Anime My Way 

    The galleries might take a couple of minutes to load up. I hope they are worth it to you. I have included my favourite images from anime I like.
    Anyway, assuming you do NOT know what anime is, well its merely a form of animation unique to Japan. It can be found increasingly elsewhere, but it is almost entirely from there originally. Some will like anime some won’t. Its by no means the mindless humour of North American cartoons though. Some North American cartoons are quite dreadful. I think Beavis and Butthead is simply the worst drivel imaginable. And I find it unfortunate that society thinks Homer is someone to admire. Still some will have no trouble slamming the value of anime. It all comes down to a matter of taste. Some like gross, poorly drawn, vulgar, offensive cartoons like Beavis and Butthead, some want something that is a bit more.

    Anime is guilty in that all to often it possesses quite graphically violent scenes. of course no one is complaining about the violence in ordinary film. So the double standard is entirely hypocritical. The ladies of anime can often make Barbie look quite plain. A useful thing to remember though, is a great many of anime creators are women. So any complaints of it being to strongly sexist, or mindlessly pandering to silly males, have to contend with the fact that it was a woman that drew them that way. Rumiko Takahashi, is in fact considered a national treasure.

   There is a dark side to anime unfortunately. Nothing new. There will always be people willing to exploit something that is vulnerable to exploitation. It takes very little effort to find out that some anime can be intensely adult in nature. That doesn’t in any way condemn the anime that was made properly. Then again I have seen Disney characters doing some really impressive things as well. So slamming anime on the basis of some adult material online is a pointless argument at best.

   Currently I am a big fan of a number of series (and the list is growing in leaps and bounds). And it's because anime is done in the format of an on going serial in almost all cases, that I like it. One show follows into the next. The plots are not always serious (some can be quite zany), but there IS a storyline in most series. And just as with soap operas, they are fun to watch develop. Some series were successful enough to run several years. It is an arrogant assumption that only North American cartoon series can have long life spans. Several anime series have produced several hundred episodes in some cases.

   The original series that got me hooked was the Ranma ½ series. I am still attempting to see the whole of it. Thus far I have had the pleasure of acquiring almost all of it. It's a goofy sort of martial arts romantic comedy. Ranma has a curse that forces him to transform into a pretty young girl type of himself when he gets splashed with cold water. Fortunately hot water makes him a young boy again. This is predictably something that produces a great many laughs. Its a lot more complicated than that of course. And he isn't the only cursed person in the cast (although the rest seem to have animal forms instead).

   Then there are my other favourite shows. Urusei Yatsura (which has many popular translations). Sailormoon, which is lightweight fun. Tenchi Muyo, which has given us the phrase in the anime community of Tenchi Syndrome due to his having every available female in the show in love with him (a common theme in anime it seems). Those Who Hunt Elves which is uniquely funny, El Hazard a wonderful adventure, Neon Genesis Evangelion which goes from comedic to downright surrealistic, Martian Successor Nadesico, which is considered some of the funniest anime ever, Photon, so funny it hurts from laughing to watch it, Bubblegum Crisis the only serious anime I have ever seen that I truly loved, AllPurpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku (yeah I know an odd sounding name, a cats brain in a cute android body basically). There are more, of course there is more. I have several friends that have an entirely immense collections of anime (they seem to have several more every second weekend we get together to watch it at my place.
   The best feature anime I ever watched was Ghost In The Shell. A movie as opposed to a series.

   So what do you get when you watch anime. Well the art work is unique. Everyone has really odd hair. It is either odd colours, impossible styles or simply oh to perfect hairdos (I really love the hair myself). The motion is what is neat. There is a much higher degree of motion realism in most anime. The violence, well it is violent. People can actually get killed in anime. The humour is sometimes a bit adult in nature. But occasionally that's a cultural perspective too. The girls are certainly well developed (more so than Barbie is sometimes). The guys all make the average body builder look puny. It's not impossible to actually see people take off their clothes in anime. But then again, they never show any detail worth talking about (genitalia is not an option in Japan). So if the nudity is a problem, then you likely have trouble with nude Barbie dolls as well. I have yet to EVER see ANY personage in ANY anime series that I have watched EVER engage in ANY sexual activity. I am of course excluding adult films. Getting all worked up over it is therefore stupid. As it goes, I have to put up with a damn sight more outrageous actual sex in my real world movies.
   If Bugs Bunny is getting boring then you need to try anime.

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