Did you know it has been five and a half years since I started The Kaijuologist? I started my blog on Blogspot back in December 2016 and made my first post in January 2017 with a book review of "A Monster Calls" followed up with the movie review. This was followed up with reviews of Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Kong-athon, the review of Kong: Skull Island, reviews of South Korean monster movies such as Yongary and The Host, reviews of the Nemesis series, and ending the year with a Godzilla-thon and video game reviews. You can check out all of these in the 2017 archives under the Archives page on my blog and you can tell the difference how my style of writing my reviews has changed over the years.
Back when I first started my blog, my aim was to reach out to as many people as I can that have similar interests in movies and media as I do. I wanted to be like everyone else and have a voice with my own thoughts and opinions out there. I was mainly inspired by Rob Rosado and his YouTube channel Entertainment Talk Nation (ETN). His focus was simple and straight forward: talk about entertainment and only do it as a hobby. Never make it a full-time job or a source of income. So I wanted my focus to be similar. However, there were a couple of major hiccups.
My first hiccup was that I never liked how my voice sounded after recording. Every time I hear my voice in a video or audio recording I cringe every time. I feared that with my voice would turn people away from my content. Second hiccup was my ADD/ADHD. I get distracted really easily and I find myself stuttering no matter if it's scripted or not. The stuttering is caused by the process of how I want to get my thoughts and reasons clearly and also my brain going three sentences ahead of what I am trying to say. Lastly, there were already a bunch of YouTube channels covering Godzilla and the kaiju genre already. At the time, we had Gojifan1993, DMan1954, Monstrosities, Alteori, ETN, Dangerville, Omni Viewer, Methlokaiju, and Monster Island Buddies that all covered similar content in their own way. Many of them are still around to this day and going strong. By turning The Kaijuologist into a blog, it helped mitigate these issues. I can talk about anything I want to talk about clearly without that fear of having to hear my voice and stand out from other content creators.
I also find with a blog, I can also get my posts out a lot quicker without dealing with editing videos. Any edits I would have to do is for images on Photoshop and even then it is minimal and now used to make my cover for all of posts. After I have typed out my thoughts, I post it, share it on social media, and it's all done. Overall, keeping my blog simple played the key factor in design and in my posts.
When it all comes down to it, my blog lasting five and a half years is all thanks to you guys. I know that I don't have 100,000 followers on Youtube or anywhere on social media. To be honest, I still see my blog as just a hobby that I do when I can find the time. However, what makes my blog special is you guys having been around for so long and still read my posts to this day. I find just having a little over 1,000 followers is just as big of an achievement for a blogger as a YouTuber that reached 100,000 followers. If not for all of you, then I would have quit a long time ago. The kaiju genre is a niche genre and I thought that I would not be around for this long. You guys proved me wrong and with stuff like Pacific Rim, the Monsterverse, the Reiwa era of Godzilla, etc. more fans are created and they want to know more about the genre.
I can't say for sure where The Kaijuologist will be in another five years, but I hope that I will still be around to continue sharing my ideas and opinions just like you guys have. Hopefully in five years, you guys will still be around sharing your thoughts and opinions. So thank you, all of you, for being around this long and lets make the next five years monstrously awesome.