100 Reviews! Now What?

When I started my review blog back in 2015, I had a goal to write and post 100 reviews to the blog. I didn't care how long it was going to take, nor did I care how badly-written all of the reviews were going to be; I just wanted to get 100 reviews on the blog. Throughout these 9 years, I had phases where I would constantly write reviews and phases where I wouldn't write any at all; heck, I didn't write any reviews in 2023! During the phases when I would write reviews, I would also feel a lot of insecurity, as I'm really not that good of a writer at all, nor am I good at explaining things. Despite all of that, today, I finally did it.

I posted my 100th review to the review blog!

(This girl is from Menhera Shoujo Kurumi-chan, if anyone was wondering.)

I seriously can't believe I did it. Through all of my struggles and insecurities, I actually accomplished something I wanted to accomplish. It took nearly a decade, but I still did it!

When I realized I was finally getting to that milestone, I decided to carefully consider what I was going to review for that 100th blog post. At first, I was going to reread Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Adventure, which was the very first manga I'd ever read; it holds a special place in my heart as a result of that, and I haven't read it for years, anyway. I decided against it, however, since I just have so many light novels I need to read before I can consider rereading any of my manga. I then considered Tokyo Mew Mew Ole, a spin-off manga of Tokyo Mew Mew, which was the anime that got me into anime, and if I hadn't gotten into anime, I doubt that either of these blogs would exist in the first place. (I created this blog when the blog feature on Anime-Planet was about to be removed, so....) I also thought about rewatching Kotoura-san, which was the subject of my first serious review on MyAnimeList (which is also on my review blog). I even considered rereading Iinari Princess, since I was considering re-reviewing it, anyway!

In the end, though, I settled on this.

As I mentioned in the actual review, I first read Level Up when I was a teenager; specifically, I was in my freshman year of high school, so I was around 14. At the time, I had actually written a review for it and showed it to the librarian, who seemed to think it was well-written; unfortunately, I lost the sheets of paper that I wrote it on before I started the blog, so I couldn't type it up and post it to the blog. Thus, even though this graphic novel was nothing special (in my opinion), I figured that I could use the 100th review milestone as kind of a redemption arc for this review. Plus, given its nature as a coming-of-age story and the fact that I've gone from a teenage girl to an adult woman over the course of the blog's existence, I thought it would fit a milestone like this quite well. As always, it's not exactly a well-written review, but give it a read if you'd like.

So yeah, I've written and posted 100 reviews for my review blog.

So....now what?

As I might have insinuated before, writing these reviews hasn't always been the most positive experience for me. When I was younger and didn't care about how good or bad my writing was, I was able to write as many reviews as my inspiration would let me. As I've grown older, however, I've found myself unable to really improve as a writer, which made me less and less confident in my abilities. At some point, I found myself unable to write reviews like I wanted to. I said before that I didn't write any reviews in 2023, but that's not exactly true; I did try to write one for Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte when that finished airing. I had been in love with the light novel's concept even before the anime adaptation was announced, and when I watched the anime as it was airing, I found myself enjoying it quite a bit, even though it's not without flaws. At some point while writing the review, though, I found myself unable to really put into words how I felt. In general, I felt like that with a bunch of other reviews I tried to write; with the ones I was actually able to finish writing, I felt exhausted after posting them from just how many words I forced myself to write.

With all of this said, it might be time I threw in the towel. If I can't enjoy writing reviews anymore, why continue to do so?

And yet....I still have the desire to do so.

Although it's for books and not reviews, writing for a living has been a dream I had since I was a little girl, and even though writing has become difficult for me on a psychological level, I still want to push forward toward that dream. To that end, no matter how badly-written whatever I've written is, I want to continue to write, and writing my thoughts on certain pieces of media may help me with improving. I think.

With that said, I have no intention of stopping my review blog. There's no guarantee that I'll write reviews often, but I want to try writing more in 2025, even if I have to force the words out of me. For now, I can just be proud of myself for accomplishing my goal of posting 100 reviews! Now, what should the subject of my 101st review be....?

Oh, no.