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The Top 9 Anime For People Who Say They Don't Like Anime

Published

on August 19, 2011

. 4 Comments

You've probably encountered this at some point or another -- after recommending an anime to a friend, they immediately say, "Nah, I'm not gonna watch that. I don't like anime." Hell, some of you might even be that person.

Well, I have a confession to make: I used to that person. But I'm not anymore, thanks to the persistence of my anime-loving girlfriend, Justique. She just wouldn't give up until she found an anime that I liked.

Some of the following selections happen to be my favorite anime (although the order of this list is not necessarily reflective of my own person tastes). But regardless of my favorites, at least one of these anime series or movies is sure to change the mind of even the most staunch anime hater out there.

9. Street Fighter Alpha: The Movie - Okay, let's suppose that the anime hater in your life is opposed to Japanese animation because they're just not familiar with the characters. Well look no further than this movie! It's a Street Fighter prequel of sorts that shows the gang coming together sorta like The Muppet Movie... just with a lot more blood and hadoukens.

8. Baccano - Personally, I don't like this series at all. But I can recognize a crossover hit when I see one. Baccano is a supernatural action story set in early 1930s America. So not only is it unconventional, but it's also set in the USA, which is sure to appease those anime haters among us who can't handle the Japanese culture shock.

7. Ghost in the Shell - This is by far the most traditional anime on the list. I've included it because it's an incredible story with gorgeous animation and a profoundly intricate plot. This is the movie to show to the anime haters that think everything animated in Japan looks like Dragon Ball Z.

6. Weather Report Girl - Ahhhhh, yes!!! I love it. This rare and extremely brief two-episode anime series is about a weather girl who works for a Japanese TV station... who's obsessively driven to succeed... and enjoys furiously masturbating whenever she gets the chance. This is an extremely adult tale that's best to show to haters who think that all anime is made for tweens.

5. Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Alright, so this show is probably the most controversial entry on this list. Why? Because it features a lot of the tropes that often give anime a bad rap among non-fans. But it's sooooooo goddamn good that it had to make this list. It's a light-hearted, feel-good story about an awkward crew of Japanese high school students who aren't quite what they seem.

4. Avatar: The Last Airbender - Disclaimer: this isn't a Japanese series. In fact, it's a Nicktoon. As in it aired on Nickelodeon. But it's often regarded as anime by many people out there. Even though I question that classification, there's one thing that I don't question in the least -- the quality of this three-season TV show. It's absolutely brilliant. Avatar is complex, emotional, and surprisingly all-ages.

3. Perfect Blue - This is the most straight-forward story on this list. A burgeoning Japanese pop star is haunted by a stalker. That's it. Pretty simple in concept. But it's wonderfully rich in suspense and imagery. Remember when I told you to show Weather Report Girl to haters who assume that all anime is juvenile? Well, you should probably show them this one first.

2. Welcome to the NHK - This is the anime to watch with haters who think that all Japanese animation is filled with busty babes, ridiculous action, and post-apocalyptic futures. NHK is the antithesis of the anime cliche. It's a slice-of-life story about a troubled shut-in and his two best friends. It's also an incredibly moving story that's potent in any language.

1. Shin Chan - Finally, we've reached the ultimate anime to convert even the most stubborn of non-believers! Shin Chan is The Simpsons meets South Park, but with more fart jokes. It's a family sitcom primarily following a five-year-old boy who says abnormally adult things while maintaining all the mischievousness of his youth. Though I've never tried to watch this show with subtitles, I can't imagine it'd be much of a hater breaker that way. For this series, you want to make sure that the anime denier in your life is watching the English dubbed version, which is notable for airing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

ALSO CHECK OUT:
- The Top 9 Horror / Psychological Anime - Part One
- The Top 9 Horror / Psychological Anime - Part Two

Culturology #88 - Name Drop City

Published

pete

on May 6, 2011

in Books, Culturology and Movies

. 3 Comments

Wow. So what a month of poetry it was (check out the documentation at www.omiami.org)! Not one to let all my responsibilities constantly slip by, the month of May brings a return to my culturological musings, and my vainglorious quest to make it to 100 posts. So this one might be a bit scattershot, as I pick up some pieces from the past month, but I'm really thinking that maybe, just maybe, I might make it back to my form of yore and drop some serious cultural science all over these here internets. Let's see...

