mita koto ga aru kedo...

...daitai anime wa anmari omosirokunai yo :(

I saw some MIT club anime last night. I wasn't completely surprised by the crowd: white 30-40 yr old men (the otaku as they might be called in japanese), the token black guy with the misshapen 'fro who thinks he's cool, people that if they were walking towards you you might cross over to the other side of the street, and a few normal-looking college students. But I definitely didn't expect the family of 4 that came with their chihuahua. I went with a fellow japanese student who goes regularly and I actually enjoyed the first episode I saw but I could only take 5 minutes of the next one. The first was about this pre-teen (white with blond hair) who was given these special ninja powers but doesn't know how to use them. He goes thru all these funny adventures while trying to unleash his magical powers.

It's sad that most anime is centered around characters who are very western-looking...white because there are definitely no black or brown people. Worse, there are a lot of young people in asia, especially in Korea, who undergo drastic cosmetic surgery to match these western societal definitions of beauty. When I first saw Miyazaki's Spirited Away-a really great movie-I was shocked by how non-asian these japanese people looked. I made my mom watch it and she was like why are her parents white? And in the series that star girls there are almost always short school girl skirts and half the time these girls have blond hair and big breasts. A thin line between child porno. The episode I left in the middle of was about this blond princess who was not only naive but very insensitive and somewhat slow-witted. The evil menaces were these barely clothed psychotic-looking women. One of them was plotting to add the princess to her collection of pretty girls...It was the most ridiculous and sexist thing ever. I want my 5 minutes back.

I think I'll stick to the Miyazaki movies.