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		anime, it's like a cartoon but not. right now, i guess i'm burning through an anime craze. so though i currently think that anime's interesting enough to waste a lot of time on right now, overall, i'd say that i still look at anime with a bit of disdain. the odd thing about anime (at least for me) is that i don't seem to be able to resist watching it all that well. i mean even if it's really crappy and not all that interesting, i'll probably still end up watching it (series that i consider to be kinda like that are: pokemon [psyduck's coolness notwithstanding], dragon ball z, tenchi muyo, and sailor moon), it's pretty sad. but throughout most of my life i've always maintained a holier-than-thou attitude towards those that devoted great amounts of resources (this could be time, money, or i dunno stuff) into watching anime, hence my lingering disdain for the whole shebang. anime clubs, anime expos, all that stuff, it all just seemed a little stupid. i really just didn't get the appeal of anime, how could people waste money and time and lives obtaining or watching this stuff? sure the shows were cartoons and stuff, but they just seemed really random, things just dragged on and on, and simplicity of the animation was sad (most of this can be attributed to the little amounts of anime i'd seen, as in the aforementioned series). why didn't people just watch normal cartoons (pinky and the brain, darkwing duck, and their ilk), they're all pretty entertaining and all widely available for viewing? that harsh opinion of anime was tempered a bit by growing to find that some of the anime shown on tv really is better than a lot of the stuff out there (for now at least). the overall landscape of the cartoon world has changed from the world of cartoons i grew up with. there isn't an eek! the cat-like show to carry on the brand of funny violence that i know and love. networks seem to be content to pump out show after show of tasteless humor or mindless action. so there was that that changed my views, there was also the watching of the kenshin ova (which i guess is pretty good, didn't seem all that special to me when i first watched it) that made things a tad more intriguing than standard anime fare on american tv. then there's this year, where full-scale anime ambivalence sets in. and i attribute that to these 2 factors: the lack of adequate normal tv watching made me a jaded and stagnant person. having lots of random unrestricted free time in front of the computer, promoted rampant downloading. so yeah, i started downloading anime episodes starting with vision of escaflowne, and then things just escalated quite a bit as i became increasingly enthused about different series. but now my main question is whether i'm a better person from watching all those random series (i think i've gone through about 6 or 7)? i mean a lot of them just deal with unrealistic situations that don't have many parallels in real life, but the overall story and relationships still have their niceness and i find myself being moved by them. like watching serial experiment's lain has probably made me a whole lot more messed up and paranoid of a computer person just because of how twisted it was. and i dunno i just really liked vision of escaflowne. and after watching some of dramas (i.e. love hina and kareshi kanojo no jijou, latter is especially great), i almost feel as if i've learned something about how people are supposed to relate to one another. i mean if i'd watched this stuff at the start of high school would i've been more willing to express my feelings? would i've been more prepared for the different social situations i would have to face? doubtful, but still it's a possibility. and as part of those random fears of social ineptitude, at times brought up from watching anime, i'm thinking: 'only now do i really feel like i'm prepared for high school.' the point is that i'm not in high school anymore. and if i'm only prepared for high school now, can i expect to be prepared for the rest of my life? all those thoughts aside, i still think of anime as more of a fringe sort of thing that isn't all that great of a hobby to pursue. it drains a large amount of my time just to get episodes. and i feel somewhat guilty for wasting bandwidth and time that i should be using to study. it's not something that i'm especially proud of; it's just sort of like my replacement for books (hopefully only for the time being). they help me understand (or at least help me form wild assumptions) about the world around me.