Damn! Yesterday (8/17) was the ninth anniversary of the Ultimate Evangelion FAQs page! Totally forgot till Karen wrote about it on Wednesday. Happy birthday, Ultimate FAQs! Celebrate! It's all right!!!!.... No new contests since the 1st anniversary though, but those old enties are still up, and they're still good reads.

Another thing I want to talk about is Snakes on a Plane. I already did my required comic strip of it, but I still wanted to remind people to see it opening weekend if they ever planned to see it. Yes, it will probably suck, as stated before, but the best way to see flicks like this is in packed movie theaters with a ton of other people who just want to have a good time. So pay for that $10 ticket, buy a large tub of popcorn, kick your feet up on the seat in front of you and laugh at all those helpless fucks stuck on a plane, 30,000 feet in the air, surrounded by poisonous snakes. Shout things out MST3K style! Go apeshit! That's what this movie was made for. Lord knows we haven't had a mindless FUN cinema experience in ages.

One last thing I wanted to cover before the weekend: ANIMEIGO IS THE FUCKING GREATEST AMERICAN ANIME COMPANY OF ALL TIME! First they brought us Urusei Yatsura, then they made Macross beautiful (and were the first to bring it out unRobotechized), and NOW they bring us one of the last old school greats that needs to be released in the States, YAWARA, that fashionable judo girl! Holy tit-fuck me yes!

It's been years since I saw any of this last (and I think that was the Yawara Atlanta Olympic Special that Animazement was showing on their in-room TV service back in '98), but I still remember how fun it was. Yawara was made back when "the best" anime wasn't all about how much CGI was forced into a show, or how fast a stupid comedy could turn into the bitterest of dramas -- it was back in the era of animation where characters made you tune in every week... It... I... Eh, I'll never be able to defend this properly with only 3 hours of sleep over the past 4 days (which is keeping my brain in neutral), but there was a big difference in how NONover-the-top characters were in the shows made years ago... Well, not ALL of them, just the... Jeezus, see, me tired now. Fuck it. Call me an old, crotchety bastard, I don't care... Back in MY day, all the anime series were over 100 episodes long, and the characters weren't all whiny, little assholes who gave up on everything before they even started trying. They were TOUGH back then, and they kicked ass whenever they could... That's the way it was, and we liked it! We LOVED it. I love YAWARA, and I ain't ashamed to say it.

UPDATE (8/19):
Okay, I just reread what I wrote for the last update, and that last part makes absolutely no sense. Yes, I actually got some sleep since then, but that's no excuse for the pure, ridiculous, rambling mess I put to electronic print above... Today's anime doesn't have good characters? Is that what I was trying to say? I seemed to have forgotten that one of the best character-driven series I'd ever seen was less than a month ago (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).

Yes, most anime today is crap (the 90% rule in full effect: meaning 90% of everything is crap), but that was true ten years ago as well. It was true 20 years ago too... Though it's not true with American movies and TV series though. 99%, yet infinitely close to 100%, of all American cinema and television is pure shit.

Good day to you, sir.

- the Rossman