Once upon a time, there was a girl living in the
middle of the midwestern United States, in the middle of the woods. (She was not
Laura Ingalls Wilder. Different story.)
Due to living in the middle of nowhere, the tv reception was limited to four channels, three of them exceedingly blurry. The library was small. The food was ... midwestern. So the girl grew up, living a simple life, reading British literature and running through the woods searching for evidence of Bigfoot. (Not simultaneously.)
That girl is me.
Don't get me wrong. It was actually a lot of fun, but my exposure to other cultures was, shall we say ... limited.
Then I headed off to college, armed with the vocabulary of an Agatha Christie character and the ability to find north on a starless night by inspecting the moss on the trees. And I met the girl down the hall in my dorm.
She hailed from the Philippines, a place about which I knew very little. We found we had similar tastes in books, movies and tv shows. She introduced me to things like Stargate, fanfiction, and rice that wasn't "instant". I explained to her that in Indiana, a "mango" is a green bell pepper. A dynamic duo was born.
Now, I've always loved animation. Animation can bring stories to life in ways live action can't. But my heart was saddened by the fact that only a few quality animated movies came out in a year. The stuff on tv was all aimed at kiddies, apparently made with the assumption that children are idiots. Then one of my students based a costume design for Maeterlinck's Blue Bird on Inuyasha. (It worked quite well.) So when I was browsing Hulu one night for something to watch and came across the show I thought, why not? I'll give it a try.
And an anime addict was born.
There were so many awesome anime, and I'd never seen any of them! But as wonderful as this was, another thing saddened me. That was the fact that I seemed to have read ALL THE BOOKS. Every time I went to the library, I wandered around and around and ended up going home with books I'd already read four times.
"Why not try reading manga?" S'ra suggested.
Why didn't I think of that? My five bookcases were already overflowing, so I cleared off the top of the piano to make way for my new obsession.
With anime, manga and ... oh yes, real life, I really didn't need anything more in my schedule. But when your best friend says, "Sooo ... I've started watching K-drama ..." what's a girl to do?
Well, that's how it all started. Where it goes from here ... who knows?
-E-
Due to living in the middle of nowhere, the tv reception was limited to four channels, three of them exceedingly blurry. The library was small. The food was ... midwestern. So the girl grew up, living a simple life, reading British literature and running through the woods searching for evidence of Bigfoot. (Not simultaneously.)
That girl is me.
Don't get me wrong. It was actually a lot of fun, but my exposure to other cultures was, shall we say ... limited.
Then I headed off to college, armed with the vocabulary of an Agatha Christie character and the ability to find north on a starless night by inspecting the moss on the trees. And I met the girl down the hall in my dorm.
She hailed from the Philippines, a place about which I knew very little. We found we had similar tastes in books, movies and tv shows. She introduced me to things like Stargate, fanfiction, and rice that wasn't "instant". I explained to her that in Indiana, a "mango" is a green bell pepper. A dynamic duo was born.
Now, I've always loved animation. Animation can bring stories to life in ways live action can't. But my heart was saddened by the fact that only a few quality animated movies came out in a year. The stuff on tv was all aimed at kiddies, apparently made with the assumption that children are idiots. Then one of my students based a costume design for Maeterlinck's Blue Bird on Inuyasha. (It worked quite well.) So when I was browsing Hulu one night for something to watch and came across the show I thought, why not? I'll give it a try.
And an anime addict was born.
There were so many awesome anime, and I'd never seen any of them! But as wonderful as this was, another thing saddened me. That was the fact that I seemed to have read ALL THE BOOKS. Every time I went to the library, I wandered around and around and ended up going home with books I'd already read four times.
"Why not try reading manga?" S'ra suggested.
Why didn't I think of that? My five bookcases were already overflowing, so I cleared off the top of the piano to make way for my new obsession.
With anime, manga and ... oh yes, real life, I really didn't need anything more in my schedule. But when your best friend says, "Sooo ... I've started watching K-drama ..." what's a girl to do?
Well, that's how it all started. Where it goes from here ... who knows?
-E-
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