Journey Through The Decade: Ten Years of CCLemon99

I made it! It's June 25, 2017. I've been posting videos as CCLemon99 for an entire decade at this point. Much like June 25, 2007, I am home alone and off from work for an entire week. Funny that...

To mark the occasion I have posted a special video to Youtube. More on that later, though. This post is going to be a loose outline of basically the entire decade run of CCLemon99. Yeah, I'm embarassed by the title of this post, but hey...it describes what you're about to read perfectly. I'm going to try to sum up an entire calendar year in a single paragraph.

I know I've told the CCLemon99 story a million times before, but this whole thing still seems foreign to me an entire decade later. Regardless, here is an outline of what has happened in the past ten years...

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2007

On June 25th, I started my little channel with three videos. Day one I posted DX Twin Brace, DX V Changer Brace, and DX V Changer Compact. I spammed the channel with videos for awhile to get it out of my system, but ended up continuing doing the Youtube thing for just a little while longer. By the end of 2007, I had 56 videos on my channel...

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2008

This year I decided to branch out a little bit. I finally caught up to current toys by getting around to the super-popular Go-onger stuff. I also got into some lesser-loved Metal Hero toys and even Kamen Rider with the DX Sunriser review.  Who can forget the one-year anniversary video? I joined the societal-ticket-to-hell known as Twitter, a move that unwittingly later became something of a turf war that I still think is weird (long story). There was also the matter of my 100th video, which also happened to be the very first mecha that I reviewed--DX Daizyujin! The number of videos on my channel had risen to 107 by the end of 2008. 

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2009

After teasing my side project CCDBZ99 at the end of 2008, I started up that channel. Once a month for nine months I posted a video there in lieu of the main channel. It was an experiment, and it ended up having a small following of it's own. This is the year I kinda figured out that CCLemon99 was here to stay. I started taking more photos for each video and did a better job of editing (though those videos still seem slow compared to the tightness of today's videos.). I ended up getting some outside coverage on one video in particular. Oh yeah, I also got married in 2009. CCLemon99 is older than my marriage. Though, yeah, I've been with my wife since well before the channel. 150 videos by the end of 2009.

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2010

I remember this year being strange for some reason. Videos started getting deleted (I lost my DX Shinkenoh video). I started reviewing weapons more seriously with DX Zyusouken (there had been some before, but now they were here to stay.). I also got into scale model reviews! I think the lesson learned from CCDBZ99 was to just to grow an audience with a single channel rather than spread everything out over multiple channels. Advice: Maintain just one channel even if you cover various topics. I closed 2010 with my 200th video, DX Dragon Caesar.

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2011

I started my blog after squatting on it for so long. The blog eventually grew into the very site you're reading at this moment (CCLemon99,com...duh). As for the channel... I started the year with Pepsiman and ended with that massive Ranger Key Set SP video. Lots and lots of Ranger Keys in between that. I ended 2011 with 243 videos. It should also be noted, I haven't missed a week uploading a video since July 2011.

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2012

Picking things up right where I left off, on New Year's Day I took a look at the Gokaiger Treanger Box...which lead into the first of two Kakuranger Months in 2012! I uploaded my 250th video on February 5th (Recently re-uploaded since it was mysterious pulled from Youtube). I also uploaded a treat for my 5th anniversary...my Dragon Buckler prop belt. I also introduced a new camera with much more vibrant colors this year. It debuted in my Abaranger Ranger Key Set video and I still use it to this day. I dabbled in 16:9. Carranger Month 1 closed out the year. I had 298 videos by the end of 2012.

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2013

Started the year with a big road trip...but through the magic of the recently introduced automation, I was able to load a bunch of videos to go live while I was away. One of which was my 300th video, SRC Daizyujin. I took a look at a ton of DX Gaoranger Power Animals this year. This was also the year that I finally opened my cold heart to Figuarts. Toward the end of the year I uploaded my 350th video, which was a custom Dekabright Brace Throttle by the prop lord Kingranger. Accept no imitations... By the end of 2013, I had 353 videos.

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2014

This wasn't a very fun year--I had a lot of personal problems. I didn't miss a week on the channel, though. I started the year with the very first Firearm Month, which would be a January tradition for three years. The rest of the year saw much more Figuarts, ToQger crap, Kakuranger Month 3, my 400th video, Michael Jackson(!?), and many shades of Kotaro Minami. A solid content year with a lot of great videos--the channel definitely helped me get through the year. At the end of 2014, there were 409 videos on the channel.

