Shuffle!

I can’t help but to join in on conversations with geeks at night school about anime. They get very excited about their anime, and compare which anime you watch to what they are watching. The men usually throw out the same names: Naruto, Dragonball Z, and Inuyasha. I’ve not really gotten into those. I’ve gotten into in-depth discussions regarding the different series that we usually share (Death Note, Bleach) and been given more spoilers than I care to think about.

But one guy, who was a little bit special, gave me a recommendation for one I’d never even heard of. Shuffle. It’s on Hulu, so I thought I’d check it out. I put it on my listing of tv shows, and the kids fired it up one weekend. There was the warning that it was for mature audiences only, but I don’t generally worry too much about that, because I figured there were a few bad words or one of those weird moments like when Sailor Moon transforms, and everyone feels a little uncomfortable.

Turns out it’s for a little more. Here’s the premise of the anime. Young man (Rin Tsuchimi) is an orphan, he lives with a young woman who lost her family in the same accident. She lives to serve him. One day at school, two new students come in. They are both beautiful girls; one is the princess of the gods, the other is the princess of the demons. They are best friends, and somehow came to know the young man from when they were kids, and they want to marry him. With their dads in tow, they are wooing him. He also has a best friend who is in love with him, but she keeps it secret, despite her blatant overtures.

Whether it’s because I’m western, or because I’m a woman, I find the whole thing rather disgusting. He shows very little interest in any of these women, and while he’s a thoughtful person, respecting their feelings and treating them as human beings, the fact that the whole story revolves around all these girls with a slightly different look and slightly different personality going to the mats for this guy is too much for me. There are other fish in the sea, ladies.

Eventually we got bored with the whole enterprise, and gave up around episode seven.

Something About the Eyes

Death Note is addictive and intoxicating in a lot of ways. The story and characters are great, unexpected and genre-defying in many ways. But the art–the art is mind-shatteringly beautiful. At first, it seems strange and harsh, maybe even grotesque. As I continue in the series, though, it makes me sigh and pause to just look and take in the drawings.

The main character, Light, experiences a reversal of character in book 4 or 5, I can’t remember which. He loses his ambition for godhood and his power to cause death. And when he does, his eyes change. His gorgeous, half-closed, and penetrating eyes become wide-open windows into his pure soul. The change was startling and unwelcome.

The change in the character’s actions and words are not so hard for me. But his eyes are changed, feel wrong. I never knew there could be so much power invested in what seems to be a somewhat insignificant detail. Just the width of the character’s eyes.

Death Note

I watched the first disc of Death Note this weekend. So delicious. I had not watched it to this point because of the anime's style. The shinigami (death god) is drawn in an alarming fashion. Of course, that makes sense for a death god. You wouldn't expect and death god to be all warm and fuzzy. That might be an interesting choice as well, but contrary to this anime’s point.

Basically, the death god is bored. He's stuck in death god world with nothing to do, everyone is bored and spends eternity playing dice. He doesn’t want to anymore, so he takes his death note and drops it in the human world. Once it is dropped and picked up by a human, he is bound to the human until he loses the book, or until he dies. He thinks humans are fascinating.

The book is found by an extremely intelligent high school student named Light. He reads the instructions, and believes the book is a prank. As a test, however, he writes the name of a criminal into the book, and the criminal dies. He dismisses that as a fluke, a coincidence. He tests it again on another criminal, and this criminal dies. He decides the book is real, and sets out to systematically rid the world of all evil people. Noble, right? In the first episode he reveals to the death god that his dream is to create a utopia and rule over it as a god.

It was shocking and disturbing. Instead of taking the traditional superhero approach, the hero is an incredibly complicated and flawed individual who may or may not have pure motives, or who may or may not be doing a good thing. His feverish commitment to the destruction and resurrection of the current reality is fascinating. And once you get used to the animation style, the animation is really quite stunning. The characters are beautifully drawn, the death god is striking in his otherness, and certain elements integral to the story or as symbols are highlighted through the use of gorgeous color. I can’t wait for more.

(It was an anime weekend, with Death Note, Bleach vol. 3, and reading Fruits Basket vol. 17)

Nerdgasm Revisited

I seem to be somewhat focused on scientific discovery recently. I just wanted to provide an update on the geek situation. This week, I have had the opportunity to descend into the depths of a geek stronghold. I've seen a couple of men that would fall into the hot geek potential category. But there are more than just hot geeks there. I've discovered a cute boy next door type, a sexy player, and the entrancing alternative guy. But there are also horrors lurking, horrors that I had managed to block. Yes, they have nerds.

Nerds and geeks are very different. Geeks have obscure interests that border on nerd territory, but still manage to keep it together, have some social skills, and not manage to grate your nerves like nails on a chalkboard. The nerds are the pretentious, overbearing, socially retarded types that are completely oblivious to almost everything.

I don't know if it is just me, or if every teacher experiences this kind of weird draw for the nerds. They wait for me after class, just so they can talk to me a little longer. They tell me about their interests, recommend books, TV shows, and anime. They are really nice generally. It's so heart-breaking to meet them and know that they are good and decent people but they somehow are so oblivious to simple social behaviors that they have a difficult time. And even though I understand them, I still want to get as far away as quickly as possible.

A message for the nerds: there is hope. All it takes is finding someone to teach you how to relate to other people, and perhaps work on the clothes. That's it. Maybe we should start some kind of nerd rehab. Take the nerds, teach them to talk without sounding like the Comic Book Guy from "The Simpsons" and put them in some GAP-issued standard IT geek uniform. It's a slight adjustment.

Plus, think about the surge in the hot geek population. It's a win-win.

Cross Cultural Confusion

Yesterday, I watched Bleach (Disc 2, Season 1) and it brought a couple of interesting questions to mind. First was "Why do the Japanese insist on making these characters 15, so I feel creeping for wanting Ichigo?" which requires further study, and another day.

Sitting and watching Bleach made me feel relaxed and more centered somehow. I thought how strange it was that I felt more like myself for watching a cartoon. I really love the cartoon. It has a cool story, I love the animation, it has great characters. But I have nothing to do with it. Why do I have an attachment to a story that isn’t remotely similar to my own?

I've formed a bond with a mode of expression that belongs to another culture. I'm not Japanese, apparently older than the target audience (see above, underage hotness), and I don’t fight evil spirits walking on earth.

So why does it feel so right to watch a teenager with spiky orange hair wield a humongous sword and slay skeletal demons? I think I can see the appeal of the huge sword now that I think about it, but skeletal demons, not so much. I guess that's why we liberal arts majors spend so much time studying, talking, and thinking about universal themes. And getting degrees that don't lead to paying jobs.