Yu Alexius

I am Yu Alexius. I talked about Chinese anime (donghua), Japanese animations; sharing anime reviews, updates, and recommendations.

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Yu Alexius Anime Portal 4th Year Anniversary | A Look Back Down the Memory Lane and Future Plans

 

Yu Alexius Anime Portal

Hey guys, today is August 17, 2019, and it is an overwhelming special day for us as this marks the 4th Year Anniversary of our blog – Yu Alexius Anime Portal which I started last August 2015 in pursuit of worthwhile things to do after I quit my previous job. It had been a fun, exciting, and struggling experience to run this blog but I am so thankful that I didn’t give up especially during those days where I felt like our effort doesn’t count at all. Nonetheless, we are so thankful for all our readers who had helped us reach the point where we are right now though we’re still far from our goal but we wish to achieve those goals that we set on a step by step basis and with you as part of our experience.

In this post, I’ll share some stuff about Yu Alexius Anime Portal and what I’ve been through in running this blog all these years as well as with our team. Basically, here’s a short summary of what I will share though some of it may come out as rants which I usually do on my personal blog www.xernest.wordpress.com which is a combination of random anime stuff I like to share when I have the time and some dosage of tantrums about work and personal life struggles.
 
Here we go; I’ll cover the following aspect of our journey in this post:

 

· 2015: Our beginning

· 2016: I Almost Give Up!

· 2017: Comeback and Struggles

· 2018: Shift of Forte and Blogging Style

· 2019: Diligently Working on Sustainability

· Future Plans

 
 
I’ll keep the explanation of each short as possible and avoid myself from turning into a chatterbox but since this is quite personal, I may nonchalantly talk about lots of simple interesting shenanigans that I might remember.


2015: OUR BEGINNING

Alright, I’ll start my tale about the beginning of Yu Alexius Anime Portal which really sounds lame and I am a little confused and shy if I’ll share it or not. But this is among my few posts in this blog with a personal approach so I’ll rather talk about this casually and personal.
 
On August 17, 2015 – I registered this blog at Blogger.com with the lame URL: da-randomentertainment.blogpot.com because I seriously don’t have any idea what to use. That time, I just want to have my own anime blog though I ended up sharing anime news articles most of the time during our early years which I rarely do today, or to be specific I only do in occasional basis and mostly for Chinese animation these days. I am a big fan of Anime News Network (ANN) that time and until now, if I’ll make a re-evaluation of our blog from 2015, I could say we’re a little bit like a mad yet tiny follower of ANN as well as Crunchyroll, and other anime news sharing websites. Later on, after a few years I finally realized to make a brand our the blog and it has been a combination of trial and error stages where I felt like the blog had been quite a messed with so many random contents or maybe we are just trying to live up to the original name Da Random Entertainment (which really makes me laughed every time I remember it).
 
I also started sharing some anime recommendations that time like sharing what are my favorite anime series of all-time and favorite anime movies too. Now, if I will remember my original roster, I will simply realize that my world that time is quite limited despite watching so many anime shows. I think becoming an anime blogger opens the world to me that there’s still a lot of anime shows that I must learn about and also embraced other genres outside of my comfort zone.


2016: STRUGGLES AND NEALY GIVING UP

This is the year where I felt like my personal struggles are really making my brain cells goes haywire. I have to admit that I’ve got the lowest percentage of blogposts in 2016 because I am undergoing some kind of challenges personally while also looking for a new job. So, when I got my current job I have to sacrifice some of my time for the blog in order to focus on it and make things stable as soon as possible so I could return to blogging. I remember that at some point, I could only post 3 articles in one month and it happened in almost 3 or 4 consecutive months. It’s been a struggle and there are times where I felt like I must give up blogging in order to focus on my professional life.
 
The good thing is I didn’t quit. This time, I changed the blog title into Yu Alexius Anime Blog and registered the free blog URL of da-randomentertainment-blogspot.cominto www.yualexius.com, and this is where I thought I have to continue blogging no matter what happened. I just told to myself that I just need to write even if it’s on a minimal basis, no pressure at all and I felt like it somehow work-out.
 
