I Haven't Watched Anime in a Decade, and I'm Afraid To Go Back
I used to be addicted to anime. When I was in high school, I binged so much anime that I didn’t hang out with friends, and I certainly didn’t get much homework done. I watched all the classics back in the day. Gundam Wing, Inuyasha, Yu Yu Hakusho, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Death Note, Code Geass, Sailor Moon, and Zoids. That’s just a small sample of what I watched. So many great memories sitting there all day watching them. Most of these were on Toonami, a classic little programming block with that iconic blue dude in his space station. What was his name, T.O.M.? I just looked it up, yes, that was his name. How did I remember that? I guess he really was iconic.
Anyway, I loved anime so much I forced myself to stop watching it by the time I got to college. I couldn’t stop watching it and I wasn’t getting anything done. I had no social life. I’d watch anime half the day and play video games the other half. That sounds like every teenager’s dream on paper, or at least my dream, but once you think about it you realize it’s more of a nightmare. You can’t hold down a job, you can’t get homework done so your grades slip, you don’t want to hang out with friends so you grow apart and you end up friendless.
Video games ended up being one of my jobs, so I couldn’t well cut them out (that caused its own problems, but that’s a topic for another day), but anime I could do without. I quit it, cold turkey, like a smoker finally realizing the real harm of tobacco. I watched a little over the next decade or so, the complete run of K-On and Welcome to the NHK. A favorite of mine in recent years was Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, which no one else seems to care about. But that’s all I’ve the anime I’ve watched in all these years.
All this is a long preamble to say I’m about to break this streak. Recently I picked up Ghost in the Shell on 4K, partly for inspiration for a novel I’m writing, and partly because I’ve heard so many great things about it. And YouTube, picking up on this sudden weakness of mine, randomly started suggestion clips from Black Lagoon. Hell if I know why, but dammit Josh, I started watching some of them. Revy is, as far as I can tell, the most psychopathic character ever written, but something about this anime is so damn appealing. So I picked up the complete series for cheap on blu-ray. I excused it as also being “inspiration” for my novel.
Still, I wouldn’t bother writing about this if it weren’t for one thing. I made these purchase three months ago. They’ve just been sitting there, untouched, mocking me every day for not daring to touch them. I’ve bought other movies and watched them since. They can smell my fear. What if I watch them, love them so much, and fall back into my old ways? What if I can’t stop myself from going back and watching some old anime? Gundam would be a great series for inspiration for my book. I could just watch an episode or two of some series. Maybe the one with David Hayter? Maybe I could watch a few series, you know, just to get a good feel for what this world is like.
It’s weird, I want to watch these two, but its like I can’t bring myself to do it. So they just sits there, effectively money wasted as I try and force myself to overcome the dumbest fear a person has ever had. Please tell me I’m not as pathetic as I sound. Wait, I don’t have comments available on this blog. Shit. Guess I better just get it over with then, huh?