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2015

Just a continuation of the previous year. January had the second annual Firearm Month after a few new Figuart releases. Not one, but TWO B-Fighter Months in 2015. I managed to break the subject of my 8th Anniversary video. I also took a look at the first Ranger Mechanix set. If there is one thing I noticed about this year while going back through the catalog...yeah, everything is structured so well. In October I reached 100,000,000 views on my videos. Wow. 100 million. It's like I'd been doing it for almost a decade at that point. I finished 2015 with 463 videos.

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2016

I would have to call this year the beginning of the end. I wasn't well for a good portion of time this year. Full disclosure, I made more than one of the videos start to finish in bed. I've never admitted that before, but yeah... Immediately after the Firearm month, there was yet another Carranger Month. This one was a little more interesting since I actually took a look at the Sufami Turbo Carranger game. Beyond that, I made the full switch to 16:9 by June since I now had a computer that didn't vomit when I attempted to make a video that wasn't square. I managed to pull off a major miracle for my 500th video and finished the year with a Blue SWAT month, and the remaining mecha from Ohranger and GoGo Five. Started small and ended big... By the end of 2016 my channel had 520 videos. 

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2017

This year has been a bit of a whirlwind. I started by heaping praise on a toy that nobody else seemed to like from a movie that...didn't do well(...?). That was followed by the second Ranger Mechanix set, a stream of five Figuarts reviews, some Gingaman odds and ends, the remaining Fiveman mecha, and a whole lot of housekeeping to prepare myself for the end...

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The Making Of "10 Years"

The video was months in the making and actually involved not only leaving the room for the very first time, but also leaving the damn house. I'm surprised that I managed to make it with only one tiny continuity mistake since I filmed it almost entirely backwards. The stuff at the beach was shot on a near-freezing day in May, while the car park stuff was shot on Memorial Day (hence the lack of people...everyone was at the beach). All of the indoor stuff was shot last...yesterday, in fact... Yeah, I really didn't want to do that earlier in the shoot. I knew that if I waited until the last minute, my creativity would kick into overdrive. It absolutely paid off.

While the video is kinda open to interpretation, I did have a loose outline that I wanted to follow. Basically I wanted to do a recreation of my first day as CCLemon99. The Twin Brace segment at the beginning isn't 100% shot-for-shot, but I did take all of the same photos that I took on that day.

Think of it this way... This video is an alternate reality where I started the channel in 2017 rather than 2007. If I didn't bother moving on to shoot the Fiveman stuff that day and instead went to the beach, what would have become of my channel? The Fiveman stuff was never really intended to be in the video, it was a last minute addition. I knew that I wanted to go from the Twin Brace, to the model BRZ, to the real BRZ, to the beach...but it was kinda missing something...

The one thing that is clear from the video...yeah, I've hung up the Twin Brace (weekly uploads) after a decade. It's still at the beach if you've ever wanted one. ; ] Maybe I'll retrieve it someday...

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So what does the future hold for CCLemon99? Well, I can let you in on a few secrets. Even if the uploads will be less frequent, you can still expect some awesome videos on the channel. Like what? Well... 

-I managed to complete my 90s Sentai mecha collection. I mean, is this really a surprise? Considering I'm only missing videos for four of them (Daijinryu...not a Sentai mecha...and I'm not particularly interested in something that is so far off scale that it borderlines as pointless...nay, it IS a pointless toy). That is a major accomplishment, though... I never thought I would do it considering I'm not willing to pay the crazy prices that a lot of these mecha go for. 

-That fucking 1982-2017 video that everyone has been ordering me to do. It'll happen before the year is out, I just want to make sure Kyuranger doesn't add anything the way Zyuohger did before the year is out.

-Kyuranger toys. Yep, they're coming. I've had them since February, I just haven't been motivated to open them up.

-More oddities and new toys as they come out. I should have that new Dragon Buckler any day now...

-The site will continue on as always. I'm working on a few major posts but I also have an enormous amount of backlogged CDs that seems to be getting bigger by the day. July will be a little different, though. I will be looking at a monster 28-Disc Box Set over the course of two posts. It has nothing to do with Tokusatsu/Anime/Game Music (outside of one song being used briefly in a Tokusatsu episode), but it's definitely going to be a trip... Coincidentally it covers the first decade of a beloved artist's career. I guess I'm all about the decade stuff...

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That's all for now, everyone. I want to finish off by saying 'Thank You'. Thank you so much for ten years of patronage to my unusual look at whatever caught my attention for a week. I never wanted to make this more than a hobby and I really don't give a flying fuck about people who whine that my quick videos aren't to their liking. That said, I still managed to meet a lot of incredible people along the way.

Thank you so, so much for watching and stopping by the site to check out this post. I really mean it.

Love,

CCLemon99