During O, Miami, I met many incredible poets. I also met Kool Moe Dee and Monie Love, both of whom turned out to be incredibly caring and eloquent people.

I also met James Franco, which probably means something to all you fans of the Spider-Man movies. Here's pictorial evidence :

This, I think, would officially be the closest I've ever gotten to an encounter with pop culture. I think you can tell from our facial expressions that it really meant a lot to both of us.

The next most recent encounter, before the festival, was a time two winters ago, when I was walking down the street in Chelsea, Manhattan, just after a large snowstorm, and walked past Willem Dafoe (I know, the other Spider-Man actor!, crazy!), and I was looking at him, being all, like, "I think that's Willem Dafoe!" and he looked right back at me and without even nodding, acknowledged the fact that he was, indeed, Willem Dafoe, and that no words or body language need pass between us.

And one of my best friends kind of looks like Elijah Wood, who is easily confusable with Tobey Maguire, and my mom used to watch Wings a lot, so I feel like I've pretty much met all the important actors from the Spider-Man movies. And Kirsten Dunst. Kirsten Dunst.

Culturology #87 - Poetry Opening Preview

Published

pete

on April 1, 2011

in Culturology

. 5 Comments

So, as I mentioned last post, I've been quite busy recently, co-founding the nation's most cutting-edge poetry festival, down here in Miami, Florida. Today I was down in the Wynwood neighborhood, at the gallery where we're hosting a month-long exhibition of Miami photography, along with a made-for-the-show installation by a handful of alumni from the New World School for the Arts down here, a kind of "writing village" in which visitors will write ekphrastic poems based on the photographs on display.

The show, done in conjunction with Abe's Penny micro-magazine, also features a lecture space where we're having several readings, taking place throughout April. Christy Gast, who runs the gallery, asked me to pose in a few places in the gallery, to take some preview pictures. And, by chance, I was wearing my Audioshocker.com t-shirt (this only a day after being pictured in the Miami Herald wearing a Dogfish Head brewery t-shirt (brewing up a minor scandal of my own)), so I thought it was only right to share a couple of preview images here as well, a day in advance of the show's opening on Saturday night.

Pete at the Abe's Penny Poetry Podium

"My Name is Pete, and I'm a Culturologist."

Good Websites Are Never Under Construction

Published

neal

on March 7, 2011

in Misc

. 3 Comments

Remember when 'This Website is under construction, please come back real soon! Email our Webmaster here" followed by a crude .gif was a common phenomenon all over the Internet? Well, that era is over. Or at least it should be. There is no excuse for a major brand's website to be "Under Construction" today.

I recently started drinking Ketel One Vodka. Why? Because it makes an exceptionally smooth Vodka Soda, and it is cheaper than Grey Goose. (come on people, C.R.E.A.M) Anyway, as of today, Ketel One's website is under construction, and this is wholly unacceptable. How does a major brand, especially one associated with liquor/spirits giant Diageo, get away with such an egregious marketing violation? Let's do some research.

A quick Whois query shows that the domain name has been registered since 1995 (actually, surprising forward looking given the time), but the domain is curiously set to expire in November of this year - pending intervention by the parent/registrar. Basically, this means that Ketel One has had at least 16 years to get it's shit together, and at least 13 years before the Diageo partnership.

Next, the WayBack Machine will prove that Ketel One has had a functional website since 1996. It had a background texture, grainy images, incorporated several links, and got to the point quite quickly: Ketel One is...the smoothest vodka imaginable. This website ran through 1997. From 1998-2000, things got a little more better, fixed width layout, more graphic navigation, martini recipes -- even a 'free video'. 2000-2008 brought various version of a flash based/intro-ed website. Post 2008, the WayBack Machine has no data, but the copyright/last update date on the current website is from 2009.

