Year In Review 2014

It's been a while since I did one of these year-in-review things.  I passed it up last year (referring to 2013) because I had put off my bottom-ten and top-ten song lists to the last minute and was too busy finishing those.  And I shall continue to put it off because this isn't a year-in-review article in the traditional sense, where I categorise the year's current events in some capacity.  Instead, I will focus on my personal developments over the year, or lack thereof.  Narcissistic you may call me, but by doing so I hope to reveal my plans for the SDP going forward, and for other projects of mine.

You may have noticed a sharp lack of SDP output this year, on both the blog and video fronts.  Yeah, somehow 2014 was, if not a bad year for the SDP, then at least a year of decline.  There are a couple of reasons for this.  Most of my articles and scripts are written during the lunch breaks at my job, but during the first quarter of the year I instead got hung up on planning a holiday in Japan.  (Which was way nice, if you were wondering.)  But even afterwards I just couldn't pick up the momentum again, and I am at a loss as to why.

And that's not to say I was lacking in inspiration, per se.  For example, you may recall a certain incident, or so I would have you believe, that happened at the Academy Awards this past year.  I felt like [noun] after first hearing the news, and even worse when I attempted to write a second article about it, sometime just before Thanksgiving.  Well, doing so got me so depressed that I deleted my work on that article entirely, because of how bad writing it made me felt.  Then, I had a talk with my parents, which I took two things from.  One, these sorts of developments are out of my control and I should just accept them.  Which I was hesitant to accept since, as I thought when dealing with the Mega Man Legends 3 crisis a few years ago, I regarded as tantamount to admitting defeat.

But rather than actually admitting defeat, I used the opportunity to renew my interest in re-writing my novel series Sapphire, which I'm thinking of renaming to the Indigo Children series.  In fact, I've made a New Year's resolution to myself of getting at least a finished first draft done.  The reason I bring this up is because it is my end goal to have these stories adapted into video games and movies, specifically anime, or anime-style, traditionally-animated productions.  After all, there's a certain quote, apocryphally attributed to Mohandas Gandhi, which I found really inspiring: "We need to be the change we wish to see in this world."  So if I want my people to take animation seriously, I need to start making the products that will do so.  And this change will not come instantly, but this is something I'm willing to accept.

But the greatest obstacle to this goal seems to be my own willpower.  I had written and published the earlier Sapphire novels online on my deviantART account, but my interest in that faded right around the time I started writing for this very blog.  Thus, looking forward, 2015 will be the year of Indigo Children, or at least a year of transition from the SDP to Indigo Children.  But that's not to say I'm giving up on the SDP entirely.  There are still a few reviews I wish to make before retiring the brand entirely.  Links will be provided to the below reviews as they are made available.

Video Games
Sonic the Hedgehog (Sega Genesis, 1991)
James Bond 007: The Duel (Sega Genesis, 1993)
Time Crisis (Arcade et al, 1995)
Power Stone (Arcade et al, 1999)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PlayStation 2 et al, 2001)
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (PlayStation 3 et al, 2014)
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse (Nintendo 3DS et al, 2014)

Music
Invisible Touch by Genesis (1986)
The Heist by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (2012)
"Latch" by Disclosure & Sam Smith (2013)

Movies
Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
The Wind Rises (2013)
The Interview (2014)

TV & Anime
Sailor Moon (1992)
Totally Spies (2001)
Sailor Moon Crystal (2014)

Again, change doesn't happen overnight.  But if you still love the SDP, that also means it won't be going away overnight either.  Just allow me to leave you with these words:

This is IchigoRyu.

You are the resistance.