anime

Every so often, anime catches my eye. And it's most likely to catch my eye if I haven't heard a lot about it.

It goes without saying that I don't take much notice of the Cartoon Network stuff the kids are watching. And the more mature anime that most people put on their required-reading list give me a distinct three-star feeling when I get around to it. If you have an anime icon, I probably don't recognize it.

But last Saturday, I was at daemonx's house watching some DVD's that ziabatsu provided, and two of them are sticking in my mind.

The first was Irresponsible Captain Tylor, about a guy who joined the military so he could live an easy life. It stuck out because I'm pretty sure I went to college with that guy. He did all his English papers on esoteric physics concepts to dazzle the teacher into believing he knew what he was talking about. He'd fake his way into interviews he wasn't qualified for (yet), and performed many other feats of slackery. And his main goal was to get up to middle management so he could "coast". Unfortunately, responsibility finally caught up to him eventually, as a few years ago I got a call from him asking for permission to be used as a reference for a federal security clearance.

The second was Yakitate Japan. It's about baking bread. BREAD! GENIUS! I really like it when an anime series is made about mastering some obscure skill that you wouldn't think of as exciting cartoon fodder. Like Hikaru no Go, or Cooking Master Boy, Supreme Office Building Architect DX, and Champion Actuary Taro. If they ever start making anime about Mario again, I want to see lots of technically-accurate plumbing.