A Decade Of Mediocrity

So, Happy Katana is officially 10 years old as of June 23rd (though the first post on the site doesn’t turn 10 until August 10th). Can I just say that that’s freaking wild? I never ever would have expected the site to still be around a whole decade later. A lot has changed in that time, both on the internet and in real life. And we have lasted through all of that. I know this hasn’t been the most reliable website in terms of frequent content, but I love writing these articles more than you can know. And I truly appreciate everyone who has supported us over the years. I hope anyone reading this enjoys what we put out, and I want to give a huge thanks to all the people out there who read these articles and continue to support us. I love every comment that y’all have posted, even the negative ones. And I can’t tell you how happy I am seeing even the tiniest amount of views whenever I look through the site stats.

So thank you very much, from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for reading what we write. Thank you for your comments. Thank you to all the people who have shared our articles on other websites and social media. Thank you for getting us to nearly 400k (!) views. And most of all, thank you for being so damn awesome! I love each and every one of you. Here’s to another 10 years of being a fairly decent pop culture website. Cheers!

Update And Plans For The Future

Oh wow, I’ve actually been doing a good job of providing content for this little pop culture website. I never would have thought it a few months ago, but I recently rediscovered my passion for writing and I’ve been having a blast writing these articles for you guys. Like I’ve stated previously, I won’t make any promises, but I love being back in the game, and I have a few plans for Happy Katana.

• More Pokemon reviews. Super predictable, but these aren’t going away anytime soon.
• I am currently working on a ranking of Super Mario 64 courses from least favorite to favorite. Mario 64 is my all time favorite game, and I’ve always wanted to talk in depth about it.
• Speaking of video games, remember that GameCube tribute I wrote a few years ago? The one I never finished? Well, going back to it today is incredibly embarrasing. I was a very mediocre writer back in those days, so I’d just like to start from scratch and reboot the whole thing. My writing has improved tremendously with experience, and I feel like I could really do the Purple Lunchbox justice with a clean slate.
• You’re going to be seeing a lot more album reviews in the future. These are the articles I have the most fun writing, and I feel as if I’m at my best writing about music. I will start working on a review of Weezer’s Pinkerton very shortly, and there will be many more in the future. I would also like to eventually write some music related lists. And I plan on putting forth a defense of mumble rap and why it’s not as bad as some people feel. Obnoxious boomer oldheads can fuck off.

Anyways, thank you for checking in and staying with Happy Katana through all these turbulent and often barren times. Thankfully, I’ve found my love for writing again and plan on giving you a lot more content in the future.

What’s Up, Ketchup?

How’s it going, everybody? Well, “everybody” is kind of a strong word. Does anyone even remember this website? I know it started to get fairly popular in 2013 and 2014, but due to years of very infrequent updates and my apparent inability to actually promote my site in any capacity, Happy Katana has fallen very far in relevance, and this was never a famous, mainstream site to begin with. Oh well, no big deal. After all, I only do this for fun rather than fame. With that pointlesss intro paragraph out of the way, here’s some plans for the future:

• More Pokemon reviews. Like I’ve said in the past, I don’t have nearly as much free time to dedicate to writing as I used to, and these Pokemon reviews are shorter and much easier to write while still providing new content.
• I have written a few album reviews in one of my journals from the Music Banter forum. I plan on bringing those over to Happy Katana, as the music related content on this site is sorely lacking. Some of those reviews include Clarity by Jimmy Eat World and Something To Write Home About by The Get Up Kids.
• I would also like to write some new album reviews that are entirely exclusive to this site. Some of the ones I’d like to get to off the top of my head are The Blue Album and Pinkerton by Weezer, Dirt by Alice In Chains, Through Being Cool by Saves The Day, and Hearts Once Nourished With Hope And Compassion by Shai Hulud.
• Of course, more video game content, especially reviews. Video games are more or less the backbone of this site. Hell, Happy Katana probably wouldn’t even exist were it not for video games. I would, however, like to move towards some more underrated gems. I don’t necessarily mean completely obscure or unknown games, but definitely lesser talked about and unfairly hated. With the exception of my Smashing Drive review, my past articles have covered games that are done to death. As great as Super Smash Bros. Melee and Ocarina Of Time are, everyone and their grandmother have already talked about those games. I might do a review of a super mainstream title once in a while, but only if I can bring something different to the table so as not to give you something as stale as day old bread.
• Speaking of reviews, I plan on almost completely doing away with scores. I will continue using my grading system for Pokemon reviews, but that’s only because my opinions on different Pokemon vary wildly, so it makes sense to keep the scores to give you a general idea of how much I like or dislike each Pokemon. As for everything else, I’m really only going to review things I like, so there’d be very little variety in the scores. It’s just kinda pointless to use a grading scale when the majority of the ratings will never even be used. If I covered more terrible content, it’d be a different story, but as an adult who’s constantly being raped by life and responsibilities, I honestly have no desire to slog through stuff I don’t enjoy.
• Come back for a little bit and make a couple of posts, then go on yet another hiatus for a year or longer and do none of the things I just listed.

