A Novice Takes the Plunge, Enjoys the Swim

Hallelujah! Those saints can march right in. This week I became a convert. No Mom, don't fly up from St. Louis. I'm still pretending to be a good Catholic. My conversion this week is on an entirely different level--I've become a girl who watches anime.

Up until last Thursday I was still the normal mundane me. Shawshank Redemption, Say Anything and Trainspotting still held their places in my movie drawer as my most favorite of flicks. The Neverending Story was there too--after all, there's nothing like Atrayu and his heroic travails when you've had a bad week.

But that was all before I was exposed to a completely new genre of film--Japanese animation of the super violent order. I must admit that as I sat down late on a Thursday night with a ratty Coop bag full of such videos for this story, I couldn't help but emit a little groan. My roommates and friends gave a little chuckle as they all trekked off to the Grille, leaving me behind to watch blood spattered characters attempt to mutilate each other in the comfort of my common room. Or so I thought.

I popped in the first flick, a movie entitled Bastard!! Demon-God of Destruction. (Oh, what a name.) The movie started just the way I expected-a thunderous voice informed me that I was entering a "barren, bestial environment" where humans had been conquered by superior beings and sentenced to a hellish eternity. Hmmm hellish eternity sounded like the night I saw looming ahead.

Within the first minute, I felt myself cringe as I watched an unproportionally busty female, Yoko, slowly peel off her skin tight shirt as she stood in the direct pathway of softly animated sunlight that happened to be emanating from her bedroom window. Her large round eyes stared at me through the television screen as she slowly began to strip, a process that was thwarted by the entrance of her younger, male friend, Lucha. As she scrambled to cover her massive breasts, which we note were each larger than her own head, she emitted a high-pitched giggle that was reminiscent of those four long years I spent on a pom pom squad.

As I sat there pouting about rampant female exploitation, the plotbegan to take some rather bizarre twists. Little Lucha, it turned out was actually the reincarnation of a badass sorcerer known as "Dark Schneider," who, with a mere kiss from Yoko was unleashed from his pubescent body, ready to conquer the world. After an impressive tour de force, where Dark Schneider proved his might to Yoko's father, a head priest, another kiss from Yoko returned him to his diminutive state.

Soon, a ninja master entered the picture. He confiscated Yoko one evening, as she lay in sublime calm next to her child lover. Soon, I began to learn of the deep historical ties between Dark Schneider and this new ninja-kidnapper figure, Gara. Gara had spent the past five years working on his own objective to conquer the world, but he continued to be haunted by a defeat he suffered years ago at the hands of the formidable Dark Schneider. Although he knew that Dark Schneider could be a valuable asset to his campaign, Gara's own personal ambition demanded that he attempt to eliminate all obstacles in his way.

As dramatic scenes continued to unwind before my eyes, I suddenly stopped lamenting my missed night of fun. Yoko's screams were accompanied by fast paced, energetic rock ditties and Gara's stories of his past encounters with defeat were virtually too much for my poor soul to bear. But what drew me the most to the film was its surprisingly reflective nature. This wasn't a foray of pointless, indescretionary violence like we see in so many films today, but rather violence calculated to prove a point about ambition and the power of evil. And as Gara stood over a dead Dark Schneider, tears welled in my eyes as he criticized his own inability to work with his former enemy. The emotionally ravaged Gara seemed more like a modern-day Hamlet than a silly cartoon character.

Japanese animation has an advantage over other film genres because the energy and focus of the message isn't diffused or obscured by overdone special effects. So many movies like Star Wars: Phantom Menace seem almost like spectacles more than epic adventures in their own right.Japanese animation transcends this barrier and returns to the emotional center of the adventure. In that sense, it reminds us why such films as The Neverending Story or the original Stars Wars movies were worth watching in the first place. As a recent convert myself, I can see why all readers out of the loop might be hard to convince. But all I can say is this: go see Princess Mononoke, the new anime film starring Minnie Driver and Claire Danes. You might just become a convert too.