The Fierce War of 2008: Director’s Commentary

Jesus Christ, is it already January 9th, 2009? Fuuuuck, dude. Man.

2008! Looking back on it all, it was a pretty good year. While the there were a bunch of shows I should have just skipped, there were also a whole lot of shows I liked quite a bit. But I’m serious when I say that I should have skipped those shows. I probably should have skipped a lot of the B- shows, too. Know why? Because I watched over sixty shows this year. Sixty shows! That’s twice as many shows than I watched last year. God, how many hours is that? No wonder I couldn’t go back and watch old things like Ideon; I was too busy watching the latest shitty episode of Rosario + Vampire!

With that in mind, my resolution for 2009 is to watch less new shows. In fact, I’m going to limit the amount of new shows I take on each season to around five or six, as opposed to ten or twelve. I love Japanese cartoons, but when you watch so many mediocre titles that you can’t really bring yourself to drop due to nice character designs, you really start to get jaded. This also applies to wholly entertaining, but also disposable shows. ToLoveRU was great fun, but what did I gain from it, aside from an appreciation for Mikan and doujinshi of her? It is however good to watch these shows, just to get them out of your system. 2008 was actually only my fourth year watching anime as it aired in Japan, so I needed a year where I could just binge on junk.

But next year, I’m slimming down! I only intend to partake of shows I really like, or shows that get positive press from the right people. If I can whittle my viewing down to a select few Strike Witches, Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu or even Kure-nai quality shows, I’ll be more than content. And what shows those were! All great, and all for different reasons! Man, anime sure is rad.

Of course, with less things to watch, I’ll probably have even more free time than I already do. I’ll probably spend that time doing other geeky things, but I also intend to watch a bunch of older titles. Over the past couple of years I’ve accumulated a bunch of shows from years past that I really should watch, but never have! The shows I have range from classics like Zambot 3, to shows AWO hate like G-on Riders and Popotan. I also have these big Gao Gai Gar boxsets sitting here, begging me to be watched.

All that said, time I could spend watching older anime next year will probably partly go towards time exploring the wild and crazy land that is Japan! Yup, I’m going over there, and it’s going to be rad. I’m not quite sure if I can swing Comiket yet, but if I do there is definitely going to be a podcast. Taking that into consideration, that extra time will also be spent studying my Japanese. I forgot all forty kanji I knew!

So long 2008! It’s been cool and all, but it’s time to finally let you go.

But hey! Before you guys click away to whatever site you want to read next, take some time to play this song I’ve posted, and and imagine names like Yoshiyuki Tomino and Hideaki Anno scrolling up on a giant imaginary movie screen to a backdrop of stars, with remains of Char’s Hyaku Shiki floating around. That’d be cool, you know?

[audio:http://mistakesofyouth.com/music/05%20Ima%20wa%20Oyasumi.mp3]

Download

10 Comments