I doubt that I will ever enjoy an anime, in totality, as much as I have enjoyed Blood+. (I will say that Elfen Lied comes very close.) Episode 50 airs tonight at 1:30am Pacific time. I started watching Blood+ almost one year ago. Blood+ opened up the world of anime for me. Much like the first time I listened to Miles Davis my senior year in college back in 1991, I was turned on to Jazz, completely blown away by the text of the music and carried away by the emotion of it all.

I was lucky enough to catch the very first airing of the first Blood+ episode First Kiss. Like the first notes of Jazz, Blood+ carried me away with the totality of its plot, storyline, dialogue, and subtext. Had it not been for that very first episode, I would not have taken the time to watch other [as] contemporaries such as Trinity Blood and Ghost in the Shell, or purchased DVD sets such as Elfen Lied, Blue Gender, and Basilisk - shows unlikely ever to be aired on basic cable or direct tv. And while for every Ghost in the Shell, there is an Eureka Seven...for every Wolf's Rain and Darker than Black, there is a Bleach and a Gantz: hits and misses. But that comes with the territory. And even with each successive 'miss', I remain willing to give the next anime a shot. And while I feel a little nostolgic, I am thankful for being proven wrong and thus becoming more open and willing to set aside my preconceptions. Anime, good or bad, is much more than I had thought it was.

Here is a list of Manga that I have completed or am currently reading. I am fishing for recomendations as well, so if you have a favorite, lay it on me!

Basilisk - enjoyed the anime as well.

Bitter Virgin - This is the first manga I read. Wow...blew me away. Gave me a tast of seinen manga. Very, very sad story line. Very beautiful artwork. Much like Blood+ anime for me; without Bitter Virgin, I would not likely have picked-up a second series. (please note the shameless reference to Blood+)

Claymore - Manga was way, way better than the anime. Haven't completed it all the way.

Elfen Lied - Holy crap...best manga ever. The one thing more brutile and violent than the Elfen Lied anime is the Elfen Lied manga. Loved it so much, I got the last four volumes in Japanese just so I can look at the artwork.

Fruits Basket - Loved the anime; manga was so bad I have stopped for a few months. Some tv.com friends have strongly recomended giving it a second chance.

Futari Ecchi - Hypersexualized. A suprisingly insightful and touching story about a young, inexperienced couple learning to love each other. Classified as ecchi, but is really a touch farther.

Gantz - Manga was as bad as the anime...got about equally as far in each before giving it a rest.

Girls Saurus/Girls Saurus DX - From the author Bitter Virgin. Comedy about a young man who is terrified by women. Some rather strange reflexivity; instead of the hot girl being hounded by guys, it's the hot guy who is hounded by girls and can't seem to get away from them.

Hatsukio Limited - Not much has been translated into English. More school life genre. Fair manga. Read it mostly because I liked the author/artist's other work.

High School Girls - Strangely entertaining. Not overly comedic. Touching story of friendship and coming of age from a feminist perspective. Wish I could have read this about 25 years ago; may have gained some insight from it. But then again, I was a complete idiot back then.

Inuyasha - Not very far into this very extensive manga. Manga is much better than the anime...and I liked that anime.

Kanokon - Started off strong...then what the hell happened? Not much has been translated into English.

Lilim Kiss - Liked this one very much. Sort of a love story...but the subtext is about boundaries and self-identity.

Love College - Didn't get very far. A comedy about male compartimentalization of women's bodies. Not very insightful. Anybody ever hear of a teen age boy who didn't like boobs? Yeah, no suprises here.

Love Hina - Manga was much, much better than the anime. A story about how love endures and aobut how different people understand their own hearts in different ways. This story is simultaneously touching and frustrating. But the subtext is poignant: the bonds we share with the people we love can be very strong, very real.

Moon Phase - Manga was better than the anime. Fairly entertaining. Often a comedy, often a drama.

