They call me オタクさん!!

It's been pointed out to me that I have excluded the anime lightweights thus far in my blog.  So this is the anime crash course!!

1.  They call her... wtf??  O.o
     オタクさん  <-- Literally means Mr./Ms. Nerd.  Phonetically, it's said Otaku-san.  And just so you don't get confused, please don't run to your only Japanese friend and tell them you're an otaku; the Japanese culture looks down upon otaku.  (Ironic, isn't it?)


2.  Subtitled or Dubbed?  That is the question.
     This is a subject which divides otaku like Moses parting the Red Sea.  I am firmly in the camp of SUBTITLED.  I will only watch a dub if it is the ONLY option for me to watch that anime.  If I have to have two full seasons of Gundam Wing shipped out to me disc by disc from Netflix to watch it subbed, so be it!  If I have to sign up for Hulu Plus Hulu Minus to watch Fruits Basket and Mushi-shi in Japanese, I will!  But I will not choose to watch in English.

     You might ask, why does this crazy old lady hate dubs so much??  Well, for the simple reason, they are awful!  I can somewhat stand the male voice actors, but the female voice actresses make me want to stab myself in the ears with corn holders.  Additionally, I could /almost/ give a pass to the terrible voice acting, if it wasn't for the fact that when they dub animes, more often than not, they will completely changed the context of what was being said, and in fact the message itself!

     My favorite example of this is in the first episode of the anime Bleach, in which main character Ichigo Kurosaki's younger sister Karin in grabbed up by some gnarly looking monster.  In the original Japanese version, Karin-chan, ever the tough guy, emphatically pleads for her brother to run for his life and leave her behind to suffer a terrible fate at the hands the monster.  In the dubbed English language version, Karin-chan instead begs for her brother to save her whiny ass!!  O_O  WTF?!  How can you SO drastically take something and completely alter the story??  It ruins the character development!!  It ruins the flow of the story!!
   
     When explaining my point, I also like to explain it as if the situation were reversed.  If a person in Japan wanted to watch a classic American movie, let's say Gone With the Wind.  What would this classic piece of cinema history were dubbed?  Do you think that Scarlet's perfectly twanged "fiddledy-dee"s would sound spoken in a Japanese tongue?  Somehow "Dī· dī o ijikuru" doesn't quite hold the same charm as Vivien Leigh, now does it?  How could anyone ever hope to utter the words "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn" better than Clark Gable did??  No one can, and they shouldn't try because it's plainly a bastardization of someone's art and acting.

      Bottom Line:  What's wrong with dubs?  Everything.

      "But, but, Otaku-san, I can't read the subtitles AND watch the action at the same time!!"  Well then, have your remote handy for when you need to rewind.  You'll get used to it.  Quicker than you'd imagine.

     Occasionally, you will run into an anime that you can't watch ANY other way but in English, and that's when you're stuck watching a dub.  Sometimes the dub will be so good (Claymore, Mushi-shi), you'll have to track down original language versions!  (Okay, well, you probably won't /have/ to, but I will!)


3.  O__e  "Ohh, but, Otaku-san, I'm starting to get confused and I don't even know where to begin!!  *dizzy*"
     This is where it comes down to personal tastes and interests...  What is my favorite may not be your favorite may not be the favorite of the person to your left, but there are animes that are very highly regarded within the anime community and are generally liked by most.

     If you've never seen any anime ever, or are looking to reacquaint yourself with the genre, Ninja Scroll, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira are a couple of the first animes widely available in America.  It appears Netflix does not have Akira available anymore, but Ninja Scroll is available on disc.  Ghost in the Shell is available in English on Netflix Watch Instantly, BUT *glares a death glare at you* I think adding the physical disc to your DVD Queue is a better way to go.

