On 21 May 2006, The Otaku’s Study (
then known as Sam’s Anime Study) first opened its doors. I launched the site initially on the AnimeBlogger blogging service, dedicated chiefly to websites focusing on episodic anime reviews and the odd editorial or news piece. It was created on a whim. The site was something I had frankly at the time, never expected to last more than a week before changing interests as I typically did at the time – here we are today celebrating the site’s 15th Anniversary.
Inspired by popular sites at the time, such as Random Curiosity and other names of the AnimeBlogger community back in the day, The Otaku’s Study was initially based on the format of episodic anime reviews. These would usually take recently aired anime episodes in Japan, take screencaps from them, summarise the narrative and then write a quick opinion piece on them. Back before it became effortless to find a great collection of affordable anime collections either via your local retailer or official anime streaming service – for some shows, this was one of the only ways for fans to keep up with a stories.