Many of you probably remember and greatly enjoyed the old Monthly Retrospectives, but unfortunately, they became too much work to put together because they were almost as time consuming as the season previews, except every month instead of every three. Then, I had a brilliant idea! What if Random Curiosity turned the written retrospectives into podcasts instead?

And so I set off to learn about podcasting. One of my friends introduced me to her friends at METANORN, another excellent anime blog who have graciously allowed me to be a guest on their METAVERSE podcasts. The fine people there were a lot of fun, and I learned a great deal about podcasting too – so please support me, RandomC, and METANORN by listening to their 15th podcast and let me know what you think!

The facepalm is because now you all know what I sound like, haha!
Podcast Link

87 Comments

    1. Well, I stopped hearing after an hour and five minutes…Lost some interest once you guys started talking about particular scenes of X show, but great podcast from you all 🙂 !

      I dunno, I’ll say what’s in my mind after hearing this and thinking about possible future RC:

      -You have a good voice Verdant. Having a good mic + clear English was all I asked for; glad you to them.
      -As part of the audience, I’m not that interested in hearing what the members of the podcasts thought about X character or Y scene –that’s what in your blog posts after all, and I think podcasts could open up other topics of dicussion. Personally, I’d be all for hearing more analysis/deeper views on a show’s structure, rather than get stuck on the surface. In other words, I’d be more willing to hear from you writers why you thought the scene (or better yet, the whole show) was so powerful/disastrous, how did it come to that result. There was actually some of this in this podcast: Nisemonogatari’s talk about the 8th episode and why the toothbrush scene was so unique and powerful. If this replaces the Monthly retrospectives, thn I guess you’d have plenty of material to work with, so no problem there.
      -Keep it brief and straight to the point! Often, one can just keep talking and talking about X topic, and the audience quickly loses interest.

      As an individual, there are million of things I could ask for in this possible RC podcast, since the idea is very exciting indeed, but I think I said the important stuff I wanted to say. Surely Verdant you/the other writers must listen to your own podcasts of interest, so you can learn from their program.

      I could keep on and on with this, but I fear I’ll come off as annoying…So cheers, and hopefully we’ll be hearing again from this project’s status!

  1. At last! I can hear Verdant talking~ Wow! And as for bringing up the podcast, I think it’ll be a great addition to RandomC since this site is most likely to be evolving from time to time~ But it would be great if all of the writers could participate in it as well. Let their voices be heard! :3

    //Yay! it’s my first time to comment! XD

    Yuu-tan
  2. Podcast for this site will be Great, to hear every writers opinions into one podcast the animes they watch, talk about likes, hates and more, the podcast adding new ones everyweek.

    skyreno4
  3. Verdant, I want to thank you personally here for giving me that subtle shout-out. I was really flattered when the commentator noticed both my alt-texts and my gender ambiguity ^___^.

    *hugs*

    Zanibas
    1. Do you mean RC will die if it does a podcast? Or if you do a podcast? I have no reason to see the former causing RC’s death — on the contrary, it would be an interesting to hear them speak.

      Xumbra
  4. I like the idea, but I think there are many people who come to this place to see and have adapted to English as text only, I think someone other than a native speaker will understand what they say never, I just finished listening to the podcast and sounds great but I can say that only 90% understood because my language is Spanish and I have limited knowledge of English

    Pachikun
  5. I think its a good idea, but you shouldn’t do it just yet. With alot happening right now, you should let the RC community settle down first. Maybe start it next season. Afterall, too much change at once might be bad

    gcsasuke
  6. How dare you call yourself a RandomC writer if you haven’t seen Evangelion yet? I say heresy!

    Jokes aside, I think the idea is fantastic. Had a very enjoyable time hearing the METAVERSE and not just the talk and opinions, the music was great too. The folks from METANORN gave lots of props to Divine at the end of the podcast.

  7. So as to quote someone on IRC: (sorry I couldn’t remember who you are off the top of my head)

    VERDANT SOUNDS EXACTLY AS I THOUGHT HE WOULD

    As for how to interpret that statement, I’ll leave it up you guys 🙂

    Thoughts/suggestions on podcasting: It might be an interesting idea but my main concern is whether transcribed text would be available, and that the length of podcasts (if any) should not be tl;dl (ie keep it not-too-lengthy yet concise)

    No harm giving this a shot though I’m sure readers are keen to hear the voices behind each writer.

    *Random thoughts*
    Would there be a trap-like voice for our trap-likesque writers?!

    LightnDark
  8. Not sure podcast suit RC. For me, my anime watching time is quite limited, and I really depends on RC’s writers to to base which anime to watch. With text, I can skim through to get the gist of the series. If it’s to taste I’ll go watch the series and then come back to read the RC post later. I don’t think I’ll have the patience to sit through minutes upon minutes of audio in a podcast to decide whether to watch the series or not. Just my humble two cents.

    Lordip
    1. May I suggest listening to podcasts while you’re doing homework? It’s actually not all that difficult to do and you end up catching most of what they’re saying anyway. It’s like listening to talk radio while doing work, which is something I tend to do pretty frequently.

  9. hmmm that’s too bad, I can read english but when it come to podcast I’ve a hard time doing the translation :/
    Still, good idea for the majority of Random C since (I guess) 90% is probably from english speaking country.

    KTNO
  10. We had a great time with verdant as you guys already have heard. Gives me an idea to do some more episodes with RC writers just to get the discussion rolling. I’m definitely subscribing when RC podcast is up.

    PS: DAT Hugh pic is so moe, Verdant! xD

    1. Thanks for taking our guys out there on your podcast. They write too much about their shows and we barely know anything about them because of that.