Ad Age reports that Grey Worldwide took over the Ketel One account back in 2009, and launched the 'Gentlemen, this is vodka" campaign back in Q2 of that same year. So then, perhaps there was a time lag associated with the changeover. But wait, the website copyright hasn't changed since 2009, and the copy on the website reflects the current campaign. I am going to hypothesize that Grey has been in control of the site since they got the account. Does that mean the site has been under construction for almost two years? [Since I don't have the WayBack Machine to prove my case for 2009-2011, I'm appealing to all of you for the facts]

If Grey were my agency , and they tried to sell me on a placeholder website for any longer than a month, I would have fired them on the spot [nothing personal against Grey!]. I acknowledge that according to the Diageo website, Ketel One is not a 'Global Priority Brand' -- but still, the marginal effort to create a decent website (flash based or not) is quite low. How can you afford not to have something up to date at all times? With social/Internet connected shopping becoming a reality, if you are going to put your URL on your bottle, make sure it leads to something useful. There is no value in investing in QR/mobile/WAP/apps/whatever if you don't have the content to back it up.

And that's the whole point isn't it? Either you have a website or you don't -- and with the abundance of social media outlets and web savvy professionals - is there really an excuse to not have an up to date web presence? Even a basic Twitter/Wikipedia/FB strategy would be sufficient to keep me engaged. There is no currently official Twitter page, and Ketel's Wikipedia game is pretty sparse. The site does direct users to a Facebook fan page, but is not making use of Facebook's integrated features or even the Like button.

Now, I've seen the print/tv/outdoor ads. I totally dig the "Gentlemen, this is vodka" campaign, but how on Earth are you calling yourself marketers with such a newbie move? Keep your old website up until the new one is ready --- or don't introduce the new campaign until all of the collateral is ready! Worried about scaring people off? If you have been collecting emails and gaining fb/twitter fans, you have plenty of ways (don't write off RSS either!) to inform customers about your new site and keep them engaged.

My hastily drawn conclusion: Diageo/Ketel One, call up your account exec at Grey, or any one of the myriad web shops out there and get a real website.

Culturology #86 - Excuses, Excuses

Published

pete

on March 4, 2011

in Books and Culturology

. 1 Comment

I know I've been erratic with my Culturologying for the past few months, but by way of an excuse, I present a link to the thing which is my full-time job: O, Miami. It's a brand-new month-long county-wide poetry festival in Miami-Dade County, inaugurating this very April. Please check back to that site often, as we'll be updating information on it from this point forward up through and during the run of the festival.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have time for some Culturological bulletins here and there in the meantime.

I Don't Dance - But I Can With This

Published

neal

on February 28, 2011

in Misc

. 2 Comments

With all acknowledgments to 50, some of us are just plain dance-challenged. And come Friday night, that can really suck when you hit the club. (Ed Note: I have not been to a club in ages). But don't lose hope fellow shockers, hope is but clicks away! Perhaps you remember AudioShocker favorite Barry 'BBoy GRIZ' Rabkin from AudioShocker Podcast #73? Well, our buddy GRIZ just put the finishing touches on his 45 disc (!!!) set of instructional dance dvds! From Breakdancing to Club, Hip-Hop, House, and even Techno - Barry has it ALL covered. You can cop the DVDs at CypherStyles today!

Need some proof of Barry's instructional prowess? Here's a freebie. As you can see, Barry is all about getting you comfortable with the technique.

Personally, I'm excited to finally learn the finer points of doing the Stanky Leg and the Harlem Shake. (By far, my two most favorite dances. ever.)

Popculturology #1 - Morehell vs. Crapcram 3

Published

nick marino

on February 25, 2011

in Misc and Video Games

. 6 Comments

Since Pete's not posting today, I figure I'll jump in with a brand new feature that's a bit more accessible and far less insightful than your average Culturology column.

Guess what I'm gonna write about today? I BET YOU CAN TELL FROM THE TITLE! ~~Marvel vs. Capcom 3~~ Cycles and fads in pop culture. Actually, that's probably what I'll write about every time I do this column. But anyway, I digress. On with today's rant.

I feel like I'm living in strange times right now. Maybe it's my newfound reclusiveness, hiding out and working on my own comics everyday. Or maybe it's because things really are changing around me in a direction that I appreciate.

I remember back in the early to mid 00s, actions and items that I'd once considered eccentric cultural habits of mine became pop culture fads. Mesh hats, once worn as a joke by my friends and I, could be purchased at your local Hollister and were being worn by the people that used to tell me I looked like a "retard" for wearing them.

