Anime Saturday...and Some Other Things, Too

Despite the fact that it's a bitter cold Monday morning and the pile of work for the week is a bit depressing, I'm in a pretty good mood. And for more than one reason.

Firstly, the excellent 11 O'Clock Comics podcast has posted their annual "11 O’Closcars" episode, wherein they run down the best comics and comics-related goodness of the previous calendar year.

Included in the best of 2010 version of the show are old stand-by categories like Favorite Hero, Favorite Writer, and Most Important News. And a new category--Favorite Webcomic--is a nice (and necessary) addition to an otherwise comprehensive list of awards.

This is one of my favorite shows of the the year, mostly because there are always a couple of books that I've never heard of. I'm only about an hour and a half in at this point (the show is a marathon 3-plus hour event), and already my list of new things to check out includes three webcomics I'd never heard of, and a book on the history of horror comics.

Anyway, this is one of the best comics podcasts out there (and there are a ton of them out there, by the way), and the four co-hosts are smart and articulate, and their varying tastes in comics encompasses pretty much the entire medium.

If you've never tuned in, give it a listen (it's free on iTunes or at their site). I think a number of our readers will be interested in the show.

Right.

So, the other reason for my good mood has to do with a successful introduction to Anime this past weekend. As I mentioned on Saturday, Nathaniel and I were invited to a friend's screening of a series called My-HiME.
While I won't go into a full-on review here (we're just about halfway through the series at this point and I'd rather hold off until we finish the show), I did want to quickly bring up the fact that I didn't run away screaming.

Which is a Big Deal.

As anyone who knows me will tell you, it's just not one of my favorite things to sit in front of a television for an extended period of time. In fact, this past Thursday--the only day of the week that I actually watch TV, mind you--my patience was tested when NBC spread out their Thursday night lineup of comedies to three hours of viewing time.

Too long to sit there, waiting for Michael Scott to be funny.

Still, on Saturday afternoon, I sat through a nice little marathon of My-HiME episodes, and I enjoyed myself. The show was fun and dealt with themes I like. Basically, there's this school for gifted youngsters who have special powers (What can I say? My friends know me), and there's some mysterious and looming threat from without (or, possibly, from within). Plus, there are giant robots who punch monsters.

All very cool stuff.

There were certainly some cringe-worthy parts of the show, I must admit, but as I was told, they're to be expected when watching Anime.

So, yeah. Mission accomplished. New fandom Exfanded.

Now all we have to do is figure out a day to watch the rest of the series, and then I will officially be able to say that I watched an entire Anime series.

Which is something I can honestly tell you would not have happened if not for this blog.