I am incredibly proud to welcome you to Run Around:Network (RA:N), where visual culture comes to life!
Today is the first day that this website is fully "launched", and from here on I'm going full steam ahead!
I wanted to write this welcome post, and include a little bit of brief history as to how this came to be.
Starting in 2005 with my Myspace blog called "The Run Around", I've been writing about Japanese pop-culture for 10 years.
I moved on from Myspace.com (like we all did) and sought better social media, however, I brought my blog to Google's blogspot service in 2008.
In 2009 I took things a step further and created "Run Around:Kazu" which was alive for about a year until I decided to create this very site in 2010.
Back then my posts mainly surrounded my life and hobbies, but I wanted to write about breaking and interesting news as a fan, and from a professional viewpoint.
In 2010 I had an extensive life-saving back operation, it put me a little bit out of commission but over a couple years I continued doing what I loved no matter what.
I've been working in sub-cultures surrounding what I call "Visual Culture" for a while now- you can learn deeper about my history and why I have such a silly name, like oppai so much, and put ranch on everything...no wait that's not covered...well anyways check here at my about page!
I plan on writing about a plethora of things, a small glimpse can be seen online already alongside some older coverage- and I hope you join me and continue to check in on what's going on at RA:N.
This site, here in 2015, has been a long process of elimination and hard work.
It had to happen at the right time, and I had to take some breaks from web-building at times to learn other skills or deal with other work.
I'm proud to say it is now live!
Rigorously I went through many designs in the development process of this site. Some things are still on the sidelines ready to pop as soon as there's a little more content that comes out.
A few months ago (and several times over the past couple years) I hit dead ends. "Designer's Block" similar to "Writer's Block" where one can't think of anything worth a darn to add to the project- kicked in viciously.
Not too long ago I dropped everything that was made (mostly) and started over.
To me, this is my masterpiece.
I wanted RA:N to really, actually represent a place that Visual Culture would come to life, and to do that it needed a theme.
That theme needed to be sleek, modern, accessible, easy on the eyes, feel new, but also feel familiar in a sense.
This site has features a lot of other sites have, I admit I took in as much inspiration as possible.
As I've already provided some early content before the big launch, as content increases there will be even more sections that will spawn to continue to organize the news even further.
Post pages are unique compared to most big journalism sites offering big impactful titles, and large high-quality photos.
It may feel even somewhat familiar at times but remains unique.
Many posts are a concept of photo, text, photo, text, etc. style posts, while others may be a quick tidbit of breaking news in more of a tabloid style- all of which are connected to the embedded comment system that connects users over multiple articles and feeds for a true immersive community feel as things progress.
Some posts are galleries, there's a couple up now- some are light and easy to digest.
This is the current and first true version of RA:N Mobile for smartphones and tablets. A little while back I picked up an exquisite ASUS tablet that runs on Android OS- was able to tool around with it over the last year and am now really digging all the development options that exist for mobile and tablet sites.
Pantsu also comes in at excellent 1080p HD quality as well.
RA:N Mobile will only improve more with time, but for now you'll find a pleasant feed of posts.
I sincerely hope you enjoy your time on this site, continuing to check back will only yield many more new posts as I will be dedicated to writing them daily, or else I will be beaten with a rusty...oh I'm not supposed to mention that nevermind. >.>
I've got quite a bit of contacts in the industry that allows me to be able to write a lot of breaking news, insider content, and much much more so do look forward. ^^
And don't forget about the community, listed amongst the navbar which holds a kind of ridiculous amount of topics I'll be covering, so many only someone who's gone completely mad would take on so much.
Posting on our community can get quality content of yours published on the main feed, so if you've got a blog you may want to share there. :P
As mentioned above you can find more about who I am and what exactly it is I do, and have been up to all this time- and you can get another look at what this site is about here.
And before I end here, I'd like to introduce you to our lovely site mascot!
Her name is Reika Fujishima [麗華藤島], and she represents this site as well as being one of the two main heroine's in my upcoming PC Action Visual Novel, which you can find all about on this page here.
The future is bright!
Stay tuned and check back often, save this to your favorites and home-screen right now.
If you've ever thought a thing should exist that:
- Includes all sorts of genre of visual culture
- Caters news to hardcore otaku, casuals, and many fandoms alike
- Has the balls to say what a lot of other sites do not want to say
- Isn't paid to give *random triple-A title* a 10 and *insert random JRPG* a 2 because there was a little moe' in it
- Loves and adores ALL game consoles, with a reasonable focus on new and old gen
- Talks about fan favorites and introduces you to hidden treasures as well
- Doesn't "flood" you with click-bait, but feeds you with information that holds weight
- Just basically hands you a bucket of awesome that you can trust, filled with explody bits of rainbows and glee, maybe some insanity...
- ...and works tirelessly against THE INJUSTICE OF MISREPRESENTATION OF INFORMATION
...then you've come to the right place. :)
I'm sick of other outlets. I have been for a long time.
I work with a lot of them, so don't get me wrong they're not all bad.
But this...this is how I run mine.
Thanks for running around with me...its going to be fun.
-Hikaru Kazushime