Raw garage rock became hot. Movies actually parodied things that I thought should be parodied. And for a brief time from 2004-2006, I thought top 40 radio was listenable. Hell, even mainstream comic books started producing crossovers that I thought were intriguing and insightful! Was it me changing to meet pop culture or was it pop culture changing around me?

Every few years, I feel in sync with pop culture. Then I fall painfully out of sync. Then I fall in again when I least expect it. Right now, I feel as though I've mistakenly fallen in again.

Marvel vs. Capcom -- once a niche game that I shared with my closest friends as a particular passion of mine -- has made a roaring resurgence. My fingers ache from online play. I would say I've spent more time playing it and talking about it this week than I've spent following world events... except it's an entertainment world event and I'm just one of the millions following it.

MvC3 is just an example of one thing I feel in sync with right now. The list goes on -- a plethora of weird animated films at the movies, Netflix streaming becoming the new way to watch media (b-movies!!!), superhero stories leading the forefront of mass entertainment, and concepts of freedom and tolerance becoming international norms for people that are tired of being held down by ignorant social structures.

So I wanna pose the question again -- is it me changing to meet the pop cultural status quo or has pop culture slowly cycled back to a place where I don't loathe it?

Culturology #85 - Your Favorite Band Sucks

Published

pete

on February 18, 2011

in Culturology and Music

. 13 Comments

I've never been one to pride myself on topicality, preferring to analyze cultural on-goings from a safe hermeneutical distance (I think I was a sophomore in college the first time I heard the word "hermeneutic;" it was in a talk about new advances in understanding the psycho-physiology of deafness and interpreting Beethoven with computers (or something like that), at Carnegie Mellon. Which was mostly a bunch of fuzzy musicological clap-trap, but did cause me to then go home and look more into what hermeneutics were, and then to spam the music school's dlist with a definition of hermeneutics (having been fairly well convinced that most of us in the audience had no idea what the aforementioned musicologist was talking about), but here I am now, using the word "hermeneutical" in an ironic sense, but in a sense that sincerely carries an understanding of what hermeneutics are (so I'm not sure if I'm thanking that musicologist or not)), but with the release of their newest album in pay-what-we-say online format--as I emailed to my friend Dan, whose favorite band is Radiohead, this morning--I've got to say it: your favorite band sucks.

Exhibit A

For a long time, I really prided myself on my thorough-going ambivalence to The Radioheads. By the time I was aware of their presence on the pop music scene (via friends listening to "Creep" or those animated videos from OK Computer) I understood to write them off as "whiny post-grunge opportunists" and "tools of the corporate hit-making apparatus." So even tho OK Computer came out at a time when my susceptibility to such things should have been quite high (I was a sophomore in high school), I never even bothered to listen to the album straight through.

In fact, I made it all the way through college (when Kid A and Amnesiac were released to massive accolades) without ever listening to OK Computer all the way through (though I did give at least cursory listends to the aforementioned smash electronica hit albums). It wasn't until I went to graduate school for the first time (Fall 2004) that I finally listened to OK Computer straight down (due in some part, I'm sure, to the fact that one of my roommates that year was the aforementioned Dan, whose favorite band The Radioheads are). To put it succinctly: I didn't realize what a good band Radiohead was until Coldplay came out.

And then Radiohead did their whole In Rainbows thing, which liked more for the "pay what you want" model of its release. The album itself was pretty lame, and I was sad to read/see interviews where the band talked about how much they liked it (I thought Hail to the Thief was way better). But it was nice to see some anarcho-socialist principles in play with an album self-released outside of the accepted corporate-driven control structures of pop music, with consumers empowered to pay what they believed the content of the album to be worth. And some of the tracks were fine.

But now, with The King of Limbs, we're back to paying standard-issue fees for digital versions of the album ($9? Get out of here...). And Radiohead have proven themselves as just another pop band churning out singles (see the above video), not really interested in pushing forward their music stylistically, or continuing to sit on the forward guard of the new music market. Oh well. A band that was pretty interesting there, for a few years, is boring again. Yawn.