Perhaps a week or two ago I had posted that I was increasing my scores for Bleach and Eureka Seven. Well, I am again changing my scores for both. I am dropping Bleach from a 7.5 to a 7.2, once the Soul Society arc ended, the quality of the plot and dialogue seemed to deep for the following 10 eps. I am dropping my Eureka Seven score from a 6.8 to a 6.0; what the hell happened at the last five eps?!?

Where are all the great animes? Of course, not every anime can be a Blood+ or an Elfen Lied, but what about the ones that are as good as Wolf's Rain, or Ghost in the Shell?!? There have got to be some gems out there.

By the way, did [as] start Eureka Seven over from ep one...or was I having a psychotic episode at 1:30am this morning? Frankly, I am hoping that it was a psychotic episode. I don't think that I can handle it if 1 hour of my 5 hour tv block continued to be Eureka Seven.

For so very long I have taken a certain amount of anti-establishment pride in not owning a TV. I suppose that it is not entirely true that I have never owned a tv before. When I was in college during the second Ragen administration in the 1980s, I owned a tv. But I am under the experiencial impression that life really doesn't start until after college or your first divorce, which ever comes later. So, since that point, I have not owned a tv. And ethically speaking, I am not entirely sure that I believe in TV...or more specifically, I don't believe in Comcast cable. Well, of course I acknowledge Comcast's existence...I just don't support it. Anyway, I digress. So, it has been about 20 years since I have owned a tv. Anyway, my wife likes the big tvs. So I just got a large LCD tv at Target of all places. Well, to my own shame or horror, I totally love this tv. It has a monitor input so I can hook up my desktop and play Oblivion on the large screen. I even brought my Xbox home from work...I know, why have an Xbox when you don't own a tv?...well, over the past four years, my Xbox has spend about seven days at home...the rest of the time I keep it at work where I get all my game time in...anyway, to complete this run-on sentense, the Xbox totally rocks on the LCD. Of course, the only games I play on Xbox are NCAA Football...oh yeah, I am rocking the Sun Devils on dynasty mode...and Jade Empire. Which, now that I think about it, is rather strange...my wife loves tv and hates video games, and I hate tv and love video games. Oh crap, that means that I'll have to take my Xbox back to my work place sooner or later. Oh well, guess you can't win 'em all. God, I am such a tool.

Rock on, everybody.

Greetings everybody. I have a question. How does one Level Up at tv.com? I mean, if we were playing Neverwinter Nights 2 or Oblivion, then I would get it. But I can' figure out how tv.com does it? Is there a theoretical bases for their level system, or perhaps there is a new conceptual framework for advanced hypothetical mathematics. I have a vague memory of learing about imaginary numbers in highschool trigonometry - perhaps tv.com employs the imaginary negative radical in their level system. But even if that is the case, I still don't get it.

Case in point. When I was level 11, my level % would increase incrementally at a very slow rate, as low as 0%, but never more than 3%. Now, during this time, I was posting multiple times daily and I am usually very long winded. I submitting a number of reviews, blogs about my travels to China, and a couple of contributions that got turned down. But none of that seemed to make a difference . However, eventually, I leveled up to 12. And, once at 12, my % completion moved very quickly, between 5% and 12% daily. This morning when I logged off, I was at 78% completion of level 12. This afternoon when I logged on, I was at 85% completion of level 15. How did I jump 3 level when I am posting less, have fewer reviews, and such???. Maybe if I don't post at all for a week, I'll jump 18 levels???

And if this system works for tv.com, why can't I import it for Elder Scrolls so I can jump from level 1 to 50 in no time??? Well, now that I think of it, I guess that is what cheat codes are for. And, to follow this stream of consciousness, does tv.com have a cheat code? I donno...