That last one was a joke, by the way, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that happened considering this site’s history. Anyway, if you somehow still follow my site, I want to thank you for sticking around so long and putting up with the lack of new content. In the meantime, I hope you continue to enjoy this fairly decent pop culture website.

Wow, It’s Been A Long Time

So uh… Yeah. That Kakuna review I posted was my first post on this site in over two years. That’s a long time. I know I’ve been doing a terrible job of keeping this site updated. Unlike every other time though, I’m not going to promise constant content from here on out. As you can tell, I’m bad at keeping those promises. I’m just so busy all the time, and I only have a phone to write with, it’s hard to focus on this little pop culture website of mine. Gone are the glory days of 2013 and 2014 when we were getting articles out left and right. However, I will say that the Pokemon reviews are short and easy enough to write on a more consistent basis, so if anything, Happy Katana will probably shift focus to a Not All Pokemon Are Created Equal or Rate That Pokemon style Pokemon review blog for the most part for a while. I’m not promising anything, but I don’t see why I can’t at least do that. As it is though, Happy Katana will be a smaller scale website for a while.

So, uh…Hi?

Hey, guys. I’ve been gone for a very long time…sorry about that. I haven’t any wifi for over a year so that hasn’t really helped…but I plan on coming back! I want to get back into the game of giving you guys more music related content on this site. Worst songs of the year will be brought back, and so will best albums. I’ll try to review albums as much as I can, as well. So, starting next week, I hope to be getting some new content out there for you guys.

Happy Katana- State Of The Site In 2016

So, if you couldn’t already tell, I haven’t been doing the best job keeping Happy Katana updated. I haven’t had Wi-Fi for a few months, but then I said fuck it and am now going to start bringing my laptop to places with free Wi-Fi. This will afford me the opportunity to revive a site that I’m sure several people thought was dead. It doesn’t help that I haven’t been doing my part to keep the site strong with frequent articles. I hope to change that. Here are some things I hope to do to ensure that 2016 is the best year this site has had yet:

• I am currently writing a rant on modern gaming (very original, I know).
• I hope to actually get some work done on my Top 100 SpongeBob Episodes I’ve been promising since freaking 2013.
• I am in talks with a new writer, who will be joining the site very shortly. I also want to try to get some other writers on board.
• I want to do some other big lists. Perhaps a giant video game list, or a huge animated movie or animated series list.
• I would like to revive Disney Month especially.
• More articles on non gaming subjects. I do love writing about video games, so those articles won’t stop, but I do want some more representation for movies, sports, TV, music, and books.
• Update links and remove dead links. Also, I hate to say it, but I’m also deleting the forums and removing them from the front page. Not only have I gotten a virus from Forumotion in the past, and don’t want anyone else to get one, but the boards didn’t take off like I thought they would. Perhaps in the future when I know it’d be able to work out.

There’s more I’d like to do, but you get the general idea. I want to ensure that Happy Katana is back in order this year. So, with that in mind, I predict that 2016 will be a better year than the past few years.

