a sense of joy and then a panic

I had an acquaintance in high school who had a shirt that said this: "no job.  no money.  no car.  but I'm in a band."  The band was mostly fictional, incidentally.  The only other shirt that I remember from high school was one bastardizing the Tolkien "one ring to rule them all" rhyme, turning it into "one King to rule them all", aka Jesus/God/clearly-I'm-not-Christian, apparently missing the obvious about the one ring being the evil essence of Sauron, not exactly the prince of peace. 

Anyway, the band shirt.  That's how I feel about Toonami.  By which I mean: not a prep.  not a dork*.  not an otaku.  but I watch Toonami.  I know that my taste is looked down upon by all the above "types".  And of course by all parents.  I'm also amused by Mr. T's World of Warcraft and Snickers commercials, I know the Mortal Kombat theme song despite never having played or seen Mortal Kombat, and I like all the Rush Hour movies, even the third one.  I even understand the appeal of pro-wrestling, which my mother thinks is basically anathema to all that is good in the world (I don't watch it because the characters don't appeal to me).  To many of my peers I'm a lowbrow hick and an antisocial freak, and they don't mean it lovingly. 

And to that I give a resounding: "feh". 

There are lots of us out there, Toonami kids.  I promise.  I don't claim that we're especially smart or savvy or interesting.  But I don't claim that we're not, either.  Some of us joke that Toonami saved an entire generation of people my age, because it struck while we were in middle school.  It probably saved some of those same people that make fun of us now.   I'm not saying Toonami was amazing.  I think it deteriorated a lot in the later years, around the time the Midnight Run morphed into Adult Swim and Cartoon Network got grown-up fans, leaving TOM the motivational robot to somehow attract a demographic that was getting pressured to do the "cool grown-up thing" and watch Adult Swim... thus making Toonami's target audience younger and dumber.  I'm just saying it annoys me when other people, especially people my age or younger, look down on me for still being a Toonami kid, while in the next breath they will applaud with great frenzy a show like, say, Naruto, or Death Note.  You know they'll only applaud it for so long, while it's acceptable.  Before it joins the beanie babies and tamagotchis in the box in the garage.  I went through my Adult Swim phase, briefly, and recently.  I know I got into it a lot later than my supposed peer group.  In high school I stuck with the X-Files and Law & Order.  Incidentally, those are still my top choices on any given day.  Yet while I do get chills from Jack's closing speeches and Goren's interrogations, they don't make my heart thud with anticipation.  Listening to their opening themes don't bring tears to my eyes.  And Adult Swim?  It's more for the dorks and the otakus than for me.  I hate all their anime and a lot of the cartoons don't entertain me as much as comedies need to.  I have no idea what preps watch - MTV?  Do they even watch television?  Or do they party all the time? 

We're being ever more marginalized, not even by society but by our fellow "outsiders" - a label, unfortunately, that is self-applied.  So whatever.  I guess I'm going underground.  There are still people, especially the poor and racially disenfranchised, who mourn the death of the old school.  Oh yes, and: real Toonami kids appreciate rap. 

I don't want to convert anybody.  I don't believe in missionary work. 

Just let me watch my Mad Rhetoric videos in peace, and don't lecture me with your thirty dollar haircut. 

If you don't know where that's from, then just don't ask. 

* Something special happened today: I realized that there is a name for the people I complain about a lot (I-be-quirky kids, pseudo-liberals, pseudo-weirdos, self-declared "socially awkward" people who aren't really socially awkward, speech kids, newspaper kids, theater kids, Tim Burton, Donnie Darko): dorks.  I hate them.  Here's a definition of them provided on Urban Dictionary: "After the 1990s, the term dork tended to specifically refer to a person who often shared the characteristics of geeks or nerds but were not ostracized as a result. Also, while old school geeks and nerds tend to continue to accept an "outsider" status and maintain an elite club mentality amongst themselves, dorks generally tend to do the opposite, hence a current preference with the mainstream for dorks over geeks or nerds."  Here's another: "someone who does things that are kinda silly and not neccessarily cool but always cute".  It first occurred to me that all the aforementioned categories might be called one name when some user on LJ complained about someone else complaining about her profile information - something about her loving the O.C., and being a dork.  I had thought that dorks weren't cool, but what self-respecting "subaltern" likes the O.C.?  (guilty pleasures aside, of course, but who would admit it in a public profile?)  So I looked up dorks and it was confirmed.  