I have said a number of different times in a number of different forums that I have been very disappointed in Bleach as a whole. And I'm not talking about Clorox. I've thought that a few of the eps were worthy of the superb rating, some were fair, some were pretty bad. TV.com's lowest rating is Abyssmal; but there have been a few that were subAbyssmal a new negative rating I call Atrocity. The Don Gongi eps, for example. At one point, in withcing hour of 3am, I recall watching a Bleach ep on [as] and I actually prayed to god to strike me down then and there. You see, the remote to the TV at work was broken...and death seemed like an effective way to turn off the ep of Bleach. Now, of course, I am at the very nader of hyperbole...or perhaps god knew that I was...as I was not smited at that moment. But shortly afterwords, I wrote my review of Bleach. A few people disagreed with my analysis, but I had some validation as one person agreed. See, the 36K I dropped on graduate school was not a total waist.

Anyway, there were a few eps that I liked quite a bit. Perhaps that kept alive that sense of futile hope - I am catholic, so I realize that all hope is fulite, yet necessary none-the-less - that I may encounter a couple more eps that I would enjoy. Besides, I have burned myself out of girlly animie in the past several weeks...of who the hell am I kidding...in the past several months. Fruits Basket...loved it; cried for Hatori, cried for Tohru, cried Yuki, cried for Momiji. Rumbling Hearts - how was I to know??? Saw a box set for like $19, who could turn that deal down??? - wholy crap, mother of god, and all that...that was sadder than an Ann Moore novel. Cried like a punce. High School Girls...why the bloody F did I cry to a comedy?!? And I am a bit, fat, sweaty, scruffy biker who makes a very good living as a treatment provider for children, building good, positive karma. I have a stunningly beautiful wife. Why should I be crying about anything?!?!?!?! So, anyway, I figure that I need a serious break from all this highly tragic, emotionally turbulant, girlly anime. So I pick Wolf's Rain next. Yeah, sounds masculine, almost sinister, preditory, aggressive. Yeah, time to get my testoterone pumping. Besides, I've watched Elfen Lied 12 times already, need to give that a break. So, Wolf's Rain...what a great anime...but what a horrible choice for somebody who needs a little break from deeply tragic, compelling, emotional story lines...cried like a punce again.

So, to make a short story even longer, I figured that I'll watch a few eps of Bleach on youtube. It's sad...but in the demented and pathetic way...not the tragic and emotionally compelling way. No risk of welling up with tears watching Bleach...unless I am asking god to put me out of my misery. Anyway, I watch eps 51 - 58. Holy crap...they were pretty darn good. And the thing was, I was totally unprepared for that. Sure...the animation was poor, the dialogue was flat at times, and for the love of god, Ichigo, say something other than 'I'll beat you'...but the story line wasn't disjointed, the plot tightened up, and the storyline jumped from scene to scene smoothly. Wait, what was this sensation? Was I actually starting to enjoy Bleach? My ontological world is shattering.

Now, instead of the minimally marginal 6.0 I had given Bleach...I'll give it a 7.5; a very low D- to a strong C. On a related thread, I have raised my score of Eureka Seven from a 5.8 to a 6.8; an F to a D+.

I have long been a fan of well written science fiction. Though I was consciously unaware of this at the time, as a child and young teen I deeply enjoyed and was drawn to the story line of clasic science fiction. As I child, I understood the concept of heroism and to a lesser extent social justice and these are two elements common to all good scifi, and quite often, they are present via subtext rather than overt symbolism and methaphore. In the late 1970s through the 1980s, a number of examplary science fiction- some drama, some action, and even a few, like Red Dwarf, were comedy. But science fiction as a vehicle for social and political comentary and satire seems to have decreased over time. The 1990s had some, I thought DS9 and the tail end of Next Generation were good, though one was dark and cynical and the other overly sentimental, both represented the primary reason I was drawn to science fiction in the first place: the reflexitivitytowards our social and political environment. Whether the messages was given by direct dialogue and plot, or through symbolism, metaphore, and subtext, the more relevent the message, the more poignant the message, the more I enjoyed the episode, the more I enjoyed the series. But it has been a long time since I have enjoyed a a science fiction series - the one was Firefly - which is, by the way, the single greatest show ever. Angle ended around the same time. I have had some other recomended to me by friends and co-workers, but none have really kept my attention. Hence, in the intervening years, I have relied on reruns and DVDs of shows I have already seen, though still enjoy.

