Fire Emblem Tiki overtakes Tsuki ga Kirei at the NLJ
On March 14, 2021, I published a lengthy research article titled The Mystery of Sōseki and Tsuki ga Kirei. In that post, I collected English-language sources on a certain legend that Natsume Sōseki had suggested "tsuki ga kirei" (the Moon is beautiful) as a Japanese translation for "I love you." I had learned about the tsuki ga kirei legend from the excellent 2017 anime series (it featured in my decade review, Tsuki ga Kirei, and while it is likely a work of fiction (I knew that going into my research project), the phrase is aesthetically elegant.
(Note before continuing: All of my page view statistics come from Koko Analytics, an entirely local and privacy-friendly analytics plugin for WordPress. It sacrifices a bit in accuracy for privacy, but my comparison of its recorded Google refers to my Google Search Console statistics shows that it is reasonably accurate. See my full review and discussion.
When I published the tsuki ga kirei article, I had some hope that my long research project would attract some viewers. It turned out to be a great success. After making its first appearance in our weekly top five most-visited articles in May 2021, it never left the weekly ranking -- it has been among our top five for 102 consecutive weeks as of April 9, 2023. It was only deprived of the top spot in our 2021 and 2022 rankings of most-read articles by two other posts (one in each year) making Hacker News page one.
However, in terms of page views, my tsuki ga kirei article peaked in March 2022. It has remained our most consistent article while posting some relatively weak (by its standards) visitor counts in the last few months, although post-January 2023 comparisons are not entirely fair since The New Leaf Journal is being blacklisted by Bing.
On February 3, 2023, I published a lengthy article about a trick I stumbled upon while completing the Tiki DLC pararalogue in the newly-released Fire Emblem Engage for Nintendo Switch. I had some hope it may pick up a few views, but with one exception, my few posts about video games (including a more interesting -- in my view, at least -- article about Fire Emblem: Three Houses) have not performed particularly well. To my surprise, it ended what had been a five-week streak of first-place finishes by tsuki ga kirei in its second week live, and has held the top ranking now for eight consecutive weeks. Its performance has been so stellar that it has, on April 8, 2023, overtaken my tsuki ga kirei article as our most-visited post of 2023 to date despite the former leader having a four-week head start.
Will this hold up? I expected the Fire Emblem Engage post to fade after a strong first month for two reasons. Firstly, some of the excitement about the game, which had been released in January, would surely ware off. Secondly, while my tip for the Tiki paralogue is good (if I say so myself), there are many more comprehensive guides for clearing the entire map (not to mention I wrote my post as an essay rather than a strategy guide). However, this seems not to be the case thus far. Tiki has been very consistent in terms of visits over its eight-week run, and it posted its best day to date (according to Koko) on April 8, 2023. With that being said, I would be fairly surprised if it is ahead of tsuki ga kirei at the end of the year, but it does look poised to build a comfortable lead in our standings over the next few weeks.