{"id":311,"date":"2007-09-20T22:38:38","date_gmt":"2007-09-21T03:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tancos.net\/wp\/2007\/09\/20\/the-path-to-enlightenment-or-how-to-squander-vast-amounts-of-time-and-money\/"},"modified":"2007-09-20T22:38:38","modified_gmt":"2007-09-21T03:38:38","slug":"the-path-to-enlightenment-or-how-to-squander-vast-amounts-of-time-and-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/the-path-to-enlightenment-or-how-to-squander-vast-amounts-of-time-and-money\/","title":{"rendered":"The path to enlightenment, or how to squander vast amounts of time and money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some<\/a> bloggers<\/a> recently have reminisced about the origins of their addictions. I might as well, too.<\/p>\n

I don’t watch television. At all. Consequently, I never saw Dragonball<\/em><\/strong> or any other Japanese imports. I did once come across a mention of something called “Sailor Moon” in a newspaper. It sounded dumb. Nor have I ever been a gamer of any kind, unless you count chess. Final Fantasy<\/em><\/strong> means nothing to me. If there ever were any “good old days” of anime, I missed them.<\/p>\n

Some years back I read a review of a movie called Princess Mononoke<\/em><\/strong>. It looked interesting, and Neil Gaiman had worked on the English script. I made a mental note to see it if it ever came to Wichita. It didn’t.<\/p>\n

Time passed. I discovered that one of my musical friends was an aficionado of Japanese animation from ‘way back, and he had a copy of Princess Mononoke<\/em><\/strong>. (He also has an impressive collection of anime cels, including some from Porco Rosso<\/em><\/strong>.) The movie was terrific, even with the English dub, and I asked him for more to watch. Most of what he brought by was disappointing \u2014 e.g., Those Who Hunt Elves<\/em><\/strong> (not recommended) \u2014 but I did discover the original Dirty Pair<\/em><\/strong> and Martian Successor Nadesico<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, I read every entry on every anime review site I could find. After sifting through hundreds, thousands of reviews by plainly unreliable writers, I settled upon Serial Experiments Lain<\/em><\/strong> as my first purchase. It was as good as Princess Mononoke<\/em><\/strong>, and utterly different. Ghost in the Shell<\/em><\/strong> followed. Some time after that I discovered that Steven Den Beste<\/a> also saw that Lain<\/em><\/strong> was something exceptional. I finally had found a writer on anime whom I could take seriously. (I’ve found a few more since then. See the blogroll.)<\/p>\n

I eventually started a weblog devoted to anime in addition to my main one (you’re reading its successor). A little over three years ago, one of my acquaintances from the SCA<\/a> organized an anime festival<\/a> in Wichita and an anime club. I’ve furnished most of the videos the club views at its rare meetings.<\/p>\n

This isn’t quite the full story, though, and Princess Mononoke<\/em><\/strong> wasn’t the first anime I ever saw. That title belongs to Shonen Sarutobi Sasuke<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, released in the USA before the last ice age as “Magic Boy.” It was the greatest movie I had ever seen. It blew away everything by Walt Disney. Then I saw Forbidden Planet<\/em><\/strong>, and that was the greatest movie ever made, and I forgot about Magic Boy<\/em><\/strong> until my discovery of Miyazaki many years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some bloggers recently have reminisced about the origins of their addictions. I might as well, too. I don’t watch television. At all. Consequently, I never saw Dragonball or any other Japanese imports. I did once come across a mention of something called “Sailor Moon” in a newspaper. It sounded dumb. Nor have I ever been … Continue reading “The path to enlightenment, or how to squander vast amounts of time and money”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[684],"class_list":["post-311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever","tag-whatever"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xam3-51","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/shuffly.net\/zoop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}