But recently, I have started to watch anime. This came about primarily because I don't actually own aTV. Mix that with the fact that as a second job, I work a grave shift at a minimum security treatment and housing facility for mentally ill kids and teens. So, at work there is really not much to do, the kids are pretty heavily medicated and sleep hard through the night. However, I am usually pretty tired already from my primary job, so at times I have to keep mindful of my energy level, keep myself occupied. Well, my work place as a TV and basic cable. Not too bad. However, after midnight, when my shift begins, the pickin's are very slim, so to speak. Between 2 and 4, the barrage of infomercials begin. My god, talk about a black hole for energy and alertness - not to mention how absolutely atrocious these commercials and products are - you have your basic choice of three: make money via a pyramid scheem, male enhancement - wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more - or GrilsGoneWild. Oh, as a sort of intra-text post script, to any of you guys who have purchased or want to purchase low grade porn on TV, let me tell you something, they're called boobs...now get over it. Sooner or later, you'll have an opportunity to see somein real life - so act like you've seen a girl before. Jeez. So, anyway, on the west coast of the US, I am stuck with the ESPN channels and Adult Swim. All the other great chanels - Discovery, History, Comedy Central - go dead at 4am.

Anyway, one Sunday this past March, I had seen enough successive reruns of Sports Center on ESPN and Mike&Mike isn't on Sundays, I changed the channel to Adult Swim. It just so happened at that fateful moment, a new show was just starting,Blood+ (which is, after Firefly, the second greatest show ever). Wow, I was blown away by Blood+ and I was lucky enough to catch it from the firt episode. Strangely enough, it was doing a google search of Blood+ that brough me to tv.com. Right after Blood+, another very good anime was on, Ghost in the Shell. Prior to watching Blood+, I had thought that all anime was marketed for children, so I would not have considered giving it a shot. Bood+ opened up my mind to what anime was. Shortly later, I watched Elfen Lied which opened up my mind to what anime could be. After watching a few successive episodes, I was intregued by the depth and poignancy of the subtext of these animes. Over the following months, I gave a variety of othe animes an shot...some were hits, others were misses. But the common feature in all the animes I have enjoyed is the presence of socially relevant commentary and symbolism. What is absent in contemporary sci-fi, I have found in mature oriented anime.

It's late January of 2007. My wife and I are in Shanghai for a few days. It's our first aniversery, and we honeymooned in Shanghai, so I thought it would be cool to go back. Now - as I believe - as is universally true of all women, she likes shopping. And Shanghai, I am told, has become a shopping Mecca. So while there are some really cool things to do in Shanghai, we still have to spend a day shopping. This is all cool with me - if it makes her happy, then it makes me happy. So, we end up in this enormous mall. I've never been in such a large mall before. It was at least six stories, it was long, and no space was waisted - shops and kiosks were lined-up and stacked up in all directions. And this place was packed full of people. Spring Festival was just a week or two away, so it was like shopping on Black Friday or Christmas eve in the US.

Well, my addaptive stratagy since traveling to China has become searching for the nearest restroom as soon as I go into a restaurant or store. And I knew that we would be in this mall for hours. Hell, if we did nothing but navigate this huge mall, it would still take a few hours even if we didn't stop to look or buy. And for you guys out there, ever walk into a mall with a girl on one arm and a couple thou' in your pocket; you know you're doing some hard-core shopping. Can I get a witness??? Anyway, I digress. I just knew that locating the restrooms was going to serve me well before the day was through. But, just as usual, I was wrong.

