Otakuworld

[Mitsukara]

I've been wondering- Otakuworld seems to have been around for quite some time, and indeed is still being updated and worked on a bit today, but has very few ties with the Unicorn Jelly community. The sites' design and look seems to have stayed consistent for a long time, reminding me much of Unicorn Jelly and the Transsexual.org website. I also discovered that Otakuworld, too, has it's own forum, totally separate from this one, and the Kamishibai program seems to have yet another forum of it's own (with a more generic forum design than UJ or Otakuworld's- likewise, Otakuworld's forum design reminds me of the old UJ forum pre-2008).

But Otakuworld seems to require a subscription (a limited time one at that) to use a lot of it's features. I can't say I feel quite interested enough to actually do that, and I don't really have the money to spare, but I'm curious; how well is this still working out? Do you have a lot of subscribers?

Besides that, I'm curious about how much work Jennifer does in relation to the site. It seems like Stephen does a lot of work maintaining and updating things, but I don't know if Jennifer still makes a lot of current contributions to the site development or not.

Basically, I'm kind of curious about the whole site in general but not feeling intrepid enough to deeply plunge and check out the forums and such right now, nor subscribe to the site as I don't have the money for such things. But I'm curious if Jennifer or her spouses have any thoughts or comments on the nature of the site, if any of you would be interested and willing, to kind of explain what it's all about or talk about what's new with it or anything like that.

I was also curious as to whether any of the UJ community carries over to the Otakuworld/Kamishibai communities, since there are these two other related forums out there that I did not know of.

If this is kind of a lazy/redundant request on my own part as those answers could probably be found by better exploring the site, though, I understand that too ^^' just pondering it a bit, I guess. *shrugs*

[Relee]

I thought they sold Otakuworld years ago?

[Anna]

Naaa...
That wasn't Otakuworld!
http://otakuworld.com/

Otakuworld was my first experience with all that stuff here.
Some Kiss dolls were presented in a german PC magazine on a CD.
If you have seen a bunch of it you will understand why I liked it.
So I found it, did load down a lot, (and it is since a few years disapeared into the digital nirvana, german section).
And I discovered Unicorn Jelly, and I had a small look to the forum.
Similar, with a search about transsexualism..., I discovered there was a circle, no it was a ball, a sphere...
I decided to stay.

So that's my story...

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Stephen keeps Otakuworld going for as long as anyone is interested in it.

But I have not done anything on it for a very, very long time. Instead, I have been drawing cartoons for you.

[Relee]

Oh? Huh. I wonder where I got mixed up...

Oh yeah, HappyPuppy.

[Anna]

Stephen keeps Otakuworld going for as long as anyone is interested in it.

But I have not done anything on it for a very, very long time. Instead, I have been drawing cartoons for you.

Oh, that doesn't sounds like: "Hey, it makes fun!"

[Ashes]

What do I get for my subscription?


You get access to everything currently on Otaku World, without exception. More importantly, you help maintain the largest archive of anime and manga-related software on the Web.
...
Kisekae dolls, Kamishibai stories, Otaku Mascots, Game demos, Rare promotional demos, and informational articles. Otakuworld.com is a repository, a museum, of rare anime- and manga-related materials....

Just how big is Otaku World anyway?
Otaku World occupies about 3 gigabytes of hard drive space with over 6200 pages, 8000+ images, and 5700 download files. That doesn't include the hundreds of graphics used throughout the site. Otaku World uses a bit over 350 gigabytes of total bandwidth each month.

3 gigabytes doesn't sound like a lot nowadays. My 50 gigabyte HD is practically full, and I'm aching to get a new 1 terabyte (1024 gigabytes) HD. I have no reference frame in which to gauge how much 350 gigabytes of total bandwidth each month is.

To subscribe to Otaku World for a year costs $61.20. For $10 more I could subscribe to D&D Insider and get Dragon magazine, Dungeon magazine, previews and playtests of upcoming book material, the D&D Compendium, the Character Builder, and the Monster Builder.

Can you give an example of what kinds of things I'd get from subscribing to Otaku World? "6200 pages, 8000+ images, and 5700 download files" isn't very descriptive. Pages of what? Images of what? Scans of rare manga? What are the download files? Nothing but KISS dolls and amateur kamishibai? How often do you add new material?

Roughly how many subscribers do you currently have? Do you often get people who subscribe for one month, download everything, and then leave forever?

I'm very curious. The Otaku World website is vague and honestly not selling itself well.

[Mitsukara]

I'm kind of with Ashes on this. It's interesting in certain ways, but the site feels a bit like some sort of mysterious magical relic from the past. What does a subscription offer? What does the site primarily do, and what new stuff is it up to? Is there any community overlap at all between Otaku World's forum (and The Kamishibai forum) and this one? What are we missing out on, if not?