Who runs this place, anyway?
Name of your host on this Spellbook: MagicConan14 – also known under multiple other aliases. The most commonly-seen alias around WordPress is “Aria” (not to be confused with Aria the Animation, the manga that spawned that show or the owner of Fujinsei). For some context regarding some of the many names, see this post.
Pronoun/s: Anything gender-neutral or female is fine, so long as it matches the alias you’re using.
Blogging speed: Erratic. It is only due to the Scheduler content comes at least once a week without fail, give or take long-term collabs, blog projects, award posts and seasonal posts. If there is something that does manage to hold a post back, MagicConan14 will make sure to notify you.
Husbando/s: Many, although if you had to restrict them to one, they’d probably claim En from Binan Koukou Chikyuu Boueibu LOVE!. Some are gender-neutral and so technically shouldn’t count…
Language/s: Predominantly English. Worked on Japanese from 2011 – 2018 + 2020 – present. Could use Chinese (both simplified – i.e. Mandarin – and traditional – i.e. Cantonese), but doesn’t bother.
Description: MagicConan14 is an opinionated person with an eye for small details and odd post topics, found most commonly in the form of editorial-style posts here. They’ve dealt with anime, manga and associated loves for almost as long as they’ve been alive and so it’s a miracle they haven’t run out of things to say about their favourite media, considering they’ve pretty much given up on books that aren’t light novels/manga.
When they aren’t consuming anime/manga or blogging, they might be playing their latest game addiction (which could range anywhere from an otome game to a match 3 to trying to defeat gyms in Pokemon Emerald/Pokemon Black 2 for the umpteenth time), actually getting something done regarding Japan-related topics (including the Japanese language)/IT/international studies…or just dealing with life as it comes. (In short, they have successfully completed a Bachelor of Arts and are currently working on a Master’s of Interpreting and Translation Studies in translation only.)
You can find their favourite anime/manga by checking out that one link that isn’t WordPress in the top bar – that’s MagicConan14’s AniList. Generally, they prefer action or comedies, although their highest ratings can sometimes go towards tragic romances instead.
What’s the Spellbook?
This blog. It officially began on November 21st 2017, but was in planning for a few days beforehand. Even though it deals with MagicConan14’s real life experience a lot, hopefully someday a sort of fantasy narrative can be spun out of it too, to make a unique experience of a blog.
See an example of what the fantasy narrative could be like with the Spellbooks and Horoscopes collab.
What’s this Tumblr MagicConan14 keeps referring to?
It’s Courage, a Word of Justice more often than not. It’s where more analytical posts have failed due to the difference in audience, and so in order to bring the posts to their intended audience, this blog was created. Courage is a more relaxed establishment than here, so if you find the discussion here not that fun, you can head there instead. The most notable thing about Courage is its simulcast commentaries – episodic notes on each episode (give or take a few episodes depending on circumstances) of certain simulcasts. These can sometimes be blamed for spawning entire posts for Weekly Wednesdays and you can sometimes see simulcast-commentary-like posts on the Spellbook.
If, however, you are a magical girl or magical boy fan, you might want to check out their sideblog Magical Girls…and Cerulean. It’s also a more casual establishment than the Animanga Spellbook, but it (mostly) keeps up to date on the latest stuff in those spheres. It is for this cause that they keep up-to-date on anime and manga news.
Why are they not linked on the top? Well, as explained earlier, it’s the fundamental difference in audience. It’s better to drive them apart rather than put them together.
What’s a good place to start on the Spellbook?
Any place is a good place (pretty much) since posts are normally self-contained, but if you’re interested, check out Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and Gender, which is the first blog post they did in the writing style they use for WordPress.
What’s Weekly Wednesday?
It’s a series of posts that can discuss anything and everything from the hot new show to problems with the fandom. They tend to be on the analytical side with an essay-like structure.
What’s the Ode to Anime Studios?
It’s a series of posts about what its title says. They are intended to be studio appreciation blog posts for the most part, so if there are any negative opinions about a studio, there should be positive ones to counteract that. They are also the only posts on the Spellbook to have proper Harvard-style referencing in them.
The title of this series is meant to be a play on words with the Beethoven song Ode to Joy, but while MagicConan14 was importing the post, they realised the pun isn’t that obvious…
Note: This post series was discontinued after the move to the erratic schedule.
What’s Must-read Monthly Monday?
A round-up post for the past month (or whatever time period is covered) plus some nice reads (mostly anime/manga-related, although there may also be blogging-related or more miscellaneous ones as well) from around the internet. Note: This post series was discontinued after the move to the erratic schedule.
What’s OWLS?
The Otaku Warriors for Liberty and Self-Respect. Normally the standard intro should be present for every OWLS post (it goes something like “we are a group of bloggers that promote acceptance, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation or disability”), but if there isn’t, you can find out more about the group here.
OWLS posts generally have a theme upon which the team writes about (a non-anime-specific theme, although most OWLS people are anime/manga bloggers) and occasionally, there are livestreams discussing these posts…You can find Aria in exactly one OWLS livestream. (My voice sounds stupid upon playback, so don’t go hunting for it.)
What about other posts?
- Despite their name, posts under the “award” category include tag posts. This is why the TBR/W posts go under that category.
- “Collab” category posts include those with a very loose collaboration structure, such as #AniTwitWatches.
Who’s “Heart Hope”?
Just an original character whose story, Half-Paid Heroes, I was writing around the time of this blog’s creation, to the point where I almost considered calling the blog Heart Hope’s Hypotheticals. She’s basically the de facto mascot around these parts for that reason.
Anything else?
- Feel free to critique MagicConan14 on anything you think they could improve on, blog- or writing-wise.
- One of the header images – the partial image of the book – is from a Google search which is then filtered for “labelled for reuse” and “labelled for reuse with modification”. Other header images have also been found in this way, if not created from either existing or original image elements by MagicConan14. The image used to represent MagicConan14 and the image used to represent the Spellbook are original creations of MagicConan14’s, although the avatar was originally made at Picrew’s Strong Woman Maker (see link above) or Picrew’s RAVOM maker.
- Italics are used on works’ titles, emphasis and, occasionally, sarcasm. If they’re used on words of non-English origin (especially Japanese ones that are baked into the fanspeak, e.g. “isekai”), then they might be inconsistent across different posts, but phrases which are italicised as a standard practice (e.g. “modus operandi”) should be.
- If you have spare change, you can throw your money at the Ko-fi, via the right-most link on the top bar. That said, it’s understandable if you’re not in a position to give – this place will stay free for as long as it exists.
[More to come when it needs to be addressed. This page was last updated on April 7th, 2022.]
The Animanga Spellbook 