Baka!

Why

Baka! started in 2019 as two beginners talking about anime. Anime was already huge in Russia, but there was almost no place where it was discussed the way film or books are — with context, history and an opinion you could argue with.

What I did

Everything. I research and write each episode, host it, edit the audio, design the covers and run the channels around the show. Over seven years the format grew from a conversation into a media project: a podcast, video essays with an audio version, a daily Telegram channel with notes and reviews, a paid membership of 200+ people, and sponsors such as Kinopoisk, Flowwow and Storytel.

Growing the audience was its own job. I repackaged the same work into every format a platform wanted — a daily Telegram channel, TikTok clips, YouTube — and got the show featured in podcast apps. I partnered with the companies that bring anime to Russian cinemas, so the podcast’s trailer played on screen before films, and made joint episodes with the biggest names in Russian pop culture media: Kinopoisk, 2x2, Pop-Devichnik.

Two side projects grew out of the show: Vzhik, a podcast about animated films, and Anime Gates, a narrative podcast about the history of anime.

What came out

240+ episodes, with 20,000 to 150,000 listens and views each. Around 200,000 followers across TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and Instagram. Podcast of the year on Yandex Music in 2022 and #1 in the Animation category on Apple Podcasts. Seven years in, the show produced a book — Manga, Moe, Isekai, published by Kinopoisk and Alpina — and a website with a full archive of everything we’ve made. In 2026 it also got an English-language YouTube channel: 11,000 subscribers in its first six months and one essay past half a million views.