Five Years
I actually missed this by around two weeks, but I note with passing interest that Hunting the Elusive is now five years old. On 20 February 2005, I decided to start a blog. Hosted on Blogspot, it was like any other venture by any other person out there, a trickle of content read by but a few. Unable to sustain even this trickle, the blog saw a last post on 9 September 2005. Hunting the Elusive back then was a very different creature to what it is today (content-wise, I mean; the interface has pretty much stayed the same due to laziness), so maybe if you wanted to nitpick, you would put the real start date in July 2006, when the blogging once again started with vengeance. Still, I will cite The Ship of Theseus in maintaining that this blog has been the same entity since that day five years ago.
Of course, all that old content is still there in the archives, accessible via the right hand column, complete with grammatical mistakes, weird turns of phrases and broken links. Actually, the old blogspot blog is still there too.
Following the resurrection of this blog, in October 2006, I established pireze.org and moved to Dreamhost servers and the WordPress platform. Dabbling with various aspects of elusiveness, including fansubbing, I eventually settled into the what used to be a relatively niche area of illustrations and illustrators. The landscape has changed since then, of course, and it's anyone's guess what the future holds for Hunting the Elusive, given its titular raison d'etre. Heck, I hardly know myself.
I should also note that on 22 February 2009, roughly four years after Hunting the Elusive started, I launched Pixels on Pireze, a gallery dedicated to photography, and that has been going strong since then, in terms of content anyway (I don't actively track traffic). In a way, I guess, I should also be celebrating the one year anniversary of Pixels.
Still, five years...! Gosh, that's a pretty long time on the Internet. In this time, I've seen giants rise and fall, friends lapse into the silent darkness, and made new acquaintances, acquired new skills. I'm not a community person, nor have I been tempted by the current waves of UGC and social media, but I'd like to think of Hunting the Elusive as a slow-and-steady lighthouse standing in seas calm or stormy. Eventually, as with all things, it must fall, its lights darken, its rumblings abate, but not today.
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Wow, that is a long time.
Congrats. :D
Your site is a really great place. o/
Gratz on the five year blog anniversary, Icie! I’ve been meaning to give my own site a whole new re-design too.
As the Chinese saying goes, “創業難 守業更難 – It’s hard to start a business but even harder to keep it running.” But I’m sure your site will stay strong with all the portrait photos and rare artbook releases you’ve been sharing! :D
頑張れ～
Congrats icie! I’m going to hit 5 years of blogging this year as well, so I know how you feel too!
Hope to see your continued presence too, I really like reading all your artbook reviews.
>> 20 February
>> 20 February
>> 20 February
The blog is mah clone
I think I first stumbled upon your blog when I was looking around for more info about the artist little moa about 2 years ago when I had just finished watching Pale Cocoon.
I believe myself to be quite competent when it comes to googling but my efforts to find even the smallest tidbit of information about her seemed impossible until I came upon hunting the elusive. I still remember the post of VALB next and your reasons for sharing it because of little moa’s presence on the tracklist.
I quickly expanded my interests in the material you brought along with your blog despite it having shifted from a variety of materials to mostly scans. Even so, I still check hunting the elusive on a regular basis and I’m sure many other silent but faithful readers do as well.
Sometimes you don’t need a raison d’etre other than for the heck of it. Here’s me giving my thanks and congratulations on the 5-year milestone.
Congrats! Damn, five years ago I wasn’t in full time work, I didn’t have my own place…hell, I wasn’t even the fan of weird and wonderful J-culture things that I am today. So yeah, it’s a long time by my standards too, but especially in internet terms when blog lifespans are measured in months rather than years.
I stumbled on this site when trying to find Shinkai fansubs and info on Yoshiura’s stuff (Pale Cocoon and Time of Eve). I’m more of a lurker than a regular commenter but I’ve quietly admired your coverage of artbooks and occasional music posts too. Keep up the good work, I guess. :)
As PhusyBuny said, “Even so, I still check hunting the elusive on a regular basis and I’m sure many other silent but faithful readers do as well. ” and I’m one of them. I’m a silent reader who come here on a regular basis but I decided to at least post one comment to thank you for all your effort and all your scan. Thanks to you, I discovered a lot of artists.
Hunting the Elusive will always be my first source of new knowledge !
Congratz to you and I hope Hunting the Elusive will continue the longer possible (sorry for my english)
happy birthday~
Happy anniversary! Or is it Happy Birthday?
Either way I’m glad you keep this thing running, I’ve seen lots of interesting and elusive (!) things here over the time I’ve known the site. Thanks icie!
congrats on your 5th year XD !!
You’re site have inspired me in many ways ^w^ keep it up !!
- Rain