"I'm a little curious of you in crowded scenes, and how serene your friends and fiends." - Mezzanine, by Massive Attack, one of my favorite songs in one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite groups. 

Texas A&M male cheerleader:  "Joe Paterno's on his death bed and needs a casket, ha ha!"
Joe Paterno:  "Yeah, whatever."

By babyjin, posted in fanficrants.

( female authors, female characters are not the anti-christ )

The thread that follows is interesting too, although everyone agrees with her (thank God) - i.e., "oh, and a small message to those who bash/kill/otherwise get rid of a female character because she "gets in the way of the mansex": here's a tip - if you have to get rid of a female 'cause otherwise the two guys wouldn't go after each other, maybe they're not actually gay."  Apparently she was writing it about the Yu Yu Hakusho fandom, but I could have sworn it was mine. 

Okay, so you know how I've always joked about people thinking of DBZ as racist because of the whole, um, SSJ-Aryan thing?  Everybody thinks, "Oh, that crazy girl, reading too much into that stupid kid's cartoon again."  Everyone laughs that Namek is a planet of black people, not thinking anyone will actually think that.

TAKE THIS!

So, everybody feel like a bad enough person for watching it?  Okay, great.  Granted, there are serious misunderstandings in the article - for example, not knowing that Kami isn't Kame, and that it means God in Japanese and (my favorite), that Mr. Popo is not actually meant to be black, although he looks like he's drawn in blackface.  He's supposed to be Indian.  Trust me on this.  And I really don't think the show is as misogynistic as I thought.  I mean, it's no X-Files, sure, but it's also not as bad as... you know, 90% of anime.  But sometimes I think even Law & Order can be seen as misogynistic too... "the ADA Babes", as they're referred to?  Sigh, misogynistic, such a strong word.  I prefer sexist myself.  Sexism.  It has a nice easy slip of the tongue to it.  Mm, sexism.  Nothing like some good sexism in the morning.  Please understand that it's 3:00 a.m. as I write this.

They proceed to discuss all these other horrid racial stereotypes in DB/Z and I'm just like... uh... heh heh.  This is why it was only meant to be seen by Japanese people?  Then they become thankful that anime is now becoming more open-minded - the new, awful generation of anime, you know.  Personally, this is why people who have singular issues annoy me.  They would find similar artistic/animation issues in Akira, to be honest, in some of the evil people of the rival gang the Clowns.  Yes, I know that it doesn't help and that it perpetuates racial stereotypes, but you know, I don't think it's malicious.  The '80s animators didn't know the full history of these issues in the states, and let's face it, Japan is a homogeneous country.  I've read that anime girls have ridiculously big eyes because the artists were inspired by American cartoons like Betty Boop.  Which means, really, we have ourselves to blame.  I'd be more concerned about the way Japan depicts China.  That has history - that could be politically malicious.  But not the way Japan depicts black or white America.

Oh yeah, and they also seem to not have caught onto what the fandom has decided - that Nameks are black, and thus one of the show's most awesome characters, Piccolo, is black. 

Still, my favorite part is the comment from "Pierce": "Po-Po. What is he, po? broke? Mr. Broke-broke?"

Rofl. 

since my mother recently expressed the quite distressing sentiment that maybe she shouldn't have let me watch DBZ and get so wrapped up in it at a young age (and by young she means, uh, 12), I feel the need to prove that this show does have redeeming factors and was in fact a valuable shaping influence on my personality and attitude.  Oh, yeah, and this is also for those stuck up otakus/Japanophiles who wish they were Japanese and think DBZ is "the worst anime/manga ever" - how I hate those snots.  They think Digimon is better than DBZ.  That makes my eyes water with hatred.  I mean, no offense to Digimon... but it's about digital monsters for shit's sake!  I'll eat their fuckin' brains... heh heh.  Feel free to disagree with me... this is just my opinion.