     Maybe the only animes you've seen are by Hayao Miyazaki, such as Princess Mononoke or Ponyo, that's okay.  Hayao Miyazaki is a brilliant and gifted storyteller and director whose Studio Ghibli projects have put him in a class all his own in terms of anime.  The reason you can watch a Miyazaki anime, in English and still thoroughly enjoy a wholly well-made movie is because Mr. Miyazaki implements a "no cuts" policy on all of his films.  A Miyazaki Film released in Japan is the same as a Miyazaki Film release in America, and the American versions have been known to choose actual actors and actresses as their voice actors, which is fabulous because they exclude the hokey, over-used typical American choices for voice actors in animes.  They are the exception to the "No Dubs" rule.

You learn something new everyday!

While writing my bio, I remembered the long forgotten "Mermaid's Scar", which was an anime VHS I rented from the local Blockbuster that completely freaking blew me away.  It was dark, and it was epic.  I remember more the feeling I felt watching it than I remember the actual animation...

The plot was based around the myth of receiving immortality by killing and eating the skin of a mermaid, but I remember little more than that.  So I popped on over to good old Wikipedia for a quick reminder of Mermaid's Scar, and the first thing I noticed today was that the Mermaid Saga was created by Rumiko Takahashi, whom I immediately recognized as the artist behind Ranma ½!!  So I'm thinking that long ago, I looked up whatever information I could gather on the Mermaid Saga, and that was most likely why I bought my much loved Ranma ½ Season 1 box set, having recognized the artist's name.

Also gleaned from Wikipedia:

" Mermaid's Scar, released in September 1993 has the distinction of being one of the two titles which launched VIZ Media's anime line, VIZ Video. Along with Ranma ½, Mermaid's Scar broke ground for VIZ and set them along the path as one of the leading anime producers in America. Mermaid's Scar is available dubbed only.  "


Who knew?

Well, I do, and now you do too!  ^_^

The History of Thoroughly Otaku Milly

So since I'm writing up my anime-ography on my facebook page, Animeted Milly, I thought that it would be nice to throw a copy up over here too!

Without further ado, a trip through Milly's anime history (animeistory, if you will):



I think the first anime I ever saw was Ninja Scroll, in a trailer(trailer park trailer, not movie trailer) about 15 years ago.  I think I was most shocked that rather than being made for children, this was clearly a film for adults.  Not too long after that, someone else popped up with Akira, which I also watched and enjoyed.

Shortly thereafter, I began to notice the existence of shows such as Sailor Moon and Pokemon and I adored them!  I saw the first 3 Pokemon movies in the movie theater even!  (Mind you this is still before the time of DVDs, in case you're like "Why was this lady (then teenager) so impressed with such silly offerings as Pokemon and Sailor Moon?"...  This was ALL we had, take it or leave it!)

Sooner or later, I discovered the anime group that had been so quietly hiding themselves until about 11th grade.  The only animes I had ever seen to that point were Sailor Moon, Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z, Gundam Wing (barely), Tenchi Muyo and Hamtaro.  Being too stupid to even realize I was being made fun of by otaku, I greedily devoured their information, and was blown away at all these shows I had never heard of that they were watching!  Not that I had any way to watch them myself, but that didn't stop me from listening.

Eventually the [bitchy] girl took pity on me (I think?) that I had only seen crappy Cartoon Network-ified anime, I passed me a maaaaany times copied tape that had several episodes of Sailor Moon (the season before Stars, I think???) that were in Japanese and I was utterly BLOWN AWAY by the content, the voices, the characters--EVERYTHING about it was completely unlike the Sailor Moon that I had known up until that point, and I was HOOKED.  Some how I acquired a copy of "Right Stuf"'s yearly anime catalog, and I was just so utterly stunned there could be so much awesomeness I didn't previously know existed!!!  Not that I could afford to buy any of it :/  But ever since then I considered myself amongst the Otaku masses.

Fast forward a couple of years--DVDs were the hottest new thing since, well, VHS tapes; I had a car, a job, a boyfriend, and disposable income. (Oh! Turn of the century, how I miss thee!)  Blockbuster had quite the decent little anime section (VHS only though), most of them were older and never put on DVD (Mermaid's Scar!!!-- anyone?!???)  We would rent 4 or 5 of them at a time, and watch them quickly and return them (this is why I don't remember them!!).  All in English mind you, I still didn't quite grasp that they were literally changing the stories when they dubbed them.

