After posting my bloggg about Toonami and the glory that was, I started thinking about Anime and how awesome it was in the 90s. Actually...a lot of stuff was awesome in the 90's. Like Nickelodeon. But that's another story and will probably end up being a post. For now, though, we'll stick to Anime.

So we all know what anime we grew up with: Dragon Ball Z, Sailor Moon, Outlaw Star, Rurouni Kenshin, Ronin Warriors, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Yu Yu Hakusho, a shit load of Gundams...and so on.

But what about recently? The shows that are on Adult Swim aren't anything new. I mean, just look at the line up:

FMA, Cowboy Bebop, FLCL, The Big O, Death Note, InYu-fucking-asha, Ghost in the Shell: SAC, Blood+, Code Gaess.

All of them are pretty dated. I know that it takes a while for America to get the rights and the dubbed versions of the shows..but come on. Half those shows are at least 5 years old. Hell, they've been airing Cowboy Bebop for almost a decade. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I love that show, as well as a lot of the other ones (except fucking InYu-fucking-asha). But what I'm saying is...isn't it time for something new?



I realize that Yu Yu Hak-, I mean, Bleach and Dragon Ba-, I mean, Naruto, are still being produced, which makes me want to jab rusty forks under my nails due to confusion. But they are so slow paced and filler-rific they make DBZ seem more quickly paced than sex with this guy.

The last anime I watched that I had never seen before was Gurren Lagaan, which was like being stuck in a paint shaker with stomach full of Methamphetamine while 17 pounds of Chinese fireworks are going off around you to the song Emerald Sword by Rhapsody. In other words...it was a lot like this. That series, which was half mocking the absurdity that is Japanese Mecha anime and half fucking supreme, was a lot of fun.



However...
(OK, so this post becomes really spoilerific after this. So fair warning to all. Call me Daniel Plainview cause I'm mining for SPOIL! OH!...je-jesus christ...i'm sorry.)

...I feel like the end of Gurren Lagaan (after Simon grows up) was kinda rushed and abrupt. I suppose that should fit perfectly with a series of that magnitude, but I didnt enjoy it. I thought the last 4 or 5 episodes of that series could have been spread out into a entire second season. The amount of information and change that was thrown at us from the time jump onward was so intriguing and different, all I wanted to do was see more of it. I wish they would have explored that world a little more, with Simon as the big cheese and all his crew in high priority positions. It would have been cool...oh well.

Although, Gurren Lagaan isn't the only anime to have this cataclysmic shift at some point throughout the series. Those who watched Death Note know what I'm talking about. Even FMA started to teeter off focus by the end. It's a fad that seems to be catching on steadily...and it kinda blows.


The one thing I love about Anime is it's sense of completeness. Unlike American television that beats the fuck out of its series' until they're nothing left but a mangled corpse of the greatness they once were (Scrubs), Japanese shows have a set story arc and they stay with it. Unless, of course, you're talking about those Shonen Jump bitchfucks, most animes are either 26 or 50 episodes long. And it works. The story stays alive and consistent and the characters never devolve into some whiny pissant dick that would get assfucked into an oblivion by the man he once was.

But that doesnt seem to be the case for anime as of late. Maybe I haven't been looking hard enough for a good series. Maybe I'm just not that into anime anymore. Maybe the shows I grew up with were during anime's prime and now we're just going down hill. Whatever. Fuck it, I'm just gonna go to Otakon and rekindle my sexitude with the genre.