Oh, also, I'm basically only talking about DB and DBZ up to and including the Freeza Saga, in case anyone cares.  I didn't watch the others and have no desire to.  Akira Toriyama has said that he wanted to end it after the Freeza Saga, but fans wouldn't let him - so I take that as a rational ending point.  I've seen episodes from the later sagas and they're way worse in every way. 

Combat - the defining factor of the show.  I don't know what effect this had on me, though, besides making me really, really love combat.  Especially in the beginning before huge super-mega explosions are being generated out of palms right and left with barely any effort, and when a power level of NINE THOUSAND is actually something to admire... those were the days.  Nobody does combat like DBZ.  I learned how to write all my "action" scenes from this show, and it still doesn't turn out half as good.  I think part of the reason I love it so much is that it's sort of realistic - and by that I mean, people actually do get hurt when they get hit, they don't just bounce back like rubber, and there are usually long and extensive recovery times involved for those involved (this show may win for the most clips in a hospital).  Innocent civilians die, buildings get blown up.  And DBZ is also very deliberate about showing how hard it is to attain those high power levels and those advanced fighting techniques.  I would say 50% of DB is training, and about 40% of DBZ.  And if I compare to other anime, I judge DBZ movies pretty harshly when it comes to combat, because I have high expectations of them - in comparison to other anime, all the movies should really score perfect 10s, because in my opinion at least, you just don't get any better hand-to-hand combat than this franchise.  For the first time, there were no dueling machines or prettyboy sword-and-armor jousts - just hard-hitting punches and slams.  Mmm.  Adrenaline... *drools*

Characters - I would hardly say they're 1-dimensional, because some of them - Piccolo and Vegeta come to mind - are actually quite complex individuals with complex relationships.  However, some people have compared DBZ to a soap opera (not a bad comparison, save that it's all fighting instead of kissing), and the characters do tend to get a little hackneyed from time to time, as soap opera characters are wont to do.  I think that's actually part of the appeal of the show: the lecherous old man who gets nose bleeds when he sees women in bathing suits and watches aerobics videos, the pathetic loser sidekick who constantly fails at life, the coward who spends most of his time hiding and then pops up out of nowhere to perform a heroic act at the last minute.  They're tropes.  But they're lovable tropes.  And DBZ leaves a lot of room for psychological contemplation on the major characters.  A lot of this is cut out of the anime, but the manga still has it.  I've heard a lot about how the anime fucks up the characters, and I can vouch that Goku, for example, is a lot more serious and a lot less of a buffoon in the manga, and during his fight with Vegeta he's actually more fatalistic than optimistic - like when he realizes that he was the one who turned into an oozaru (giant ape monster) and killed his grandfather, and he says, "Oh, Grandpa, I'm so sorry... I'll make it up to you, when I see you in heaven," implying that he knows he's dead facing oozaru Vegeta.  If you count all the characters in the early sagas, you'll see that they actually make quite the plethora of interesting individuals, diverse and rainbow-like.  Toriyama was very careful to give all his characters both flaws and redeeming qualities.  As much as Goku is often accused of being a Gary Stu (Mr. Perfect), he has a lot of pretty serious flaws. 

