Akemi's Anime World FAQ

These are some frequently asked questions about Akemi's Anime World. If you have a question that isn't answered here, contact us, and we'll try to reply.

Q: Are you Akemi?

A: No. Not exactly, anyway. Most of the writing at this site (unless credited otherwise), and all of the management, is done by Marc Marshall (aka "Makosuke"), her husband. The name was her idea, of course (not that I'm complaining), and she does offer executive oversight, but most of the work isn't hers. She did design the new logo, and most translations and Japanese cultural notes are checked with her, since she's native Japanese.

Q: I want to link to your site. Is that OK?

A: Of course, and there's no need to ask permission. This is the web, and the whole point is that everything is connected. Link to the site or any individual page, though we do suggest that your links have good descriptions in their text--that's always a good idea.

Q: Can I copy reviews (or other writing) from your site and put them on mine?

A: No. As is the case with most websites, linking is great, but we don't generally allow other sites to copy material directly from AAW for publication on another site. There's really no reason for that, anyway, since you can just link to our pages and let people read the information at the original source.

Q: Can you send me pictures/music/whatever from [insert series here]?

A: No. We don't have the time or the desire. Try doing a search on Google--you'll almost certainly find lots.

Q: Who is your webhost?

A: DreamHost. They've got reasonable prices, a whole pile of features, and best of all, they're nice people. I think they're one of the best in the business (for what AAW needs, anyway), and we wouldn't be here if they weren't.

Q: I want to start my own site. Can you recommend a good webhost?

A: See above. And despite the fact that we get referral credit if you sign up through a link here, I wouldn't recommend them if I didn't think they were that good (besides, why else would we be with them?). There are many other good ones, too, some cheaper, some with more features; A Small Orange is the only one I'm familiar with that I've heard good things about. If you do decide to go with DreamHost, you can use the promo code "AAW50OFF" when you sign up to get $50 off your hosting plan.

Q: Will you put my site's banner on your site?

A: While we are open to tasteful, inconspicuous paid advertising, if we displayed banners for every site that requested it, that's all you'd see on the main page.

Q: When are you going to review [insert series here]?

A: Someday. Maybe. Or not. Since we don't do this as a job, our reviewers have a limited amount of time to spend writing reviews. We'd love to review everything, but that's not possible, so we stick to what we've been watching recently, be it new, old, popular, or obscure. In fact, we tend to skip really popular series, since they're already covered almost everywhere. You can always submit your own review, of course.

Q: Can I help?

A: Maybe. We certainly can't pay you, and we can't even offer much credit, but if you'd like to help out we are looking for people willing to volunteer a bit of time. If you want to write reviews, getting started is easy--just start with the reader review form, do a good job, and we'll publish it. If, over time, you establish some dedication to this site and a high quality of writing, we'll consider offering you a permanent spot as an official reviewer, but your reviews get published either way. If you have other talents that you'd like to volunteer (or no useful talents, but some free time you want to offer) contact us, and we'll see if we can do something to reduce your boredom.

Q: I want to merge my site with yours. How 'bout it?

A: No. If you want to volunteer some time to AAW, let us know, and if you're desperately seeking to donate a site you're no longer caring for or can't afford to host, we'll see what we can do. Otherwise, AAW is AAW, and will remain such--we don't have any particular interest in combining with another site, since we like this one the way it is.

Q: What tools do you use to make this site?

A: All the writing on the site, as well as all XHTML and CSS is done in BareBones' TextWrangler (before that existed we used BBEdit Lite; both are fantastic text editors). Scripts are edited with the freeware Smultron, spellchecking is done with the built-in MacOS spellchecker, and uploads are done with Starways Software's Interarchy (version 8 as of this writing). Screen captures are currently done with VLC, and post-processed with Lemke Software's GraphicConverter. Some graphic work is also done with Seashore, an open source image editor based on GIMP. It all lives in a little, carefully backed-up folder on my hard drive, and gets uploaded to a DreamHost webserver in Southern California when something changes.

The site was originally made from hand-pasted-and-linked templates. Now, most static pages are generated using the Perl module Webmake from text files and XHTML templates hand-coded in TextWrangler; a few pages (like this one) are still handwritten. Everything should be standards compliant (valid XHTML 1.0, either Strict or Transitional, depending on the page), with the possible exception of the occasional adbox, which we don't have any control over. All styles are supplied through CSS2 (even a bit of CSS3, which you'll see if your browser supports it). Data on the static pages is occasionally supplemented a bit through SSI includes. Dynamic pages are generated using an assortment of open-source freeware or custom-built scripts (mostly PHP, some Perl), with a MySQL database backend.

Page testing is done on pretty much every available browser either running directly (cross-platform browsers), or (for IE) via a Virtual Machine running under Parallels Desktop.

The computer in question, if you're really curious, was a PowerMac 6500 running MacOS 8 or 9 up until 2001, at which point everything moved to a dual G4 533 running MacOS X, then on to the current machine, a dual G5 2.0GHz (rev. A) with 2.5GB RAM, running MacOS 10.4.7 as of this writing, or whatever is the latest. I also recently added a 17" MacBook Pro (2.16GHz Core Duo, 1st gen) to do much of the work from bed.

Q: How do you do the graphics?

A: All original art is hand-drawn with pencil and paper. It is then inked and scanned (Canoscan N670U currently). Finally, the line art is cleaned, colored, edited, and composited in either Photoshop or Seashore. All graphics work is (currently) done on one of the computers listed above, or the artist's computer (20" iMac G5 1.8GHz with Adobe's CS1 suite as of this writing).