Subsequently, an FYE opened in a city not too far away that carried a large selection of anime DVDs, but the only problem was, back then, we had no way to preview anything before we bought it!    You literally had to spend $30 on a single dvd with NO guarantee whatsoever that it wasn't going to suck ass.  But I paid it.  Happily.  There are MANY anime I have from this time period that I don't even /remember/ watching.  I've jokingly told people that I've forgotten more anime than they've ever seen.

Any anime I had actually /heard/ of was enough of a recommendation for me to buy it.  I bought many Sailor Moon discs, Devil Hunter Yohko, Ranma ½, Neon Genesis Evangelion (ain't been right since), Record of Lodoss War, and plenty of single disc animes I couldn't even tell you the name of.  When my ex and I broke up, he kept a good bit of **MY** DVD collection (he claims to have paid for??  HA!  I still have the freaking cancelled checks, you damned liar!!), mostly notably of which that I'm still pissed about was my Neon Genesis Evangelion box set (which I got for the ASTOUNDINGLY LOW price of $100 [[It was supposed to be $200!!]]).  (I'm still bitter, can you tell??)  I'm more pissed I lost 1/4 of my anime collection than was with a cheating, ugly, pestilent scumbag for 5 precious years of my youth!!!  But, I digress.

At some point, when watching Ranma ½, we had to turn to volume down so low because my ex's roommate was a jerk (who knew years later I'd wind up married to said jerk?! haha, funny how these things work out!) and kept saying the TV was keeping him awake.  Since we could barely even hear the TV, I decided to turn on the captions, and it was at THAT moment, when I began watching Ranma in Japanese, that I when I truly realized the utter flaw of the dubbing process:  they [take your pick] don't/won't/can't cram the same content back into the character's mouths when they translate from Japanese to English.  Some things they change because the wording is just too awkward sounding in English, somethings they change because they think the dumb Americans won't be able to comprehend Japanese customs, some things they change because they want to make it more publicly marketable to mainstream America.  Whatever their reason may be, I f-ing hate dubs.

I didn't watch anime as much after that, I had a job, college (took Japanese, it was tough as hell!), a life, followed by other boyfriends, turning 21, going insane, calming down, getting married and having a child, cleaning a house, cooking, working, and too much cleaning (it never ends, so it gets listed twice) to even think about anime.  My anime collection along with all my old DVDs and VHSs were packed and stacked neatly inside of Sterilite storage containers, collecting dust in a closet at my parents house.

On my husband and I's 4th wedding anniversary, we took a trip to FYE out at the mall, the place I had so belovedly frequented in my youth, when I came across the object that would draw me back in to my long lost animeted world; it was like Harry Potter passing a Horcrux-- that is to say, it called to me...  It was a small, angry looking little yellow lion, and I grabbed him and I said "I will love him and squeeze him and pet him and I will call him... [quick tag check]... Kon".  I decided I had to see whatever anime this wonderful angry looking little creature came from, and bought Season 1 of Bleach, a season of which only cost $35, instead of the stagging $100+ seasons/box sets ran you in years past!  We watched one episode and we HOOKED.  We proceeded to buy and watch the first 3 seasons in the first WEEK, and when we ran out of purchasable box sets, we took to the internet and in 2 weeks had nearly caught up to the entire series, then became disenchanted (Bount?  Seriously?  We still haven't finished the ORIGINAL plot??  You watch[ed] Bleach, you know what I'm talking about.) with the never-ending, destroyed artwork-ness of it all.  Somewhere around the Bount arc is also where they went from beautiful animation to... whatever it is they're trying to pass it off as now, because it's sure as hell not artwork.  But again, I digress.

And thus Bleach became the catalyst for my anime re-education.  Now that it's so easy to watch so many different animes, in Japanese, from so many wonderful sources is fantastic!!  The internet, Crunchyroll, Netflix, yes, even you Hulu Minus, have truly opened the floodgates of anime.