      Your site has FUN painted all over it. I hope you get more visitors and comments after this.

  11. 1. You have a very pleasant voice Verdant ._. I can finally put a voice to your post.

    2. Love the idea of a Podcast but I’d recommend it to elaborate why you like this scene or what could have made it better. There’s so much to talk about in one ep but it can be daunting for readers to read a whole book on an episode.

    And if you do do a podcast for RC why not add in questions for the audience and get them to participate in the podcast so that we can all broaden our views. Cause it’ll be tiring if the readers just talk for an hour long lol

    shamaticgrl
      1. what? i never said there isn’t any different, i just said there is a simple solution to the problem of making a huge preview as this site writer doing, the list i posted is short, simple, and easy to understand. they can post it somewhere aside in a small window. like most of blogs doing.
        the previews on this site are excellent, but to long, i mean it just a preview. plus this list save a lot of time and pain to writers.

        lkm
      2. If you noticed you get to see some of the writers insight. Its well thought and researched. you can see who doing it and whos role is going to voice some character in that certain anime. Some of the people don’t noticed this but some reads actually see whos directing it. If you see a anime preview that you didn’t like and then the director did an awesome job on his previous job, you might see a new light and say “Ah, I guess I’ll give it a shot”.
        Thats my reason for reading RC’s season preview.

        Croos
      3. no doubt, you right! like i said they have an excellent previews. but you have to agree that the among of people that started reading the preview but never actually read it to the end of the post, is pretty high. and the reason is simple: the post are to long. some people like it simple, after all its just a preview, not some conclusion about the whole season.
        and the link i posted offering easy preview of the next season, there everything you need to know. and i pretty sure it’ll be easy for the writers to. its win win.
        but hey its just an opinion.

        lkm
  12. Great stuff, enjoyed it very much! As for the length, it seems like this one could have been cut up into three podcasts. Maybe you could make each the same length as an anime episode? You guys covered some nice topics though and would look forward to more!

    Sudachi
  13. GREAT idea for hearing people! Not so great idea for Deaf people unless caption option is added. I always have enjoyed reading Monthly Retrospectives, so I definitely will miss it when it is determined to use podcast without caption added. Yes, I’m Deaf person. So, I just tell you what I think, like you asked.

    RandomGal
  14. Great, great idea. Having podcasts for Random Curiosity’s Monthly Retrospective is the best idea since Divine’s side banners! I would love to hear what the staff here has to say about the shows I love to watch. It’s like listening to the conversation I’ve always loved.

    The Bleach music was pretty cool in the background too. First time I listened to a podcast by Metanorn.

  15. Please please go back to doing monthly retrospectives rather than trying out a podcast. Like many other people, I typically visit RC to get quick impressions about shows I am not currently watching and to see “what’s hot” – basically, my entertainment time is limited and I use RC to decide which anime to watch.

    Season previews are by far the most important content to me – and monthly retrospectives were a close second; best thing to happen on RC since I started reading the blog in 2007. I don’t want to listen to a one hour podcast, I simply do not have that time. I must admit I was hugely disappointed when you decided to discontinue the restrospectives. As a comparison, psgels.net has been running monthly summaries since forever and he is a single writer – too bad his opinions are essentially worthless for a “mainstream” anime fan like myself.

    Given that the website has many more writers now, why don’t you try for a different restrospective format? You could have each writer limit himself to 5-10 short opinions on different shows (perhaps the ones he cares about the most). Given that the podcast would take over one hour from each contributor anyway, I cannot see how writing the restrospective would be much more time-consuming.

    Please consider it!

    Steelman
  16. You brought up a good point in the podcast about wanting to “shed the light” on series that readers didn’t like. Despite that, I’ve still found days where I enjoyed an episode of a series and the writers would blow it up. Kiiragi was one of them. Lol Yumekui Merry wasn’t THAT fantastic, but I did like it. He tore that show apart. XD I had to skip his reviews because he took my “candy” away after I watched it.

    If you did monthly podcasts, is it going to be with ALL the writers here on RC? Or just a few.. and how do they feel about it?

      1. Aside from it being faster and less stress on the writers, it would be new and exciting for us readers to hear the voices of the writers we follow so religiously. I look forward to a favorable decision.

  17. Podcast, huh?
    To be blunt, I’m not really into it since :
    1. I’m not really good at listening English, so do many people that aren’t English-native.
    2. Reading is faster than listening (since you can skim more freely) and I like reading more rather than listening in general.
    3. I need more loading time for my slow connection to watch podcast.

    But I guess I won’t go against it. But if I can prefer between Monthly Retrospectives and Podcast, I will pick MR for sure. Of course I won’t force it since it seems to be a lot of extra hard work for you guys.

    *Furthermore, if three MR per season isn’t possible, MR for the first month would be very nice to support 3- months obligatory judgement…But that’s only me being greedy :p

    zeroyuki92
  18. That was certainly interesting but a tad bit too long. I think 20-30 minutes would make a good podcast for a casual discussion about animes. But I hope you guys don’t lose sight of what made RC so great in the first place, timely and insightful episodic blogging with yummy screen caps 😉

    Seishun Otoko
  19. Just listening to your voice is enough.

    Overflowing homoeroticism aside, I don’t mind even the longer format especially the way it is conducted over at Metanorn. Nice relaxed atmosphere, fun group of people. There’s no need for an infodump. A RC-native podcast would be interesting especially since all the writers seem to have such good chemistry already, and so it’s definitely something that all of you could look into.

    Jif

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