Blogging on Blogs: Jurnal Otaku Indonesia

Earlier, I had mentioned that a local online news portal for all things of Japanese and specifically otaku culture is about to shut its doors as this month turns over. Since Pokémon is in many ways related to that, the news portal naturally contains news about Pokémon things as well. With that in mind, I thought I'd highlight the news portal before it shutters starting next month and how it covers Pokémon in a "Blogging on Blogs" manner. Now, the news portal isn't exactly a blog, but many of its contributors have a blog-style approach to writing their articles, so it may be indirectly considered a blog and can be discussed in the same way as one, moreover for obvious reasons to be detailed.

The news portal is called Jurnal Otaku Indonesia. Because of its name, it becomes clear that the site is in Indonesian and serves the needs of otaku in Indonesia, though it may not be hard for those well-versed in the culture but don't know the language to follow along. It also has "Jurnal" (journal) in its title, in some ways evoking a blog aura. And as mentioned, the news portal has existed for a number of years, and it has become extensive over those years. So too is the coverage of Pokémon things, which has its own categorical section like other very popular things that hail from the Land of the Rising Sun. For this post, the emphasis is obviously on the Pokémon section and the content contained therein.

The content in that section is as one would expect, with details on niceties such as the remake of the first Mystery Dungeon games and the "GOTCHA!" music video from the past year. However, the news portal is also not afraid to report on what I would call "the darker side of things", such as a Pokémon Go foray that got too violent and a ranking of Pokémon that possess many adult (18+) fanart on one such site. The site is a news portal after all, so it has to serve up at least some balanced content, though of course readers are free to read articles that delight them and avoid the ones that don't.

News portals and their offline cousins of newspapers and magazines also (may) feature regular rubrics of some kind. The news portal discussed here recently implemented one such rubric for the localized edition of the TCG, called "Pokémon Card of the Day". By its title, it was intended to be a daily thing (as mentioned in one edition), much like how posts on this blog are a daily thing, but only seven editions - each somewhat distanced for more than a day - ended up being created due to the writer's other businesses. One can now only wonder how it would look like had it been successful as a daily thing.

And with the impending shuttering of the news portal, one can only wonder how things would be if the local news portal wasn't forced to shut down. Yet, otaku culture and Pokémon as a part of it will always have their fans, and they'll carry on with or without the news portal. Regardless, the closure of the news portal is likely to leave a hole for local fans of either or both. One may hope that the hole can be filled at a later time by someone who is willing enough to satisfy the needs of those fans as the two areas continue to develop.

Goodbye, Jurnal Otaku Indonesia, and best wishes to wherever its people may go.

One year ago: Tournament: Raid Group Sorcerous Cup

Two years ago: Pokémon Go Event Rollup, 6/29/2019

Three years ago: Monotype (of) Sorts

Four years ago: 3DS Circle Pad and Pokémon Games... Plus My Experience