I have started practicing my Japanese again; the best thing I learned from Japanese I in college was how to pronouce, write, and learn the Hiragana.  While I had a difficult time forming the letters in college, when I picked up my old workbooks, I was able to form the letters nearly perfectly with hardly any review...  Of course remembering which symbol is which sound is another story, but I did remember about the first half of the syllabary, which is not too shabby, in my opinion.  I am able to hear what they are saying clearly now, whereas it always just sounded like gobbledygook before.

This marks the end of our tour of "Animeted Milly's History of Anime", now have a pleasant day, and go watch some anime!!!  >.<

A Cheesecake in a Fruits Basket

Fruits Basket stands as the girliest girly anime I have ever viewed.  It came highly recommended by a close friend.  I had previously attempted to watch it in English, which was the only option available to me at the time.  The dubbing was horrible, and the content was changed dramatically.  Overall, I deemed it unwatchable in English, but I was willing to give it another try if I could find it in Japanese.

Fast forward to now, and I discovered Fruits Basket was available subtitled on Hulu Plus Hulu Minus!  I giddily signed up for a Hulu Plus Hulu Minus account, added Fruits Basket, Mushi-shi, Vandread, Black Blood Brothers, and Trigun (all, to my utter amazement, in Japanese), loaded it up on my Roku, excitedly flipped to Fruits Basket to finally watch it in Japanese and ... it started playing in English.  O_e  Vandread, Mushi-shi, and Black Blood Brothers were WEB only (as in, you have to sit in front of your computer to watch it, which negates the reason I bought a Roku to begin with!!) and Trigun and Fruits Basket, though available streaming--Only the DUBS were available streaming!!

I went back and searched EVERYWHERE on Hulu Plus Hulu Minus and NOWHERE could I find anything that said "Only viewable on web" on the website!!  With that in mind, I angrily got on Facebook and "liked" Hulu Plus' Hulu Minus' page, just so I could leave them a scathing review.  Yes, their little minion answered me with a generic answer that skirted the real issue of their shady business practices.

Since then they changed the website to make that information more forthcoming, I notice.  But it still doesn't change the fact that I can't really watch these 5 animes subtitled anywhere else. :L  But, I digress.



Fruits Basket tells the story of Tohru Honda, a naive but kindhearted high school student, whose mother died last year in a car accident.  After much family debate, it is decided that Tohru will live with her paternal grandfather.  When her Grandfather's house needs to be remodeled, Tohru tells him she's going to stay with a friend of hers.  In reality, Tohru has decided, as a way of avoiding being a burden to her friends, to sleep in a tent in the woods.  (Only in  Japan, folks.)

Tohru's secret hardship is discovered by classmate Yuki Sohma, dubbed the Prince Yuki by his ardent fan club of female admirers, and Yuki's older relative, the ever pleasant and oft gutter-minded Shigure Sohma.  Yuki, astounded that a such a happy seeming young girl was going through so much, is enchanted by the Tohru's story.  Shigure, after his initial fit of laughter, insists along with Yuki that Tohru stay at their house due to the danger of mudslides in the woods.

Tohru quickly realizes that the Sohma House is not your oridinary household when she bumps/runs/falls into (it happens 20 times an episode, hard to remember the first one) one of the Sohmas, they turn into the animals of the zodiac!  Prince Yuki is a rat (most good looking guys are), and Shigure is a dog (makes sense).

One more side note about Fruits Basket...  It made me cry my eyes out.  >.>  Yes, I know, big tough gal over here cryin over fuckin animated zodiac characters, ha ha ha, very funny indeed.  I think I managed not to cry for a whopping 4 episodes (yes, that means I cried through 22 heart-rendingly adorable, friend-loving, teen-filled dribble, puncha me in the face!).

Even through the blur, I enjoyed Fruits Basket; it was both heart-warming and tear-streaming.  I would say most men would kill themselves rather than watch this (this, according to my husband), and while I'm sure there are some out there who would enjoy it, I'm definitely inclined to label this one as 100% on the Girlymeter.