Around this time, I’m still posting anime news while giving more attention to ongoing and upcoming anime shows in my radar. Meanwhile, I also started to write more reviews this time around with my review of Guilty Crown still one of my all-time favorites.
 
I’ve been binge-watching a lot of finished anime titles too in 2016 and it opened my eyes to a broader range of anime genres.


2017: CONTINUOUS LEARNING, STRUGGLES, EFFORTS, & MOTIVATION

I’ll say 2017 marked the year where I eventually invested more time and dedication to my craft and for finally starting to visualize a goal for the blog. Around this time, I’ve spent my time learning from checking other anime blogs, learning SEO again and what’s new in the industry, struggling with the time management, and keep on motivating myself to exert further effort to finally build a brand for Yu Alexius in the near future.

I think among the turning point for the blog is when I received some emails asking if we could write something about certain anime-related videos or projects, and even some upcoming independent anime shows. I remember writing about D’Art Shtajio’s original anime project Indigo Ignited few weeks before its release and I felt like it is really fulfilling. Our other featured articles that I am happy to share with you guys are as follows:

·
In 2017, I had 2 team members joined us and they are Jervis, and Irish. Later on, Kess from www.techanime.net also sign up as a guest blogger.


2018: SHIFTING TO CHINESE ANIMATION

I guess I have The King’s Avatar to blame for this as I’ve been fascinated by it the moment it aired the previous year. I’ve been on a rampant Chinese anime marathon since then and I officially added Chinese anime stuff in 2018 starting with reviews as well as recommending it to my viewers such as the following posts:

I’ve been writing some stuff though about Chinese anime prior to 2018 but it is so few that I could even count it on my fingers. Among my most common topics about Chinese animation was The King’s Avatar where I have written several topics about it as follows:

This time, I actually lessened on writhing anime news and focus on sharing recommendations and list posts. Actually, among our most popular contents where list post such as the one we had written about the strongest characters from Overlord novel as well as the most powerful characters from The Seven Deadly Sins. I also shared several reviews about anime movies and series which I am more confident to share with anime viewers now compared to my previous works in the earlier days.

In 2018, I see the growth of the blog and eventually, I changed its name to Yu Alexius AnimePortal and see the potential that maybe I could build my own brand where I share about Chinese anime series while keeping an eye to original passion which is watching Japanese animation and share my thoughts about it to my viewers. I am also more diligent to share my thoughts about different anime shows to the community which is why our blog had been active in social media such as Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and Pinterest this time around.

We also got Zhihua as our latest team member in 2018 and she did an amazing job with sharing great content about one of my favorite donghua – the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (Mo Dao Zu Shi). And here are some of her works that I bet you must want to check if you’re a fan of the donghua:


She also wrote a review about My Hero Academia: Two Heroes movie which she watched in its world premiere in the United States.


2019: AIMING FOR GREATER GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY

This year, I am more focus to build the brand of Yu Alexius and make the SEO stable while providing quality content. I have actually diminished the quantity of the blogpost and instead lengthen it to provide a more detailed way of sharing my thoughts about many anime topics.

c65be seo icon b302eed0626e97034cc66849c9a556b8 Yu Alexius Anime Portal 4th Year Anniversary | A Look Back Down the Memory Lane and Future Plans
© HIVE Digital Strategy



I simply wish for the Yu Alexius Anime Portal to be one of the go-to points on the internet for the anime community to check for recommendations both with Chinese and Japanese anime. Though I have to admit that one of my own struggles this year is time management with the blog, watching anime series, and keeping up with my daily schedule at work since I got promoted twice since last year which means I need to keep my responsibilities on check all of the time. I think it’s quite noticeable because it really affects the number of our posts that is why I resort on posting few but detailed posts as an alternative.

