Why You Won't Hear from me on Saturday Nights.

Because the nerdiest of all my addictions is going to be beamed into my television (well, it's a toss up between cats and this for nerdiest). I will no longer have to watch old episodes online or read some truly pathetic fanfics (please, learn the difference between there, their and they're.).

For all the normal and much cooler than me people, tonight new episodes of Bleach are airing (at 1 AM). If you don't know what Bleach is, it's a wildly popular manga that was turned into an anime series. If you don't know what manga or anime is, then you should probably stop reading here; if you go on, you'll just think I'm mentally unstable.

If you've never known the true bliss of the euphoria induced by watching a half hour of animated crack, you've really been missing out. Sure, when people bring up anime the first thing that comes to mind is pimpled teenaged asian boys wearing beanies that have kitty cat ears sewn to them. Or those cool people who go to Cosplay and dress up like this:
(I call him Sailor Type 2 Diabetes)
or this:
(Somewhere, Tite Kubo is weeping).

Okay, okay, there are a fair amount aesthetically challenged and strange people who like anime. And, yes, I suspect all these people have very active Second Life accounts (if you don't know what Second Life is, it's pretty much a game that is exactly what it sounds like.) A sad fact remains, however. The majority of anime/manga stories have about twenty times more depth to them than most major US television shows."What going on with "Who's-Humping-Who Hospital-Drama-Land", Dear" "Well, generically attractive male doctor is now dating token female asian doctor, and bad boy doctor made a house out of candles for anorexic moody doctor and Katherine Heigl has cancer. CODE BLACK!" (Literally every "Gay's Anatomy" reference I know from either Cory Geraths or The Soup. Please, ABC, stop giving these 'actors' spin-off shows.)

Sure, most animes plots are rather...different to the average viewer (catching adorable monsters and making them fight for you, japan is ruled by great britian and your kinda super pissed about this--good thing you have magical mind control powers, I see ghosts and occasionally have to venture into the spirit realm to have epic battles for some cause (usually rescuing people who should be more skilled than they are, but...anyway), I just want to bake cakes but I have to kill evil spirits with an exploding box, I'm half demon but I want to be a whole demon--also I have what look suspiciously like kitty cat ears on my head. If you can guess all of these, you and me need to hang out a lot more), but once you get past the initial weird of the anime universe the show is taking place in, you realize that most of the characters have about three different back stories driving their actions. THe more familiar you get with the characters, you realize that these sub-plots aren't just a clever way to keep you interested in the show; they were choice the author made about his characters because (shock) they love them and care about them (in an authorly way). The voice-actors portraying these characters bring more emotion and depth to them than most classical actors do, giving them three dimensionality. After awhile, you don't really notice the show is animated (even though they are really beautifully drawn and colored).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go sew some kitty cat ears on to my beanie.