Culturology #84 - My stang dois storkyn

Published

pete

on February 11, 2011

in Books, Culturology and Music

. 6 Comments

Last week's column got me thinking, since clearly neither The Frank Sanchez Band nor AxCx was first responsible for shouting "fuck yeah!" in song, who had done it first? I didn't find out the answer, but I did find the first-ever printing of the word "fuck" in English arts & letters! It was by the 15th Century Scottish poet, William Dunbar, in his (bawdy Scottish) poem known as either "A Brash of Wowing" or "A Secret Place." You can read it here.

The glorious stanza is this one:

His bony beird wes kemmit and croppit,
Bot all with cale it wes bedroppit,
And he wes townysche, peirt, and gukit.
He clappit fast, he kist and chukkit
As with the glaikis he wer ouirgane.
Yit be his feirris he wald have fukkit -
"Ye brek my hart, my bony ane."

Pretty evocative. Fuck Yeah! There's another classic stanza in there was well, in the history of racy verses:

Quod he: "My kid, my capirculyoun,
My bony baib with the ruch brylyoun,
My tendir gyrle, my wallie gowdye,
My tyrlie myrlie, my crowdie mowdie,
Quhone that oure mouthis dois meit at ane,
My stang dois storkyn with your towdie:
Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane."

According to his Wikipedia entry, Dunbar is also a forefather of printing the word "cunt" as well, but I really think that both "tyrlie myrlie" and "crowdie mowdie" (especially the latter) are better.

Culturology #83 - Fuck Yeah!

Published

pete

on February 4, 2011

in Culturology and Music

. 7 Comments

A SPECIAL CULTUROLOGICAL REPORT!!!

I fell into a kind of stupor entering 2011, and one of my apparent New Year's resolutions was to allow Culturology to slip into an unannounced hiatus. But we're back, because of developments on the scene of nasty novelty rock that we here at AudioShocker just shouldn't let go unnoticed.

Back in the Fall of 2006, having spent the previous two years living in Boston, I found myself back in Pittsburgh for four months. Nick and I took full advantage of my time there, not only getting Dirty Weekend back together for an epic reunion show at the 31st Street Pub and recording fine demos of two new songs, we also recorded a handful of new tunes under our The Frank Sanchez Band moniker. When the ghost of Frank Sanchez occupies our bodies, Nick and I can sing some pretty filthy things. But I should touch on one other thing...

Going to college in the first years of the millennium, certain cultural experiences were pretty standard for the course, and two that I associate pretty closely are 1) Watching CKY videos (CKY2K coming out just in time for my and Nick's freshman year of college) and 2) Listening to songs by Boston's cock-metal favorites, Anal Cunt. Maybe because there was an AxCx song in CKY2K. Anyway, it was mostly for their track titles, which were super-offensive, but occasionally, one--looking back--must admit, made one chuckle. "I Got Athlete's Foot Showering at Mike's" is a classic. I don't think I watched CKY stuff very often, or ever listened to these songs very much, but they were out there.

So, when you come to record vulgar variety songs of your own, you tend to be aware of your influences. My biggest influence was Nick (I think my own song-writing was safely of the lonely nerd novelty genre, until he coached me along the Way of the Dirt), and his influences were... I'm not even sure... 2 Live Crew, certainly... and, Rod Stewart, I guess. Bill Cosby? But never did we say to ourselves "Let's record songs like the kind Anal Cunt makes."

Fast forward to 2010. Those 2K6/7 Frank Sanchez songs have been up at MySpace for nearly half a decade already--and listened to about twice a year. And Anal Cunt has just put out a new album. Anal Cunt, presumably, still has the strong following of shock-giggling teenagers that they've had since making the scene back in the late 80s. The Frank Sanchez Band, thankfully, goes mostly unnoticed there on the ol' internet. So, without further ado, I present two you two exhibits:

EXHIBIT A: The Frank Sanchez Band - "Fuck Yeah" (2006)

Find more artists like Frank Sanchez at Myspace Music

EXHIBIT B: Anal Cunt - "Fuck Yeah" (2010)

Listen to it here.

As much as I want to take some kind of credit for this--that one of the 49 listens of "Fuck Yeah" on MySpace was by Anal Cunt, and they were like "great idea,"--the moral is, mostly, that there are only so many ideas to be had out there in the world of offensive rock music. But we got to this one first. And then, thankfully, retired. (Like Frank Zappa would say, "they're just words," but after a while, I think most of us get tired of them...)