No Cutesy Females - this is perhaps one of the top reasons I love DBZ.  There is an utter absence of the googly-eyed, leggy teenage schoolgirl type in DBZ.  Toriyama's style doesn't lend itself to it, and he often gets accusations of drawing "ugly".  Yeah, I think most anime is drawn "misogynistic", so eat that.  The girls do not have unrealistic body figures or faces, and none of them are cutesy.  They're all bitches, in fact, loud and shrill and commanding of attention - not because they're so cute and spunky, but because they're so goddamn... cantankerous.  The only girl who's vaguely cutesy, Maron, is hated by everyone and eventually leaves her boyfriend with these guys that happen along the beach, making her flake central.  While the female characters are by no means perfect, at least they're not stupid, vapid robot-dolls that get "turned on" by getting pressed between the legs (Chobits... my GOD I hate this show).  This is a comment I've read: the female characters just look like the male characters only with toned down muscle mass and prettyfied.  Deep breaths here: THAT IS WHAT WOMEN ARE.  PRETTYFIED MEN WITH LESS MUSCLES.  THEY ARE NOT BUBBLEHEADS WITH GOOGLY EYES AND BALLOON BREASTS.  HOLY FUCKING JESUS.  LEAVE YOUR ROOM!!! 

Redemption - one of the main "themes" of the series, it deserves a mention.  Redemption here means villains that become good guys - but over a very long and exhausting process, it's not overnight like Darth Vader.  Piccolo's redemption is probably the best - he trains Gohan and in between throwing him off cliffs, learns to care for him and eventually sacrifices his life to save him.  Vegeta is also redeemed, but you're never quite sure if it works, and part of the reason the Freeza Saga is so entertaining is because Vegeta switches sides through most of it.  Still, when he is killed by Freeza and begs Goku as he's dying to avenge the Saiyan race... that was emotional.  I remember having my face frozen solid after watching that episode.  Only two big villains in the whole thing actually prove irredeemable - Freeza and Cell.  Well, and Radditz, but he's not really a biggie.  And all of the Z-fighters - every single one of them - start out as Goku's adversaries in DB.  Which goes to show that when it comes down to it, DBZ does advocate letting one's opponents live and giving them a chance to do-over, and further, that organisms are "basically good".  And that's always nice.

Perseverance - I used to tell myself when I was in middle school to remember Gohan.  He was four when he watched his father die, was abducted by a green alien that up till then he thought was an enemy, and forced to train for the first time under harsh duress, away from his mother, without food or shelter.  Chumbawumba's "Tub Thumping" song: "I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down" is pretty much the attitude of the Z-fighters.  This makes for some hella emotional scenes.  I think my favorite is Gohan insisting on going up to fight Recoome despite being completely battered, despite Krillin telling him to "stay down".  Gohan goes up anyway, saying, "I'm the son of Son Goku the warrior... I won't let you beat me!"  And then Recoome breaks his neck. 

Emotion - I think this is what actually keeps me coming back to this show.  Besides the combat, that is.  This is probably the most highly emotional show I have ever watched.  For supposedly being a silly kids' show, it can pack a hell of an emotional punch.  Notwithstanding the self-sacrifice scene in the Cell Saga, which I can't really talk about because I never watched it, DBZ is filled with under-the-surface emotional tension that occasionally explodes, and when it does, it's actually kind of frightening (see the infamous p.24 scene in Viz's #12).  Another good example is the episode "Embodiment of Fire", my favorite episode because of the dream sequence Goku has when Freeza's holding him down, drowning, in the water.  Essentially he sees all his friends and family - particularly his wife and son - screaming or dying as Freeza destroys Earth.  For one, the episode reaffirms the G/CC pairing.  For two, the dream sequence motivates Goku to power back up and scream, "and I don't care if you're a million times stronger than me, I won't let them down!"  I get goosebumps just thinking about it.  Granted, if you're not "in" it, then you probably won't feel it.  But if you are "in" it, then this, combined with combat creates a feeling that's pretty much a high, that I haven't been able to replicate with anything else.

