A is for Anime

So I don't make many bones about it, but I don't watch much on tv.  By in large its fluff, filler and wasted human existence.  The stories are driven forward by drama, but never compelled to complete themselves, make the experience complete or really even make sense in and of itself.  The stuff I do tend to watch is Fan-subbed anime.  I watch it with the original narration, and subtitles for a few reasons.

First, the voice actors chosen for America are typically terrible.  Not always, but most often voice acting and particularly voice acting for import animation is done at cut rate and leaves a lot to desired in expressiveness and overall interpretation.  Second, Fan-Subbing is typically very informative on Japanese culture and belief systems which can help you to appreciate the significance of the characters actions as well as get some of the wordplay jokes that are often present in Japanese culture.  You would miss these in dubbed versions because the wordplay would likely not make sense in a another language.  Third and this is key, it forces engagement.  I literally cannot do anything else if I want to watch the anime, because I have to read the whole story line.  I cannot read facebook while "watching" the show and I need for single tasking in my life.

This was sort of prompted by this techcruch article on engagement and he is lamenting twitter and facebook integration and interactive viewing as preventing you from escaping.  I find in particular when my wife tries to watch tv she cannot stop multi-tasking and misses plot queues, and subtle humor.  It could be that distracted viewers are really the reason tv has to be dumbed down, just so those only paying partial attention can get the jokes.

Just an idea.  I'm trying Satirical blogs idea and doing the alphabet challenge for April so there is my A post for yesterday....or whatever.  By counting June would have really been a better month to do it (30-4) instead of 30-5 with a Sunday as a soft start.  Whatever this is blogging not rocket science.  Just blog b-z Monday - Saturday for the rest of the month and take Sundays off.

Right?

Right so we should do this again in June just for the sake of it makes more sense.