I’m Not Dead

What’s this? An actual post on Happy Katana? What kind of Twilight Zone shit is this? So yeah, by now you probably thought Happy Katana was dead and would never come back. Well, I’m here to say that it is not dead, but it’s been on a sort of hiatus. You see, I haven’t had access to a computer in quite a long time until now. And don’t give me that “use a phone or iPod” crap, either, because WordPress doesn’t work for shit on mobile devices.

But yeah, the last post on here was in November, and honestly, I’m embarrassed, especially since I wasn’t exactly posting frequently then, either. I mean, this isn’t freaking Sydlexia. I kid, I kid. So, yeah, I hope to get this site back in order and return it to its former glory. You know, back in 2013, when I posted frequently and the future looked bright before my articles became more and more sparse. I plan to get some Pokémon reviews knocked out, and also finish my interview with a certain internet personality. Hopefully, the Happy Katana revival will be sooner, rather than later.

Introducing: Pokemon Reviews

Hello there, everyone. Today, I am going to start something new at Happy Katana. I am going to start reviewing Pokemon. I was influenced by the excellent Not All Pokemon Are Created Equal, which is one of my absolute favorite Pokemon sites, if not my favorite. Basically, his blog is him reviewing every single Pokemon. And it’s awesome. I was reading his reviews and thought “Hey, why can’t I do that?” A few reasons behind this:

1. I love NAPACE. Fantastic site, and I’d love to see more sites do that.

2. I love Pokemon. It’s probably my third favorite video game series of all time. And I would love to review them.

3. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t done the best job of updating the site frequently for a while now. There are a lot of articles I have in development right now (I promise, I’ll have the second part of my GameCube article and my big SpongeBob project finished at some point) and not enough finished. I have been doing a shitty job of writing on a consistent basis. This is something that will provide more content for the site. The reviews will be short and sweet, which will be significantly easier and less time consuming to write. Also, I like to think writing these reviews will help get me out of the writer’s block rut that I’m in and will inspire me to start writing more. Don’t think these reviews are just filler, though, and that I’m only writing them to keep the site updated. No, I’m reviewing the Pokemon because I love the series, and it’s something I would legitimately love to do. Seriously, this is going to be so much fun. More content is just icing on the cake.

Lo and behold, here we are. I do want to note that my scoring system will be different from his. While he uses a more traditional 1-10 scale, I will be using a letter grade scale. I always preferred that method of scoring than the 1-10 score. Without further adieu, let the reviews begin

100,000 Views!

Wow. Just, wow. I seriously can not believe the number of views we have. This is awesome! I would have never predicted Happy Katana to be this successful. Never. Seriously, I remember nearly a year after I created this website, I only had six views overall. Hell, I even made a post about it. Even at the beginning of 2013, which was shortly after I came back to the site and started truly taking it seriously, it only had 469. Hell, I remember being extremely excited when we reached 1,000. Now we have 100 times that. And it’s awesome! Seriously, I am so proud of myself (look at me and my giant ego) and everyone who writes here. Thank you Ashley, Brendan, Jacob, and Matt for helping me make Happy Katana an awesome website. It wouldn’t be nearly as good or as successful without you guys. And a gigantic thank you to everyone else who made this possible. Thank you, JEW, for designing our awesome banner. Thanks to friends and family for supporting us. Thank you to Robot Boombox, Zack’s Weekly Record, and Outskirt Noise for our first awesome collaboration. And most of all, thank you, Happy Katana fans! You are the reason we came this far. You who enjoy our articles. You who follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Those who share our articles on other websites (we’ve gotten a lot of traffic from people posting our articles on Reddit and their personal websites). You guys are awesome! We appreciate you supporting us throughout our history. Here’s to another 100,000!

Worst 4 Hit Songs of 2014 (So Far) Part 2

Okay, so this is a bit long over due. A lot has been happening lately in my life but I’m finally here to do part 2 of my most popular article yet! Yay! So, before we start, let’s just recap on the rules. There were only two, but they were:

1. The song didn’t have to come out in 2014, but it had to become popular in 2014

and

2. If rule number 1 applies, it must have been from 2013

Also, this is MY opinion. If you don’t agree with it, good for you. Like the songs for all I care. These are just my personal opinions and you don’t have to agree.

So, let’s stop wasting time and just get on to the list.