I’ve been on a pretty big anime kick lately. I’ve watched most everything else in the video store so I’ve started adding Japanimation to my nerd resume. I got introduced to this stuff in college with DBZ and silly crap like Fist of the North Star. Recently I’ve seen Metropolis (was ok), Spirited Away (fucking weird but good), Princess Mononoke (I thought it was overrated), Ninja Scroll (some good stuff), and Akira and Ghost in the Shell (both are awesome), and Barefoot Gen (traumatic and weird but good).

Sometimes it’s good just to see something that’s not American-o-centric. Even though at times there are a lot of similarities it just seems more interesting (and original) that it was Tokyo that was destroyed in the beginning of Akira. The previews for the Day after Tomorrow made me feel like I’d already seen that movie.

Now I’m watching Neon Genesis which is a bizarre TV Series that (stretching even my nerdly patience) has giant fighting robots and includes a weird mixture of pseudo-Christian mythology. The human interaction stuff is the best part of the series and there’s something about the medium of anime that can make you nostalgic for a period of your life (the main characters are 14) and kind of lonely all wrapped up in bunch of other confusing emotions. The fighting stuff doesn’t resonate as well with me because I’m just not much of a fighting robots kind of guy, it feels too staged, it just doesn’t have the ‘sharpness’ of the action in Akira.