I haven't been keeping up with the Naruto Shippuden anime, but the new ending is pretty entertaining, especially since it includes the two best characters in the series being awesome. Watch it, meditate on the glorious Springtime of Youth, and shed manly tears at the setting sun.

This was the video I opened my Buddhist Poets presentation with. It was a nice contrast to the much darker actual content. It's the opening theme to children's anime based on the childhood of carousing, whoring, dirty poetry-writing Ikkyu Sojun. As you might guess, none of those things are actually included in the anime, to the detriment of Japanese children, in my opinion. It grew out of a real tradition of popular tales about Ikkyu's exploits that left out the more controversial parts of his life. Safe for work, obviously.



Incidentally, for those of you familiar with the Read or Die OVAs, A cloned Ikkyu is the leader of the villainous group trying to wipe out humanity. It's a nice contrast.

I'm watching the evening news and feeling oddly comforted because they're covering a French Japanese culture expo and they have a segment on French anime fans. They showed a bunch of cosplayers and had them yell 'anime daisuki!'(We love anime). They even visited a French fan's house and had him show them his collection of models and DVDs, then filmed him putting on his costume. They finished up with the convention masquerade and a shot of Naruto cosplayers dancing around. See, Japan! Americans aren't the only people who are scary freaks about your pop culture! The shame is shared by many countries!

I know how stupid this sounds, but I know I'll end up buying it anyway.

Every since coming to Japan, I've become more and more interested in manga by CLAMP. At first it was just Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and XXXholic, but last week I started reading X. Tsubasa is filled with cameos by characters from other CLAMP manga and characters from X show up fairly frequently, so I finally broke down and bought a few collected volumes at the used manga store. This was more difficult that you'd think, since X is classified as a shoujo(girls) manga, and it's in the girls section of the store. And while girls can go into the boys manga section, I've never seen a guy in the girls manga aisle. Luckily, it's near the end of aisle, so I didn't have to venture too far in. I have a history with X; it was serialized in English in the magazine Animerica in the mid-nineties, which is where I first read it. Now I'm reading it in the original Japanese, which feels pretty good. And it's addictive like crack.

One of things that's so entertaining about it is the use of religious imagery, especially Christian and Jewish imagery. It's like CLAMP was competing with Evangelion, and I think CLAMP's overuse of the Star of David and Hebrew writing may have given them the win. X makes Eva look restrained in its use of Western religious symbolism. And what makes it better is that all this Jewish Kabbalah and Christian apocalyptic imagery is used alongside Eastern astrology and characters drawn from the gamut of Japanese religious and mystical traditions. You could present X as an example of the syncretism that characterizes Japanese attitudes toward religion.

Also, now that I know more about Japanese religion, I can appreciate the references more. The Dragons of Heaven are essentially the Superfriends of Japanese religion.

Here's a quiz about anime con experiences I got off bigbigtruck. If you're so inclined, feel free to copy it and answer the questions. Read on to learn all about my shameful con past.
( My Answers )

So apparently GAINAX is making a series of new Evangelion movies . I'm more ambivalent about this than you'd expect. On the one hand, the production teams looks great. The creator of FLCL is directing and Hideaki Anno, the main creator of the original series, is the general director and manager. Still, I think I'd almost prefer for such a great team to create something new. Eva was great. For me, it was literally life-changing. That may sound silly, but the TV ending honestly helped me to recognize and deal with some serious problems in high school. When I watched it, I felt that someone else understood the problems that I'd been struggling with and that there were ways to deal with them. Ironically, I now think my interpretation of the TV ending may have been flawed, but that's not relevant to what Eva meant to me at the time. So, Eva was an amazing, if flawed, piece of work, but do we really need more? Wouldn't a completely new series be better? Anime needs more genuinely unique shows like FLCL, not retreads of old shows, even great shows.

That being said, new Evangelion! Hell, yeah! This may be the closest I ever get to feeling the joy that Christians will feel at the Second Coming. The question is: can the new, well-adjusted and mentally healthy Hideaki Anno recapture the mad spark of the old manic-depressive, free falling elevator on the way down to emotional hell Hideaki Anno that made the first Evangelion series so memorable?

