For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, and since the working year concluded for me in early December, I decided to take myself on a proper holiday over the last week – with my destination to be pretty evident over the coming weeks as new content begins rolling out for the holiday season. I am still recovering from what was a non-stop week of activities, but from this evening will begin to have news catch-ups going live.
The purpose of this is to highlight a bit of internal restructuring in how The Otaku’s Study will be run into the future, in particular, an alignment with the site’s motto, Studying the Labyrinth of Fandom. The content of The Otaku’s Study will soon be housed under two banners – The Labyrinth (Fandom) and The Stage (Life Experiences).
Fandom will retain the lions share of the existing categories under its banner, including anime, manga, video games, artbooks and visual novels – as we continue our journey through the ever-expanding labyrinth. Life Experiences on the other hand will be home to live events and opportunities, including The Theatre Sphere which was first introduced in 2014, as well as a new section dedicated exclusively reviews of live experiences and entertainment. The new section is primarily meant as a way of filling that gap of content that I have always wanted to do posts on, but never really found a place for it to sit.
Additionally, 2024 will also see the re-introduction of The Soapbox, focusing on short-form opinion writing on a range of topics that one might typically see on social media, but with no character limits, proper formatting and editorial review.
In most regards, things will remain the same. Content will still have their own dedicated topic pages such as anime or video games – and The Otaku’s Study brand will remain the same as it ever was. But where this will be more prevalent is in the integration of more feature pages, such as this one I developed in late November for Opera Australia’s The Ring Cycle and Aida. Some redesigned page layouts are also in the works to differentiate these three very important sections of The Otaku’s Study, as the site continues towards its 20th anniversary in only a few years time.
With that out of the way, let’s continue our journey into the labyrinth.
