anime

Ever since I can remember, I've been fascinated with animation. Mom had recorded a few cartoons like tom and jerry on tapes and I've watched them over and over again, always fascinated each time I saw it. As I grew up I encountered animation by marvel comics....most notably spiderman, superman and x-men. I fell in love again, and the adrenaline rush which came through each time i watched them was overwhelming. However, the novelty of the storylines slowly started wearing off. By the time I had entered engineering, my fascination for cartoons like x-men (which was my favourite at that time), johnny quest, jackie chan adventures had started its downward slide.
While in my third year, I happened to notice a particular file named samurai x on the hostel LAN. This marked the beginning of a seemingly unending exploration into the world of anime(Though I must admit that I had a brush with hentai while in high school). However, pressure of placements and landing a good job (give me a break!!!) made anime take a back seat and I had almost forgotten about it until about a year and a half later.
Enter anima. Except for my roomie, I had never expected to see anime fans. Why so? Because of the 400 odd people I knew in the hostel, there were just two people (me and roommate) who adored anime!!!!! And when I meet this character, I am humbled. Her "otaku"-ness surpasses my craze by a huge and incalculable extent. Come to think of it, she even paints anime in her spare time, writes anime stories, eats with anime and will probably have an anime character and punchline on her epitaph. Phew!!!! After putting me on the anime track, I encountered lots of beautifully written and aesthetically made anime. However, none of them matched samurai x. I had watched samurai x in english. However, anima preferred japanese. I really wondered why. Isn't it a pain to keep one eye on the subs and the other on the screen while simultaneously trying to absorb the context, the intensity (or humour), and understand the text? I thought so.
But as she and I have discovered, the Japs are different. When one compares a dubbed and subbed version of the same anime, the dubbed version sounds like a shakespearean play. The tone and manner of speaking adopted by the japs are best suited for anime.
Just after I shifted to SAP I was again blessed(cursed) with long periods of free time. I made full use of the freedom given and my anime exploration started its next leg. Here I got to watch tsubasa chronicles whose music I absolutely adore. I watched around 60 episodes, but couldn't find the remaining. I loved the anime except for one small teeny weeny part. Every time saoran makes a statement about being with and protecting the princess, she looks at him with those humongous eyes and in that very irritating voice, says saoran-kun. aaarghh!!! It gets on my nerves even when I think of it, even when I am writing about it!!!
Then came nodame cantabile. This dorama was quite inspiring. Plus, I love music..so this was a double whammy. After that came claymore. It had all the elements to make a guy happy. Lovely chicks with great assets, great fight sequences, abundance of fan service and a plot which does not drag. The series lasted for just 26 epsiodes and had an open ending. I'm surprised that it does not make a mention among the most popular anime. My guess is that its because there have been loads of previous anime which have a similar storyline.
The high note of my anime journey came after I watched bleach. I don't want to say anything about it here as those who watched it know how good it is, and those who didn't ought to do it the first thing after they finish reading ma post. 155 episodes of pure entertainment. (Okay..you can subtract the fillers and a few cliched humour scenes.)My new roomie who until a few days back used to think that it was kiddie stuff has beome an anime fan. And in the course of flirting with the technical leader of his project, he scored thousands of points BY GIVING HER MY BLEACH DVD!!!!! So you see that the realm of anime's influence streches far beyond the virtual world.