Adults Only - I think part of the reason a lot of these things I've mentioned work for me is because the people they concern are all adults (except when explicitly mentioned, like Gohan).  A lot of anime centers around bratty teenagers, and you're expected to believe that a bunch of meddling kids totally have the fate of like, the entire world in their hands, when really all I want to do when I see these spoiled whineypusses is shoot them.  The adults in most anime shows are either villains, stupid parents, wise old teachers, or lovely unattainable older women who will die to save the life of the bratty teenager, as if life really does end after you turn 21.  DBZ thankfully does not adhere to this, and really this is probably why I love it so much.  If you're going to make your main characters children, then do it purposefully and seriously think about the implications of what you're doing by making them under 18 - both Akira and Neon Genesis Evangelion, my runner-up favorites, do this to a precise art.  Otherwise, just make them adults.  It makes the story stronger.  There's just a certain extra wallop of importance when your main character is fighting to protect not only his friends or his planet, but his child.  You can feel how much more it means.  It also makes the main characters much more relatable, in my opinion, for life, because it just makes them look like average Joe Schmos (except... completely un-average) trying to protect their families, and that's a feeling you don't get when your heroes are all so young they have no life experience.  This actually strikes me as a much more American rather than Japanese trend - Americans are more likely to have grown-up heroes, especially when it concerns their blockbuster action heroes, like Rambo and Rocky and whoever Bruce Willis's character is in the "Die Hard" series.  Characters with baggage and skeletons in the closet.  Besides, could kids really be responsible for saving the world? 

No Romance for Me, Ma - as much as I bemoan the lack of romance and affection between the couple I'm devoted to, this being a hardcore shonen anime, I'm actually glad.  You know why?  Because the Japanese don't know how to do romance.  They are scary when it comes to romance, in my opinion.  Toriyama was once asked why he always skips the years without fighting when babies get born (the 5 years between DB and DBZ out of which comes Gohan, the 3 years in the Android Saga out of which comes Trunks and Goten), and he just blushed and said he didn't know how to write romance.  Yeah, well, don't feel too bad, Toriyama, cuz it apparently goes for that whole country of yours.  I saw an episode of this anime, Eureka Seven, where the main boy and girl are sort of getting closer and expected to kiss, and the boy just ends up going all red and hentai-ish and the girl gets these soft vulnerable doe eyes, the way Japan always draws their female characters before they have sex, and I just wanted to vomit.  It's mushy, it's ridiculous, it's over-the-top.  It turns the guys into blithering perverted idiots and turns the girls into weak-in-the-knees damsels in distress.  Somehow they still have time for this despite the world  needing to be saved.  Basically, love in Japan = peeks at the female characters naked.  Besides, people never actually get married.  Hell, they're all 14* .  So in retrospect, I'm glad DBZ doesn't do romance.  It does, however, credibly show support for the G/CC pairing in several episodes - and it's never the stupid giggly headrush romance that Japan likes to do either, it's mature love between adults.  Granted, I put a bit more than that into Ilium Agonistes.  But then again I can write romance.  Unlike Japanese people. 
* - an important exception to this tirade against anime romance: Berserk. 

