Hey guys, it’s finally here. With less than 30 hours until 2023, and this is our last post of 2022, we just wanna thank you guys for all of the love and support that you’ve given us throughout the year and then some. Things around D&A HQ haven’t always been smooth, but we’ve managed to persevere and continue to do what we do best. Although we’re rapidly approaching the new year, the future of D&A is still kinda up in the air; with aspects such as looking for more contributors (shout-outs to ‘JunoGuy’) to help run the ‘blog’ side of things, to convention appearances. We’ve actually had to take a step back these last few months due to burnout as well as life ‘stressors’, which meant we also had to scale back on the amount of content that we put up on our channel. We do however want to emphasize that ‘D&A’ as a blog, is not going anywhere. We are just in a period where we’re on the verge of redirecting our focus on other aspects of the blog; especially in the educational sector.

2022 has been a year of reflection, reevaluation, and revelations for D&A as a whole. What comes next can only be described as the ‘What Happens Now?’ phase of our 7-year tenure. (Kinda like the 7-year itch for marriages.) Should we get pulled out to a con, or we stumble upon some new material for our content, you’ll be the first to know – as we post or talk about on our podcast! This is pretty much it for this post, so until 2023, keep being nerdy! 😉

Well, 2022 is about to come to an end, and things around here have been pretty quiet. It’s not because there hasn’t been any ground-breaking anime titles to come out this season (other than Bleach and MHA Season 6), but after 900+ articles, posts, and reviews within the last 6-to-7 years, we’ve racked up some serious burnout mileage both mentally and creatively. Usually for most people, this is where you’d thank all of your fans for all of the love and support you’ve given them throughout their journey of being a blogger and content creator; followed by a tearful farewell video telling them that they appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to watch and like their content. Now before you guys get the wrong idea thinking that we’re walking away from being bloggers and content creators, we’re in more of a “what now?” situation than a “farewell” one.

We kicked off this adventure back in 2016 after making our debut at Animore in January of that year; then in 2017 we really got the ball rolling and made appearances at Animore, Zenkaikon, Nipponcon, CHS Otaku Fest, Saikucon, and ended the year at Anime USA. During the first two years we were quite active in the convention circuit as well as in the anime community, and right after our fifth appearance at Animore in 2020, the pandemic happened. Cons from all around the world were shutdown, thus causing many of them to go virtual or even on hiatus – many of which even closed their doors for good. For a lot of the major players in the convention scene, there were financial losses that caused them to downsize but not close down, while others managed to have enough in their reserves to keep them afloat until things got better.

Near the end of 2020 we decided to take a different route in terms of convention appearances by becoming full-fledged guests (contracts and all). There’s not much we can say on what’s in store for us in 2023 for a return to conventions, so we’re in a ‘wait-and-see’ period on that front. In some of our earlier posts we mentioned that we’re looking for writers and contributors for the blog, and the door is still open for those who wanna hit us up! Don’t worry about the steep 1,000-word requirements, just write whatever you want however you want it – as long as its related to the current content that we have on the blog already. We don’t have all the answers of what the next move for D&A will be in 2023; whether its downsizing our social media presence to a more manageable footprint, or redirecting our focus towards a different part of our brand. All we can say is that this is our “what now?” moment, and not a “farewell” one.