About

Rukinet. was started in late 2009 as a successor to my previous blog The Night Wind Chronicles when I was switching web hosts and decided to start over from scratch with a new name and domain, namel Rukinet.com; a new theme based on the Thesis framework; and new posts with more focus on a certain niche, Japanese pop culture, which includes manga, anime and to a lesser extent even video games.

What about Rukinet.?

As you know, I write as Rukishou (more about that later), and I think I originally registered the Rukinet.com domain to make a portal for all my websites and projects because it was the “Rukishou Network” (with a stylish dot! XD), but I ended up never making one and so I used it for the blog instead. Call me lazy or whatever but I like the title “Rukinet.” – believe me, it could have been a lot worse. Like “The Night Wind Chronicles,” perhaps? orz

Thinking back, the reason I switched web hosts and started a new blog in the first place was not (only) because I wanted change but because all my websites – I also ran a Swedish community and forum site for otakus and such called Hissatsu! – went down for a week or two and the traffic on my blog went down almost 50% permanently! Instead of 700-800 unique visitors a day – 1100 and more on real good days – I was down to 500 unique visitors a day. You might say now, “that’s not so bad,” but it was not over yet. A month later they went down again (although, this time I had forgotten to pay the bill in time… (^_^; ) – but only the second time!) and my traffic went down again. At this point, I was lucky to get 400 unique visitors on a great, great day – 200 unique visitors max on normal days.

What about the author?

はーい！　お元気ですかー？　流気　翔でーす！ (lit. Hii! Are you feeling well? I’m Ruki Shou~! Yeah…) Actually, my name is Martin E. Bergwall, but you can call me Rukishou. Or Ruki-san. Or Shou-kun, if you know me well enough. Let me explain:

As I’m writing this I am 17 years old – give me a “hell yeah” for youth! -  and I have been into Japanese pop culture – mainly manga and anime – since I was… well, I was less than 3 years old so I can’t remember it very well. Of course, I didn’t find out it was called “anime” or “manga” or that it was from Japan before I read my first manga (Pokemon “ani-manga” does not count) Dragon Ball in 2000 and I read about it in a reader’s sent-in letter. A few years after that came a big boom of manga to Sweden with conventions and bad websites and whatnot. Anyway, that is pretty much my story in a nutshell – no wait! I have also been drawing manga myself for about nine or ten years (I did some not-so-serious Pokemon fanart even before that, though) and I am more or less a professional mangaka (manga artist/author) now. Except I don’t get paid. Yet.

My big dream (and life plan) is to become a successful mangaka in Japan and for that I started thinking about a pen name a few years ago, since my Swedish name might not work too well over there. At first I was varying between signing my at with either Rukishou or my real name, but later I started with Makkun – which I have no idea why I thought was good.

On Tanabata 2010 (or the day after, Japanese time) – July 7 – I got some help from a few Japanese and otherwise Japanese-speaking friends and came up with my “official Japanese name,” which I’m thinking I might also use with friends when I move to Japan, 流気　翔. It is basically Rukishou split into to written in kanji, but though you might find it plain or whatever, I think it’s cool and I really like it! The kanji are 流, which is an archaic (obsolete, forgotten) kanji meaning “exile,” and 気, meaning a lot of things (i.e. “spirit,” “mind,” “heart,” “mood”), spelling 流気 or Ruki; and 翔, which means “to soar” or “to fly,” spelling Shou, my “given name.” So, feel free to call me Shou-san once we get close enough! (≧∇≦)/