The ten eternal questions

There is a 50% chance you know him — and 50% chance that you don’t. But one’s sure, after our little inter­view you will know him with a chance of 100%. Eternal is the per­son behind Memor­ies of Etern­ity — the place of ‘thoughts, insight, and ana­lysis from a young otaku seek­ing enlight­en­ment.’ We’ll get to know how he star­ted doing things, more about his reas­ons pref­er­ences, but not only.

Gar­g­ron: When was the abso­lute begin­ning we can point at with our meta­phor­ical fin­ger and say ‘Here Eternal star­ted to watch anime’?

Eternal: Hmm… well, I sup­pose that depends on what you define as “anime.” I watched shows like Dragon Ball Z and Poke­mon on TV like every­one else, but I didn’t know of anime as a medium at the time so I don’t really count it. I think my real first intro­duc­tion was when I was in the 6^th grade and I star­ted watch­ing Shaman King and Inuyasha on YTV (Cana­dian cartoon/kids chan­nel). That led me to other shounen like Naruto and Bleach, which then led me to fol­low subs instead of dubs. The rest, as they say, is history.

Gar­g­ron: Was there, and in case there was, which was the anime that influ­enced you the most, and per­haps even changed your point of view?

Eternal: That’s an easy one. Haruhi. I watched the show a few months after it aired, back when I was start­ing to branch out and watch more than just shounen and Evan­gelion ripoffs. I can’t explain it logic­ally, but some­thing about it changed me. I think it might have been my first encounter with moe, and I guess I just got swept up in the show’s fan­dom. It hit me at an impres­sion­able time.

Gar­g­ron: Why did you begin blog­ging, and how was it con­nec­ted to your anime experience?

Eternal: Ini­tially, I began blog­ging because I knew it would teach me more about anime. I’ve always been (and still am) bad with tech­no­logy, so I knew it would be a chal­lenge to fig­ure out how to use Word­press and run a web­site, but I knew I had to do it. I wanted to find more fan­nish things to explore, and it would give me more incent­ive to do things like buy mer­chand­ise and write reviews if I could give them a tan­gible form online.

Gar­g­ron: What anime can you re-watch again and again, uncount­able times?

Eternal: Heh… I always like watch­ing new things, so I’m not sure if I really have a show like that. Prac­tic­ally speak­ing, it would take me a long time to get tired of Lucky Star and K-ON, but I also know that Honey and Clover will remain time­less for me, whether I re-experience it or not.

Gar­g­ron: What brought you about the nick ‘Eternal’?

Eternal: Like with most inter­net handles, there’s no easy answer. At first it was just the shortened ver­sion of my old handle (which is a hi-mi-tsu~ until someone finds it!), but it took on a life of its own after a while. Sadly, there’s no real sig­ni­fic­ance behind it, but I decided to try to give the name mean­ing instead, which is why many things relat­ing to me share sim­ilar words and names.

Gar­g­ron: Why do you think people read you?

Eternal: Ah, that’s a tough one. I’m used to writ­ing what I think, but I’m not so used to think­ing about what I write. Hmm… I guess some people group me in with the other edit­or­ial blog­gers that they read when they want a dif­fer­ent per­spect­ive on a show they like, but oth­ers might just find me enter­tain­ing. It’s style vs con­tent I guess; I have no clue which is my strong point. Who knows, maybe some read­ers actu­ally like my flowery writ­ing when I wax poetic about visual nov­els and romance!

Gar­g­ron: What is your goal, your tar­get you want to reach by blogging?

Eternal: My goal is to grow as an anime fan. I like the thought of help­ing people with my art­icles, and it’s a con­veni­ent way for me to work on my writ­ing, but my final goal is to become more like the blog­gers and fans that I respect. That includes everything from under­stand­ing anime as a medium to mak­ing otaku friends and con­tacts along the way.

Gar­g­ron: You have a catchy blog name there.

Eternal: Haha, thanks. I spent much of last sum­mer try­ing to think of a catchy acronym title, and the phrase “memor­ies of etern­ity” just popped into my head. It doesn’t really mean any­thing, but I think it gives off that fluffy, sur­real feel­ing that I love about anime (while dir­ectly ref­er­en­cing one of the other things that I love about anime!)

Gar­g­ron: What do you like the most about anib­lo­go­sphere (if you like it at all)?

Eternal: The fact that people actu­ally under­stand me! I learned a long time ago that shar­ing a com­mon hobby isn’t enough to make com­pat­ible friends, but some­how, even though anib­log­gers range in age and gender and per­son­al­ity, I feel like I can relate to every­one. Plus, most blog­gers are older and more exper­i­enced than me, so it gives me lots of otaku role mod­els to strive toward.

Gar­g­ron: Sim­ilar ques­tion, what is the best exper­i­ence that came out of hav­ing an anime blog?

Eternal: At first I would have said that it taught me more about anime and crit­ical view­ing of media in gen­eral, but that’s just part of it. I have a lot of fun talk­ing to every­one even when it’s out­side the con­text of our blogs, and after a while, I found myself look­ing at Twit­ter feeds and GRSI com­ments more often than check­ing my own hit counter. I guess my enjoy­ment came bit by bit in a lot of dif­fer­ent ways. Heck, I even learned a thing or two about lit­er­ary cri­ti­cism from the Super Fan­icom guys!