Weekly Update! (August 15th 2025)

HELLO TOTALLY NOT MARKERS! (Why don't we have a fanclub name? This sucks.)

The majority of this week has been taken up with Vinland Saga shenanigans. Everyone on the team has read through the material for the first arc we'll be covering (Chapters 1 to 54), and while that was a reread for myself and Editor, this was Ajay's first experience with the story. He adored it, so that now makes all three of us frothing at the mouth with excitement to cover this story!

This week alone has seen me write nineteen pages of notes on the character work, themes, and historical elements that make up this very first story arc. There's something so exciting about reading the events of the manga while simultaneously studying the history that inspired it. I've written some stuff that I'm extremely proud of, and I can't wait to share that in the future.

My hope is to have a good 50% of the script finished off by the end of next week so I can begin planning out the trip element of this video. Vinland Saga encompasses quite a lot of countries, so I need to make sure I find the absolute best places to go to really add some exciting value to this video!

It's all been quite the learning process transitioning from narrated anime clips to this semi-documentary vibe. The various camera kit acquired this week should at least help push the premium look I'm after!

Those in the Four Star tier can check out the very old version of this Vinland Saga project we starting making back in February, prior to overhauling the concept! In many ways, it's a half-finished pilot - unprocessed audio, missing clips, and a very old script. I think it'll be an interesting one to look back on once the final video is complete!

On the Shorts front, I'm still making my way through One Piece... and to be honest, it has been both incredible... and exceptionally embarrassing. I think my default One Piece experience at this point is being totally lost in the world and discovering time and time again that I've forgotten something extremely crucial that my team needs to remind me of. The upside is that when I do get reminded, I get to experience that hype all over again, but the downside is you guys think I have legitimate memory issues. Either way, I should be all caught up next week, and we've got a whole bunch more non-One Piece shorts to follow!

I should wrap this up in a very professional way, but to be perfectly honestly, I'm still completely consumed by the fact that Ireland and Brian Boru are only mentioned once in this entire Vinland Saga arc. I am suppressing the most intense primal desire to rant about this for ten straight pages. Letters are being sent to Yukimura as we speak. TotallyNotKaren arc begins!

See you all next week~