Let me set the record straight before I get started.

I don’t like doing these pledge drives. Nor do I like asking for financial support (How? Via Patreon, Ko-fi, PayPal, and Commissions mainly – see below). It would be great if I was independently wealthy and could do this for the sheer joy of it. But something I like even less is the idea of this site ceasing to exist, which is exactly what will happen if I don’t do at least one fundraising campaign per year (and if it’s not mostly successful). So I do them – not because I want to, but because the alternative is worse.

Some of the reasons why that harsh assessment is true are obvious. Hosting a website is expensive, and gets more so every year (my new hosting plan was almost double the cost of the old one). There are a lot of other financial costs involved in running the site, all of which I bear myself. If this was a part-time gig for me, a few hours a week, I could get to the point where at least LiA paid for itself and I might be able to justify continuing it.

But here’s the thing. I work full-time at a “real” job, and not a particularly well-compensated one. Inflation has finally come to Japan, and it’s struck with a vengeance. So the hours I put into the site come at considerable personal expense, in more ways than one. And I’ll say this – however much time you think I put into LiA, I can almost guarantee it’s less than the reality. Probably a lot less. Look around the anime commentary landscape – how many sources offer the content I do? I’ll wait – I don’t think it’ll take you too long.

If you’ll indulge me, I want to talk for just a bit about history (grand as that sounds). I keep hearing about how anime blogs are relics, their time is over. And as I look around, the landscape has certainly gotten a lot more barren. But that makes LiA’s role that much more important, doesn’t it? I think there’s still a place on the net for long-form anime criticism. For analysis that looks beyond the official synopsis and doesn’t go for clickbait “reaction”. Maybe I’m wrong, and the doomsayers are correct. I guess this pledge drive will answer that one way or the other, but I certainly hope it proves me right.

There are no ads here. No paywalls. No content that only premium members get to see. I’ve resisted all those things, and seriously debated whether I would want to continue the site if I no longer could. Nope, it’s only you – the small percentage of you that choose to support the site financially. The debt of gratitude I owe all of you is immense, and humbling. Maybe it would be fairer if I did install gates, and make content available only to those of you that step up and support LiA financially. It’s something that’s always on my mind, and as the financial situation gets more dire every year, my consideration gets ever more serious.

For now, though, I’m going to do what I do every year – ask for your help. I’m setting the same goal I did last year – 50 new subscribers or $25 or higher one-time contributors. We didn’t quite hit it last summer – maybe in this day and age, it’s not realistic. But I have to hope it is, because if not things are going to get pretty dodgy for LiA. And in the big picture, that’s a pretty tiny percentage of the people who visit the site regularly. It’s an arbitrary number in some ways, but based on the realistic needs of the site. And it reflects that over the course of a year’s cycle, a certain number of patrons are going to drop away. It happens every time, and there’s nothing to be done about it.

Last year, I produced a fundraising video for the first time – with free (public domain) kittens! I wanted to talk in more detail – and in a more personal way – about why this site means so much to me, and hopefully to some of you as well. It’s a reflection of how swamped I am that I couldn’t produce a new one this time, but all the things it says are still valid (and the kittens are still cute).

And since these goals need a target date, let’s set one – three-plus weeks from now, October 20. I’ll post progress reports periodically.

Part of the goal here, again, is to avoid paywalls and tiered content. I do however offer some incentives for those who help out. I’m continuing to offer to the following supporters:

• Existing monthly patrons
• New monthly supporters (Patreon, Ko-fi, PayPal) who sign up in the next 21 days<
• Supporters who give a one-time pledge of $25 or more who sign up in the next 23 days

The following benefits:

• The right to vote for one series for me to pick up for the Fall (and future) seasons – the “Patron Pick”.  This can be anything from the schedule that I don’t decide to cover on my own – whatever wins your vote.
• Recognition at the end of future YouTube videos (and possibly posts too).
• The right to vote for one manga yearly (give or take) to cover on the My Taste is Better Than Yours podcast.

I’m always very interested in new ways to reward supporters, so if you have suggestions by all means please share them in the comments. One possibility I’m strongly considering is adding a LiA Discord server exclusively for supporters. As such I would love your feedback on that idea. Would it make you more likely to support the site, and is it something you would find useful?

How can you support LiA? As always, the links are in the sidebar. The most obvious methods are as follows:

• Patreon – Monthly Patron support (you set an amount per post, with whatever monthly cap you like).
• Ko-fi – Monthly subscription support at a level of your choosing. Ko-fi also offers the option of one-time pledges of support.
• PayPal – Monthly subscriptions or one-time pledges at a level of your choosing.
• Commissions – The LiA Bespoke program allows you to commission works ranging from haiku or top 5 lists to larger “best of” projects, editorials, and anime/manga reviews. General price levels are here, but you can reach out to me directly for case-by-case discussions.

I would also add that subscribing  to the LiA YouTube channel, as well as liking and commenting on videos, is very helpful towards the long-term goal of making the channel a means of additional financial support for LiA (and is of course free).

As always, I’m very grateful to everyone who reads, watches, listens and comments – and most of all, to those of you who support LiA financially. Here’s hoping we can keep making history together.