This year, I have added our first-ever Anime Seasonal Awards with spring 2019 as our pilot experience. We also do a weekly anime chart now every Sunday on our Facebook page since last April. Actually, this is a really satisfying decision for me though it is obvious that among the repercussions for me is the time management and coping up with at least 30 anime episodes each week. Nonetheless, I am seriously enjoying this and hopefully, I’ll be able to sustain doing the weekly chart which I am so determined to do so no matter what.


STRUGGLES AND FUTURE PLANS

At this moment, I can say that we really grow since we started in 2015 and I am simply happy that today is the 4th anniversary of Yu Alexius Anime Portal which means we had endured 4 years of struggles and triumphant together and we are thankful to our readers and followers who had been with us all these years.

Last year, the blog achieved 1 million total pageviews since 2015 and it is a feat that we are so happy about. Though we are still aiming for more and I know that it’s a long and arduous process but we want to aim for greater heights and achieved more one at a time. This year, we are heading to reaching the 2 million all-time pageviews threshold and we want to reach that before the year ends. Hopefully, we will be able too. This is a motivating achievement for us as it only means that our thoughts that we shared here are reaching a wider audience and we couldn’t be happier than that.

Though among our struggles is for the blog to be sustainable as financially, the blog isn’t really earning a decent dime from the advertisement but still, it is enough for us to pay for the domain renewal and also allocate it for online marketing on our social media accounts.

vlogAs of now, among our future plans is to make a vlog for the blog but it’s quite hard on my end because I am not really fond of making videos or doing commentaries. Though we are open for collaboration in the future or if I have some more spare time I could invest it to create and edit videos. Though, I want to provide more than just a vlog, maybe making and editing videos like what ViniiTube had been doing all this time in their YouTube channel.

I think I may also want to connect the blog to shopping websites where people can shop for their favorite anime items such as anime figures, collectibles, accessories, and more. Well, Anime Motivation had been one of my inspirations when it comes to this aspect.

Among my plans for the future too is to collaborate with other bloggers in the anime community especially with the Chinese anime industry where only a few people are still recommending it. I want to be one of the voices to help its growth in the near future to reach a wider audience.

As a Filipino, I also want to promote anime projects done by Filipino animators. I think it’ll be amazing to show to the world that Filipino animators could also make pretty decent anime. Every once in awhile, I guess I have to add a new section in the blog where I have to share some animated projects from Filipino artists.

Sinag Animation's Kamagong: The Animation Project
Sinag Animation’s Kamagong: The Animation Project #ProudPinoy | © About Cagayan de Oro

 

We are also open for any fellow anime fans who are willing to contribute their thoughts and opinions about different topics about anime, even live-action or manga. If you’re interested, please drop me an email at jzeuldeick [at] gmail.com so we could discuss it. If you have some fanarts or projects that you would like to be featured, we will share it here for free as long as our team agreed about it.


1d0e9 Yu Alexius Anime Portal 4th Year Anniversary | A Look Back Down the Memory Lane and Future Plans

 

I think I’ll stop there though we still have so many plans and dreams for the future to come. However, we’ll save it and share it to everyone, maybe in our next anniversary. After all, it’s quite crazy to drop a lot of to-do-list and plans as it may turn out to be a drawing or similar without any effort invested on it. Alright, so I’ll wrap up my post here about our journey at Yu Alexius Anime Portal so far. For everyone who had been here since we started, thank you very much and expect for more to come. For our new readers, thank you and we hope you’ll have a great time and enjoy our blog posts. Finally, Yu Alexius turned 4years old today – congratulations to my team and thank you for everyone. Expect that no matter how hard the struggles might be, we will always strive to deliver interesting stuff for everyone to enjoy about anime in general.

 

Last Updated on February 25, 2021 by Yu Alexius

Author

  • Yu Alexius

    Code name: Yu Alexius is an ambiguous entity who loves to talk about anime and Chinese animation in general. An insatiable soul from the Pearl of the Orient, a frustrated writer and a Houtarou Oreki wanna-be. He is a piece of a lunatic and everything crazy.

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