And here we are, with the last post of the year. It’s the end of the year and the end of the decade.
For me, this year was quite important. I think I’ve made a lot of personal improvements over the year. Even though I still have my personal problems, I didn’t solve some real-life issues and I didn’t get the passport, I’ve quietly improved myself and my lifestyle. I was really really looking forward to going to Japan this year, but honestly, I don’t mind and I don’t have any regret. I will keep going at my pace and hopefully, I will achieve my goals in this new decade!
Now I just wanna give a big hug (and a chibi Ranko hug) to all my friends who supported and cheered me up during the year. This was just the beginning!
And speaking about this website, I don’t think there has been any big change, except now that I have a proper webspace it’s muuuuch cooler and easier to manage! And I’ve just realized that next year will be the fifth anniversary, oh crap…
As for BUTAOTOME… Even though it was the 10th anniversary, and also the Chinese year of the Pig, I think 2019 wasn’t one of their best years.
I don’t think their 10th anniversary celebration was amazing and I was planning to publish a rant about it as part of the post, but in the end, I refrained from doing it, because it was way too ranty. So I’ll limit myself to a simple: “they focused on quantity rather than quality”.
But even excluding that, there have been other things I didn’t like about BUTAOTOME this year. Epitaffio was the album that made me pretty much lose faith in their music and I feel like it stole the spotlight to all the other releases of this year. And even though Goku was a redemption, I think this year lacked that one release I really really REALLY loved and I’ll always have in my heart, like Daihinmin, Kyou ga Saigo no Ichinichi or any of the original albums. I honestly don’t think Magic Lantern would qualify as that, but maybe the XFD sucks as usual. We’ll see it when I’ll get my copy! Moving on, there was also an excessive focus on Touhou stuff. I’m not saying they should completely abandon Touhou, but I think there has been a huge unbalance in the last couple of years. And as a couple of friends said, “what was the point of the major debut, then?”
However, there have been a couple of good things, and I want to cherish them. Every time BUTAOTOME makes a new original song, it’s a big event for me, and I’m glad we got some rhythm game contributions this year. I’ve been really really loving Ichi ka Bachi and Henteko especially, they are my favorite songs from this year along with Odore. Paprika’s instrumentals have been always consistently good, even if I don’t go particularly crazy over most of her newer albums. Also, thank you for giving us Yokoshima na Honoo!
I hope next year will be much better for BUTAOTOME, but most importantly, I hope it will be an amazing year for myself and my dear website (time to plan a crapload of stuff for the 5th anniversary!!!!111). See you in 2020!