Generally Hated by Anime Fans - and not considered anime, even!  Of course, this begs the question - what is anime?  Is it anything animated that comes out of Japan?  If so, then it is, sadly, anime.  If anime is, however, mostly bishojo and bishonen (pretty girl, pretty boy), elaborate details, angsty plotlines involving the sword of blah blah blah, with unrealistic characters with no real problems other than that they happen to be half-demon or half-witch or half-fucking-Pokemon, then ok, it's not anime.  Good.  I think DBZ should just get adopted by Marvel or DC Comics.  Never thought I'd say that considering I'm not a big fan of the two big comic conglomerates of America, but DBZ would probably fit better there.  I personally am of the opinion, as of right now, that anime gives DBZ a bad name.  Then again, I think that this could also be traced back to my love of the movie "Hero" and my complete hate for the one that came after it, "House of Flying Daggers".  Why?  "House of Flying Daggers" was so over the top emotional and "beautiful" that it generated no emotion in me at all.  During the ending scene where they're dying in the field of snow I was like, geez, why don't we have some rose petals fall on you too while we're at it.  "Hero" on the other hand was about what you'll do to save your country.  Sorta like the people who say DBZ is all fighting, what's the point of that?  Yeah, what is the point of it?  I mean, millions of people die every year in conflicts, fighting is obviously not an undercurrent of our daily life*.  I am, however, a political scientist.  And a pretty strident one at that.  I study power.  You can say it's not important... and I can say that, well, that's nice, until some pissed off country decides to blow you up as you're getting a Starbucks frappucino.  Ok, got a little off topic there.  My point is, DBZ is often shunned by anime otakus.  For this I am very glad, because I'm starting to think anime otakus, and the great majority of anime, are basically the scum of the Earth.  And don't tell me that I'm just one of those "newbies" that needs to see what I'm missing.  I have tried to watch/read several animes.  Here's a list of the ones I like: Akira, Evangelion, Berserk.  Here's a list of the ones I don't like: .hack, wolf's rain, lain, chobits, gundam (sorry, Kim, it's just not for me), pokemon, digimon (again... sorry), full metal alchemist, eureka seven, fushigi yugi, sailor moon, inuyasha, ruruoni kenshin, saint seiya, flcl, fruits' basket, hellsing, love hina, naruto, yu yu hakusho, scryed, zatch bell.  I know I'm missing a lot, but I'm tired of giving this genre a chance. 
* - another qualm of mine: "brainless fighting"?  Brainless?  You know what brainless fighting is - pro-wrestling.  This is fighting to save the goddamn world, you piece of fucks!

Entertaining - DBZ is addictive and entertaining.  Period.  Sometimes the humor is intentional, sometimes not.  Sometimes it's in the sarcastic comments made by Piccolo and Vegeta ("you had the incomparable power of the dragonballs serving you, and you brought this useless sack of trash to life!"  "sorry I'm a useless sack of trash...").  Sometimes it's in the bugged out expressions on characters' faces.  Sometimes it's just watching Krillin fail at life for the millionth time.  As much as I hate the Majin Buu saga, I have to admit, the episodes The Innards of Buu and Mind Trap are the most wonderfully fucked up episodes in the series.  Yes, some of the humor is purely physical - i.e., Master Roshi falling on his head on the ground when he tries to jump out the window and Goku lets loose a power blast.  So what?  You only live once.  If you can't laugh at old people falling on their heads, I guess that's your loss.  In fact, looking over this post makes me just want to drop everything and watch more and more episodes! 

God told me, I've already got the life...

SHIP TANGENT:  I'm collecting episodes with G/CC in them and found these two recently - "Our Hero Awakens" and "The Time Chamber", taking place in that Cell Saga I don't otherwise watch.  They offer undeniable proof of my ship's right to be the couple of DBZ.  Goku's just recovered from his heart disease and is going off to train in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber for a year to see if he can get any stronger so he can beat Cell.  Lights, camera, action.  Italics are thoughts.
Goku:  Hey, Chi-Chi, I'd like to take Gohan with me if that's okay with you.
Chi-Chi:  That's a joke, right?  Right?  Well, what do you think I'll say, Goku?  Yeah.  Go ahead.  I can't stop you.  But I want you to make sure Gohan gets as strong as possible... *lightly punches him* ... 'kay?
Goku:  Sure.
Chi-Chi:  Now, if I let Gohan go and battle those androids with you, you have to promise to let him study when he gets back, alright?
Mr. Roshi:  Hm, interesting.  Chi-Chi never lets Gohan put down the books.  This must be some kind of a trick.
Chi-Chi:  I want you and Gohan to give it all you've got.
Goku:  Thanks, Chi-Chi.
Chi-Chi:  I could never deny you anything, you big lug.  Goku.  I don't know what I'd do without you.
Mr. Roshi:  That's sweet.
Goku:  Well, see ya.  I'll miss you, Chi-Chi.
Chi-Chi:  I'll miss you too. 
*Goku puts his fingers to his forehead to do instant transmission, briefly glances at Chi-Chi, and then vanishes.*
Chi-Chi:  Come back... soon. 
As Kim says, that's really all the proof I need right there.