Today, I am going to just talk about the first five anime-related topics that come to my mind.

Storytime: It’s the prelims round of Saimoe Japan (the Anime Saimoe Tournament). I want to participate and I put a ballot together with my friend uis, who in return for six of the ten names on my ballot, provided the voting key. So after like 10 minutes of double checking to make sure my ballot is formatted right and I’m posting in the correct thread (everything is in Japanese because they hate foreign participation) I get slammed basically with a message that my American ISP is banned. Ok, I thought, so I proxied a random server and that’s banned. Then I proxied a Japanese ISP, and 2ch’s mechanism picked up the proxy. Apparently I have to have starred in the movie Swordfish to be able to vote for which 2D animated girl I think is the more attractive.

Fuck reality and Zion, we did all this because we just wanna vote in your anime character popularity contest.

The Reich-fuhrer xenophobic hodgepodge demographic that is the otaku internet of Japan has decreed that I cannot vote in the 2009 Anime Saimoe Tournament. I have found the xenophobic tendencies in Japan (another instance is many eroge visual novels being DRM’ed outside of Japan) a rather disturbing trend. Over at International Saimoe League, we don’t really mind Taiwan spamming Rozen Maiden characters and China spamming Haruhi that much. I mean it’s annoying but it’s fair. I guess that’s because we have “International” in our name.

In other news, Yuki utters a grand total of five syllables over the course of the entire second episode the The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It must have been a quick day at the office for Chihara Minori. I know she’s busy, so at this rate she can just leave her lines on Kyoto Animation’s voicemail.

Everyone who watches anime has a different “favorite Miyazaki film” or Studio Ghibli film. It’s like the same people who discuss what the best Disney movie or Beatles and Michael Jackson song is (The Lion King, Let it Be, and Bad if you disagree you are WRONG). For Miyazaki films, people usually answer with the standard fare of Spirited Away (typical response), Princess Mononoke, or Howl’s Moving Castle. Occasionally, we get My Neighbor Totoro or Castle in the Sky (i.e. old people). Know what I never hear? I have never heard anyone say that their favorite Miyazaki film is Kiki’s Delivery Service. This is probably because this movie is too kickass. I might dedicate a full essay to this later after I finish watching every one of Miyazaki’s works. I like it because even among Miyazaki’s unique style of direction and plots, Kiki’s Delivery Service is unique and different. It seems so much smaller, less ambitious, and compact. The touch and magic of Miyazaki’s directing is there, but the epic granduer and overarching messages are much more subdued and sutble. It’s just such a great, simple feel good story with great amounts of depth if you peer a little harder. So yeah I’m a rebel now.

I have noticed that while my conversational Mandrin Chinese is perfect, my reading has withered into shit. It’s because I never read anything in Chinese. I discovered this because I tried to watch Chinese fansubs of Bakemonogatari. Because English fansubbers are slow and … slow. I know a few groups are going to pick this up and I will wait patiently. I don’t really blame them too much, as the first episode has over 9000 lines of typesetting. Fansubbers have nightmares about two things at night: Akiyuki Shinbo’s directing style and jokes about the .ass format. (“Hey babe, are you fansubbed? Because I want that .ass) This will probably mean that releases of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei 3 are going to be slow and unreliable as fuck. Maybe if a.f.k. does it they will have the good sense not to make 170MB hardsubbed unchaptered .avi’s but I will honestly take anything. If Shinbo keeps directing I am sure that pretty soon people will be fucking for fansubs. Would you do Aeris from Eclipse for some Full Metal Alchemist? It’s pretty tempting…

Finally, time to go off and watch CANAAN. About time…