So about two hours into our shopping pilgramage, just enough time for he unusual but down-right tasty spices to reak havoc with me, it's time for me to find the nearest restroom. And given that my eyes have been open for that all this time, I knew that I was not too far off from one. Now, my wife - god bless her - knows how totally inept and dependent I am, tells me that she'll help me find the restroom and wait for me there. But no...me and my male ego...want to show her that, even though I don't speak a word of manderan, other than 'beer', 'spicy', 'hello', 'thankyou', the F word, and - thanks to my trip the Xi'an the previous year - 'I'm sorry', I can still walk 20 yards in one direction without getting lost. Of course, getting lost wasn't ever the problem. So I tell her, 'No, honey, I know you enjoy shopping so I'll find you when I'm done'. So I head out for he public restroom. Find it withouta problem. Unfortunately, there is only one door...and there is a long line of girls waiting to get into that door. And when I mean a long line, I am thinking there must be 25, 30 of them. All girls, all in the teens to early twenties. Is there a door with the international male stick firgure? Nope. Just one dorr. One long line of girls. No other guys. And me, standing there, starting at it all. So I think to myself, there must be a men's room somewhere else. But I can't ask anybody because I don't speak manderan. So, I go find my wife and tell her I can't find the men's room. She points to the direction I just came from. So I tell her what I saw. She grabs my hand and impatiently pulls me back to the rest room. When we get there, I say, "See, I told you so." She say back to me, "No, I told you so." Appearently, I had to get in line and just wait until I got through that door. Appearently, the mens room was in there. If there had been a guy in that line, I would have figured that out.Well, appearences can be deceiving. So my wife says she will wait there for me...appearntly she knew me well enough to know that I would still have trouble with such complicated tasks as going to the bathroom. So I get in line, which is moving steadily forward, So I am thinking that I won't have to wait much longer. Oh, boy...wrong again. Once I get though that door, it opens up directly into a rather large bathroom. There must have been twenty stalls along one wall, and a long sink that ran the length of the opposite wall. And there were a whole bunch of girls. Of course I stand out like a sore thumb, as I am a good foot taller than anybody else and probably weigh more than any two of the girls put together. Luckily, none of them made eye contact with me, or I would have blushed. I can see the headline of the newpaper the next day: American Pervert Exicuted for Peeping. So I carefully back out through the line of girls waiting to get past me, saying and probably mispronoucing 'I'm sorry'. My wife is right there waiting for me. I tell her that's the girls bathroom. She roles her eyes - so quick to forget that she was born and raise in the Peoples Republic and I was not - and tells me that there is only one restroom. So I say, "No mad'ing way". Turns out, it was a co-ed restroom. So, I have to go 'blow it up' with a girl on each side of me. So, my wife seeing how embarassed I am,takes my hand again and stands in line with me. Strangely enough, I am comforted by that and feel less embarassed. I am probably stillblushing at this point, but I think that I have repressed all the memories from that point...but that's not true...if it i was able to repress all the memories, then I wouldn't remember getting stuck in the stall.*sighs*

Preface: My bathroom adventures continue. This installment takes place in Qingdao, Summer of 2006. Now, before I go on, I want to explain the tactics for men using a squat hole. If you are already familiar, then slip down to my abject humiliation. Now, for the rest of you, here's the deal. Women have it easy. Let me explain why. Assuming one is wearing jeans or pants, the manouver can be quite tricky. One stands with one foot on each side of the hole. Drops 'trou (vanaculer for pulling one's pants down). Then one leans foward andsquats down so one's butt is possitioned to releave himself in the hole and not on himself. So, one accomplishes this by using one hand to pull his pants, which are around his ankles, forward. This manouver is extreamly important if one does not want to soil himself. Without this manouver, ones pants that are around one's ankles form a sort of net, catching what one does not want caught. Now, this is why women have it easy, given the manouver detailed about, a woman still has one free hand to ballancer herself. Now, a man, on the other hand, need to use his 'free hand' to redirect his junk downward so he doesn't urinate on the jeans he has pulled forward. What this means is that a man does not have the option of using a hand to ballance himself. From the very first moment I used a squat hole as narrated in the 1st installment of this blog, my biggest fear has always been that if I lost my ballance, I would fall @ss first into the squat hole. Even more disturbing was the fear that if somebody opned the stall door, it would slam into my head, therefore forcibly driving my @ss down into the hole where I would be stuck in the hole. I don't speak manderan well enough to say, "for the love of god and all things Holy, somebody please help me!! I am an ingorant american, after all".

