Double Shot of Anime

I started the arduous task of stretching canvas over the 60" x 60" frames that dad built last night. To keep me company while I did it I watched a couple of DVDs. I started with the anime classic Fist of the North Star and followed that up with another classic, Ninja Scroll.

There is no way I can pinpoint the moment I fell in love with anime. And it would be equally impossible to determine which feature-length movie was my first. Maybe Akira? That's one helluva way to start a career in lovin' anime. But I digress.

Fist of the North Star was one of the first anime movies I ever saw. It is based off the manga of the same name. The movie is ultra-violent - easily the most violent anime I have ever seen. The animation is below average (or possibly worse than that) by today's standards. The action is over the top and the violence is simply visceral. If you sit through the whole movie without thinking to yourself, "Whoah!", "Gross!", or "Holy Shit!" then you, my friend, have seen too many Saw and Eli Roth movies. Go to therapy now.

Ninja Scroll is an absolute classic. Ninja. Bad ass wandering samurai with his bad ass sword. Ninja. Seven devils of Kimon. Ninja. Tokugawa shogunate spy and wizard. Ninja. Ninja. And more ninja! This anime has it all. It's violent. It's fantastic (meaning, filled with fantasy - although it is also fantastic in the sense that it is a great... oh, hell, you know what I mean). As soon as I started watching it I wondered why I've never shown this to Kelsey (who shares my love of anime) - this is penultimate anime.

And then I realized, I haven't because... It. Is. Pen. Ul. Tim. Ate. ANIME! It's misogynistic. It's chauvinistic. It's brutal. It has copious amounts of nudity. It borders on the perverse. In other words, it's a 15-year old boy's cinematic wet dream but not something I want to share on the couch over popcorn with my daughter quite yet.

It's a genre-defining movie, sharing the top ranks with Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Vampire Hunter D, and... aw jeez, I better stop there or I'll just rattle off every title in my collection :)