The reel deal

I've never really gotten the deal about Japanese Animation. Other than the fact that it looks really sleek and the characters swagger in styles enough to throw Olympic swimmers into depression, what's so great about it?

Maybe, everything.

Sure they talk funny. The leading characters (and unleaded characters too) are fueled by a lot of energy. The kind that powers verbal diarrhea perhaps because their lips keep moving long after the actual speech has ended. That might be due to bad dubbing, but it's kinda trancelike to watch those itty bitty probosces keep fluttering. And then expand to the size of hippopotamus mouths while eating. Background score: Crunch, mmgah, chomp, deelish, gnaw, crunch. I already said crunch. The animators sure know how to make them sound good. The only time I heard someone actually eat like that was in a Bong marriage when competing over fish fries was still fashionable. The burp was still in vogue then. After that, health became fashionable and the quintessential Bong bourgeoise was sadly left behind...

Back to anime.

Most ingredients of a typical anime are liberally splashed with action, skin show, some more action, a storyline that involves either a treasure, dragon, parallel world, godlike power, cyborgs and fan service. Speaking of action, those blokes westwards could really take a few hints. Matrix style moves, flying kicks, crustaceans wielding nanchuckers with a taste for pizza leaves a funny taste in the mouth. More salt please. So there you have these long haired japs who look typically stereotyped in their ripped jeans, out of proportion physiques (I swear, if those characters were life size, they'd be over 8 feet tall with gorilla arms and no chest hair. We call them metrosexuals - just without the height). And they swing their arms as fluidly as cigarette smoke, make some grunting sounds that might or not be inspired by Jenna Jameson and then crack the skull of the not so attractive anime opponent.

Basically, it's fun. It's fun to imagine blasts of ultra heat from your eyes. Oyya, speaking of eyes - they're always lazily drooping until the sexy villain decides to beat the living daylights out of the poor wrong protagonist. This sounds very Bollywoodish, but villains here are never sexy. Maybe long haired and dyed beards at the most. Animes look cool with any colour of hair. It's mostly metallic yellow and purple, but the odd shade of red, green and blue are also there. Black hair sticks out like a misshapen mustache on a southie hero. Think pokemon.

Ultimately, it's about entertainment. It might just be about money as well, but we're prudish and don't cloud our thoughts about such materialistic things. (Also skin show). So if you'll excuse me, my Fatal Fury - the movie has finished streaming and I'm off to watch the ghost of lover the martial artiste coax him into wishing his new lady love good night.