The moment: I am in a coffee shop in the Qingdao Internation Air. My wife and I are having a mocha while waiting for a flight to Xi'An. I get that same old bubbly feeling. My god, will this ever end? So I make a quick dash for the nearest rest room. As I open the door, I make a quick scan of the restroom - a line of individual stalls. The first four stall doors are closed. But the fith door is halfway open. Ha, my luck. So I quckly run for that door and thrust it open whileI am unbuckling my belt. A split second later, there is a loud BAM and a man's grunting voice shouting out in suprise and pain. I totally clocked this poor guy right in the freaking mellon. OMG. I can't believe that in my own haste and carelessness, I did to somebody what I was afraid of being done to me. I have scince learned that "I'm sorry" is "dui bu qi"...but I didn't know that at the time. So I profussely say "I'm sorry" in English over and over again while I back away from this guy. I consider it lucky that I didn't have to make eye contact with his guy, I would have felt even worse.

Since then, I know that my days are numbered before karma plays a heavy handon me. *sighs*

Perils and Pitfalls, Part 3

My first trip to China is coming to an end. I am in Jinan and we are about to drive the four hours to Qingdao. Before the long drive, we decide to stop by a Taiwanese Soy fast food restaurant. BTW, Chinese fast food is way better than American fast food - hell, I'll even go father than that, Chinese food is just simply better than American good. I mean, aside from the severe abdominal cramps and gastric distress. This time, both of her parents are with us. Her father speaks only two words of English - wonderful and Michael Jordan - and he uses them as synonyms. Her mother speaks one word of English...unfortunately, it's the F word...and even more unfortunately, she learned it from me at the dinner table while I was learning to use chopsticks. Oh, the shame I carry in my soul. *sighs*

Well, as the pattern of this blog would suggest, I was in for a rough, unforgettable trip to a Chinese restroom. Now, this restroom was clean. No problem there. But...there were not any stalls...at least not any individual stalls. There were four squat holes. Now, nothing ethnocentric is intended or implied here. But, as a westerner, it never occurred to me that a public restroom would be organized like this. I felt uncomfortable just looking at it. And the restroom was occupied by four other people. Oh, dear. I was I ever going to drop 'trou in front of other people. Well, I couldn't. So I waited until the restroom was empty and went for the squat hole farthest from the door.

So, I am in the position, still feeling exposed and uncomfortable despite the fact that I was totally alone. I just need to relax for a moment before I can do my business. Well, here's the deal...a little boy walks in to wash his hands in the restroom sink. He turns to look at me...then does a 'double take'. He stops, looks towards the door, and calls out something - I presume he says 'hey, mom, they have westerners in here'. Then, instead of washing his hands, he comes right up to me and looks me in the eye...of course, I am already in the squat position. And he is close...uncomfortably close...like 8 inches away. So here I am, at my most vulnerable, my stomach is killing me, and I am terrified of looking a five year old in the eye. So, while he is looking directly at me, I am trying my hardest not to make eye contact...so I am looking at the ceiling, at the floor...to the side... It's not like I can tell the kid to back or give me some space. The only words I knew in mandarin at this point are 'thank you' 'beer' 'spicy food' and the 'F word' - which, strangely enough is the 'M' word there. So the kid stood there for probably only 40, 45 seconds...but god it felt like five minutes. I guess that he got bored with me, when to wash his hands, then left the rest room. Oh...then, finally, I got to take care of business.