Anime

Alright, I am about to confess one of my darkest secrets ... I watch anime. There I said it.

Not all anime mind you. There are still some cultural differences that I just can't fully appreciate - mostly the humor. A lot of anime seems like the tired old tropes of scantily clad women who are quite endowed and oddly have a monkey's tail or the characters over emote which I find terribly annoying. I did used to watch anime when I was younger: Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing, and the Pokemon television show. I got bored of watching Pokemon at the same time my fad with the Pokemon video games faded. Gundam Wing I still kind of like because it avoids all of the anime tropes that annoy me and had some themes that were interesting. Lastly, I did watch Dragon Ball Z all the way through, but dang, if those grunts and battle noises weren't super annoying. I did check out Dragon Ball Kai years later, and I must admit that made DBZ much easier to watch since a lot of those grunts were omitted. But all in all, I never really could get into other animes other than the popular westernized ones.

All of this began to change upon the discovery of TeamFourStar's YouTube series, Dragon Ball Z Abridged. I am linking the 29th episode because that was the first one I watched.

When I saw this for the first time, I must have been literally rolling on the floor laughing. It poked fun at all of the annoying things in DBZ, and I must admit that I was able to appreciate the original series better. Naturally, I had to watch all of the other episodes and waited in anticipation for the 30th episode to come out. These fans of a beloved childhood cartoon gave me renewed interest in anime. If you watched DBZ when you were a kid, I can't recommend these videos enough.

Long story short, I had a roommate in college who recommended that I watch Death Note. I watched the first episode and I thought it was interesting, but I never gave it another chance -mostly because I was way too busy with college. That changed when I saw it appear on Netflix. Having a greater appreciation for anime again thanks to TeamFourStar, I finally decided to watch it. I was disappointed that I had waited so long. It was actually a really good show. I love villains with a god complex, and the morality play was really fascinating. I hated how the show ended, but it was a really fun ride.

One thing that I have noticed when it comes to anime is that I have to watch the English dubbed versions. It's just hard for me to enjoy the visual spectacle when I have to read text at the bottom to understand the plot. However, that was not true for the next anime I discovered on Netflix which was Attack on Titan. Starting with a spectacular opening score, the show quickly grabs your attention. While I definitely appreciated the few English dubbed episodes I watched on Toonami, I didn't really care about the dialogue when these extremely unsettling titans started attacking and eating people including the protagonists.

And then I discovered what is without a doubt my favorite anime and possibly one of my favorite television programs, Berserk. The animation is a bit dated, but all I can say is that I found this because of a YouTube video about the top ten WTF anime endings (Berserk was #1). Again, Berserk had zero of the annoying tropes I find in a lot of anime, and the story was just one of the best stories I have ever had the pleasure of watching. Heck, this show may even get me to read manga because I want to know what happens next in the story!

Nonetheless, the reason why I am confessing my sins is because I recently watched the latest Dragon Ball Z movie: Resurrection F. I'm not going to write a review for it because I went to see the movie out of pure nostalgia, and I don't think I can really recommend watching it for any other reason.

I will admit that the voice acting is real good and the animation is stellar, but the entire movie can be summed up as Goku learned how to turn his hair color to blue and fought Frieza who figured out how to turn gold. I'll give you a lucky guess who wins at the end. The movie was basically one big television episode.

If nothing else, the movie does compel me to check out the new Dragon Ball Super show which just started airing recently.


Well I am glad to finally get that weight off of my chest. In the end, I'm just trying to say that despite my initial distaste for anime, over the last year I have begun finding an appreciation for it that didn't exist. Out of this new appreciation, I am discovering new stories that are truly unique compared to a lot of other fiction.