Video games, anime and rabid j-pop culture fandom...

...are NOT how I roll, baby. Yes, I got into anime from Akira back in the day (thanks Gabe), yes I beat Mario 1 when I was 4, and yes the Japanese seem to be on the cutting verging threshy threshold of everything, but I don't really obsess over any of these things. I'll admit I used to, to an extent, before my health reforms I would consume mass amounts of anime in a daze of noise, colors and subtitles, but that isn't me now. My anime-watching has gone down to virtually nil in the last year or so, since somehow knowing that I would move there one way or another prompted me to observe American cinema with a fresh eye again. I was the supreme dork to end all dorks of video games (i own at least 8 different consoles) but now find little time to play much of anything, or rather I think of better things to do while I am still in New York. Do I still like these things? Yes, of course, like so many I am sick with J-fever, BUT I am actually pretty interested in Japan's historical and cultural facets beyond just the technology and entertainment... although most historical dramas have been turned into manga...

Manga. The big center topic of this post. For all you J-n00bz out there, manga = Japanese comics. Comics which are ridiculously cheap (something like $3 for Shonen Jump, with 400+ pages) and promote a healthy love of reading, and a literacy rate of 98% to boot. Now, do you wonder why this is exactly? Why aren't comics as popular in America? Long story short, McCarthyism in the 50s directly linked comics books to juvenile delinquency, thereby blacklisting both authors and publishers alike, hence us being left with the utter drivel that some call "the funnies." It only took us until the 00's for Hollywood to figure out, "hey these are like story-boards, and we can make MOVIES out of them!" *slaps forehead* Newsflash to all you comic-adaption-screenplay-writers out there, THE JAPANESE HAVE BEEN DOING THIS FOR 30+ YEARS.

Woo, rant. So yea, the Japanese do some things better, mainly comics, seafood and not veering so far from patriarchy and tradition that we lose any semblance of what entails gender. (and for all you feminists out there, I'm not taking it back). Of my original Japanese obsessions, one of the few that remains intact is One Piece, a masterpiece of a comic, and not a bad anime either. That, Berserk and Gantz are the only manga I still follow. Because you are all dying to know.

I finished that Lovecraft story (mofo was flippin crazy) and am moving on to some Poe, until my eyes fall out or I fall asleep, whichever comes first...