My Journey into Anime

As the years go by in my life I have come to terms with a lot of things about myself. I will have back hair in the future. I am sarcastic and can only hope that it will not scare off people or offend people to the point of tears. And my personalty will make some people think I'm okay. But I have found that I am okay with how nerdy I am. Thanks to my friend Casey, I came to terms with my love for sci fi, as we sat through the entire series of Firefly and Battlestar Galactica's three seasons. The latest installment of my nerd power comes in the form of anime. This comes as the natural progression of my enjoyment of the films by Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. His films are not anime, though they are often placed in that category. I was also introduced to anime through a cartoon my roommate got me into called Avatar. These are not anime but considered as such simply because they are Japanese fantasy cartoons. Alas, watching these masterpieces gave me the in to a lot of other things. I began watching everything I had heard of in the past or seen at Hollywood Video: Ghost in the Shell (1 & 2), Akira, and Appleseed (me and Garret watched Appleseed and were rather disappointed). But none of these did it for me, so I gave up...until my roommates found some new stuff. Another roommate started bringing in other things like the TV series of The Ghost in the Shell (which was much better).

But two others have stuck out: Samari Champloo and Karas: The Prophecy. Champloo is a one season series about to samurai masters traveling with a 15-year old girl in search of the samurai who smells of sunflowers. It's a samurai show with good action scenes and great wit. Even though it's a period piece, it remains incredibly funny and modern. The soundtrack is completely hip hop and scenes change to the sound of a record scratch. There are several jokes about weed, sex, and whatever else. It's so good. Karas: The Prophecy is a rather confusing film about the spiritual and real world's coexistence. Awesome fight scenes and animation and, once you understand it, a very intriguing story. Karas is the protector of Tokyo. He flies around in the shape of a crow and when he finds trouble becomes the ultimate ninja warrior I have ever scene. He has this contraption that allows him to morph from a ninja warrior into fight ship that shoots at whatever he's chasing...and at random moments his crow wings come out. It's all visual beautiful and intellectually jarring.

I've seen bits of the shows Naruto and Bleach and very much want to get into those too (even though they cost about $70 to buy each season). Hopefully, getting an online renting account will make this latest obsession a little less financially injuring.