It looks like Kaoru will play a larger role in the movies. I wonder if they'll go with the kind and gentle TV characterization or the cold and assholish manga characterization. Will they fill in the backstory more? Will we finally find out what was up with Chairman Kihl? Will it be late and over budget? Given that it's GAINAX, almost certainly. Misgivings aside, I'm very excited about this. I hope it lives up to the standard set by the original.

Yesterday was another visit to an elementary school. Luckily it was within biking distance of my apartment and my first class wasn't until 9:30, so I could sleep in a little. I had three classes, all sixth years. Keeping to the schedule was difficult because the teachers wanted me to cover a lot of new material, including several adjectives to describe personalities that were difficult for the students to pronounce. Just teaching that was time-consuming. I taught two of the classes "Row, row, row your boat" because I was getting sick of singing "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes," "BINGO," and the alphabet song. The whole time I was teaching it I couldn't stop thinking about Star Trek V. As usual, a bunch of kids wanted my autograph, and some of the students I taught were a part of the sansa dancing team I belong to. I think I'm definitely getting better at elementary school visits.

Today's going to be pretty boring it seems, unfortunately. The first and second years are on school trips while the third years will spend the day practicing for high school entrance interviews. I wish I could have gone with the second years to Hiraizumi. It's not like I'm performing any vital functions just sitting around the teachers' room. Rants aside, I watched the live-action Cutey Honey on saturday and found it to be fairly entertaining. Cutey Honey is a live-action adaption of a wonderfully cracked-out seventies anime show about a female android who fights the evil organization Panther Claw. She can change into multiple outfits in order to investigate crimes and fool her enemies. Then she changes into her main form and cuts them to pieces with her sword. Ah, the casual violence of classic anime. What's so interesting is that director was Hideaki Anno, the creator of Evangelion. If Evangelion really was his own personal therapy, it appears to have been very effective. He's now married (to a female manga artist who coincidentally had the same last name as him) and making wacky movies like Cutey Honey. It makes me think that if I really want to overcome my problems, I should enter the Japanese animation industry, make a few well-regarded shows, then make a show that starts out really popular and ends in a complete audience mind-fuck. And then I'll be able to overcome all my psychological problems and become happy and well-adjusted.

Tasuki You scored 56% Right - Evil, 43% Sloppy - Org, 62% Exp - Naive, and 12% Selflss-Selfish!

You are Tasuki, the bandit king. You wear your emotions on your sleeve, and you are never neutral or ambiguous on issues, be they important or trivial. Rather than sticking to a strict moral code like many of your brethren, you adhere to personal obligations and tastes. This means that many of your actions can seem contradictory or erratic, but in reality you’re just a capricious person, analyzing things on a case-by-case basis. You may behave brashly, but you have legitimate concern for your comrades, and you’ll help them out of any pinch, no matter how hopeless. Some might think that your tough exterior hides a very sensitive interior, seeing as how easily you cry. You are more evil than you are righteous. You are more sloppy than you are organized. You are more naïve than you are experienced. You are more selfless than you are selfish. You are most similar to Ashitare, Chiriko, Suboshi, and Yui. Your polar opposite is Mitsukake.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 87% on Evil You scored higher than 12% on Organized You scored higher than 62% on Naive You scored higher than 0% on Selfish

Link: The Only Good Fushigi Yuugi Test written by midori_chan on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

I didn't expect to get Tasuki, but the rationale the quiz gives makes a little sense, especially the tendency to judge things on a case by case basis. My favorite Fushigi Yuugi character remains Nakago, mainly because as evil as he is, he's never annoying, unlike the great majority of the cast. Fushigu Yuugi is fine for the audience it was made for, so I can't seriously begrudge it, but it's full of wasted potential. So many interesting characters are ignored and underdeveloped in order to focus on the interminable Miaka-Tamahome relationship. According to a magazine I saw, a new video game based on it is coming out in Japan.