: Gintama and Japan’s Most Famous Honeymoon
6. Post: How Gintama hit the twitter trending topics in 2009 and what we can learn from it.
7. Post: Naruto to Gintama Transition Guide - How a Naruto fan can come to enjoy Gintama. I want to make more such Transition guides for Bleach, One Piece, FMA etc, basically all popular shows so fans of those shows who’ve never heard of Gintama will find it easy to switch.
8. New Animated Motivational Posters(AMPs): Ibaraki is not dead, Umibouzu and his wig, Pedobear as a Personal Trainer
9. Post: List of Celebrities referenced in Gintama - From Arnold and Macaulay Culkin to Will Smith to Shimura Ken and Jackie Chan.
10. Post: How to watch newcomers to Gintama using Twitter search and help them get into the show.
11. Downloads: Shareable Bit.ly bundles: “Understand Gintama in 10 links” bundle, “Top 10 Gintama Videos” bundle, “Top 10 Funniest Gintama Pics and GIFs” bundle, “The Best of Gintama in 25 links” bundle.
12. Meme: “Find your Samurai name” page - find which Gintama Samurai you share a birthday with. I thought this up so it can go viral on twitter.

That’s basically the short term plan. I have more plans but they are all in early stages. And it’s not like I planned to carry this blog forever. Here’s a mail I sent to a fellow Gintama fan about a month back:

So I was already planning to stop blogging after I finish all the ideas listed above but after the catastrophe, I’m having second thoughts about posting even the ideas I had planned to finish before stopping. But, I also HATE leaving a job unfinished. That’s not how I was brought up. Come hell or high-water, always finish the job you took up or never undertake that venture in the first place - this is what my parents taught me and I’ve stuck to it pretty much all my life. That’s why even though posting this stuff seems silly when we are in the middle of this tragedy, a part of me still wants to keep going to finish the job I started. And this is where you guys can help. Now that you know the situation, here’s a poll on what direction you think this blog should take, and feel free to leave comments (DISQUS comments are back) if you have compelling arguments on why I should continue/stop/pause the blog:

A few days back, we saw L’s Plan to jump from Death Note to Gintama, so he can try out dangos and Ginpachi sensei’s ‘Smoking Lollipops’. While he succeeded in infiltrating Yorozuya, there was a doubt about what the next stage of his plan was - stay with the highly uncooperative and violent Yorozuya or move to Shinsengumi HQ. Well.. we now know what the next stage of his plan was…

I guess this means we’ll see April start airing an all new show - Tama Note.

While Sorachi and Kondou are out in the open having a go at each other, our main guys are having a little tiff of their own.

Who do you think will end up getting the larger share?

(Source: animepaper.net)

Ummm… Kondou… as the frickin Shinsengumi head you might wanna leave that silly banana alone and go help the people out already! 

Yes, that IS Sugita Tomokazu. He’s as nutty as Gintama is.
Follow his updates here » http://twitter.com/sugitaLOV

Good thing Oedo is far away from Sendai.

(Source: Flickr / buttiesqueak)

Order before stocks run out!

A true BAMF. His speech as he falls down from the roof after his fight with Kagura is the very definition of epic awesomesauce.