Three Years of Kantopia & the End of the Daily Blog

Three years! Wow…it’s time for a little reflection.

What started off as a personal project and basically a portfolio grew to become a small, but hopefully informative site for readers. I simply decided to share my own curiosity and thoughts on some observations and found out there is a reader base for it out there somewhere!

Posting everyday for that long has been great for sure. I got to run through all sorts of topics, from comparisons to just good old translations. It was a self imposed rule that I would upload at least one thing every day. Be it big, small, short, long, a translation, a note, or whatever. Something, anything! It would be a great way to improve writing, translation, or just reaching out to people.

And it seems to have served me pretty well. I met great people along the way, and my twitter following continues to grow with people who are intrigued by all the trivial things that I also enjoy!

Among those achievements was being able to translate some interviews that even made it to larger game sites. Though, it was much less about the fact the interviews got linked to and more than it got out to more people. That’s my personal joy.

Another wonderful honor is being cited by PushDustIn as one of the inspirations behind the wonderful SourceGaming which I’ve seen from its beginning continue to grow and grow. It warms me that I was an inspiration to anyone, and hope I can continue to be with posting things I enjoy sharing.

It was also great heading a coordinated translation project that saw the Fire Emblem community come together to help donate/fund Tellius Recollection Vol 2. Namely, buying an extra copy that I de-spined and scanned for higher quality image and translations. It was a great success, and is still ongoing!

Speaking of Fire Emblem, it’s also been a blast using my favorite Lilina as an unofficial mascot. I heard it was pretty well received much to my delight, hehe. She got to share in my joys and sorrows along the way.

So much use out of one sprite!

The portfolio proved invaluable in my ongoing search for my dream job (to work officially in video game translation and/or localization). However, it simply is not enough for many companies out there. They require people like me to have actual work experience, which is a shame that none of this really counts for much beyond simply blogging in the eyes of human resources.

Not that it takes away from it for me. For me, it’s been valuable experience in translation and the pursuit of (trivial) knowledge.

However, it is important because it meant I still need that practical experience to help land that dream job.

So, I made a big move and am back in Japan for the time being (which is what I was busy with the last week or two), and will be here teaching English for awhile to lovely school kids while improving my own language skill. As such, my schedule will certainly get much busier, and my readers know I love to be diligent at what I do –and hence will prioritize that job first and this blog second.

If I tried doing a daily blog while working what looks like will be quite a time intensive job, then I’d probably reach that overworked point (like when I marathoned the Japanese version of Fire Emblem Fates Revelation to write a summary in English for readers to enjoy).

So I decided I’ll finally listen to what a ton of users on serenesforest.net, twitter, blog readers, and even Nino have told me all along:

So I won’t! And you’re welcome! (And thank you for reading!) For once, as hard as it is to quell my OCD when that one day is finally missed. It horrifies me just thinking about it!

But!

This does not mean the blog is being abandoned entirely.

It simply means I probably won’t be able to do a daily upload! I do this all for free, after all! Not bound by ads or clicks for revenue, I feel it keeps it authentic in a way. Donations are simply tips or voluntary support from my readers, and certainly not expected!

As such, the Fire Emblem artbook scanlations, requests, etc will all continue! I still plan to do all that, it just may take a bit longer and come on a more sporadic schedule for when I get time to do them.

I will still do what I love to do with looking at game localizations and the like, so please continue to send requests and suggestions!

This message is so you don’t panic when you see there was indeed a day where Kantopia uploaded *gasp* nothing?!

It hurts me more than it hurts you, believe me!

You know, when writing this post, I realized just how much I love writing/translating/doing what I do on this blog. Perhaps even more than that dream career I’m aiming for..

But hey, when this teaching thing is all said and done and I’m back to being unemployed, you can be sure this blog will return to being a daily one until I finally land that dream job! (Where the objective of the portfoli-blog is ultimately complete).

And with that…

Aww, thanks!

Here’s to another year! Thank you all so much for all your support!