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Blogger's Block #2: Anime for the Nonplussed
Author’s note
This post, even though it's purely about anime, is refreshingly wholesome and dare I say it, kind of cute.
I think 8/10 of the recommendations hold up with time (20 years later). I'd drop Gankutsuou and Wolf's Rain, and replace them with Made In Abyss.
My and Linh's interest in anime eventually waned, and we only watch them once in a while now. I think kdramas have replaced anime as the new binge fodder.
AI Notes
The wildcard of the four 2006 Blogger's Block backlog posts: Steve takes a hard left off the software beat — no thesis, no industry argument, no programming — and files a slightly bashful enthusiast's report on having discovered Japanese animation. He and his wife Linh watched Spirited Away, worked through Miyazaki's catalogue, and then asked a 19-year-old Suncoast clerk Steve remembers as Ashley for a recommendation; she suggested Twelve Kingdoms, then Last Exile, and 150 DVDs and thousands of dollars later Steve is delivering a Top 10: Haibane Renmei, Last Exile, Fullmetal Alchemist, Twelve Kingdoms, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Scrapped Princess, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf's Rain, Gunslinger Girl, Gankutsuou. Miyazaki is disqualified for being too good. A Jeff Bezos digression in the middle explains why Amazon had to stop trying to be the world's biggest book, music, and video retailer (digital piracy would eat the category), and the closer applies Sturgeon's Revelation.
The warmest beat is a bashful exchange with Ashley over her Last Exile recommendation that lands an affectionate joke at Steve's expense — paired with his wish that he could erase the show from his brain and watch it again for the first time.
Related listings
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2006
Blogger's Block #3: Dreaming in Browser Swamp
The companion piece, same week, but back on the software beat — the early case for JavaScript as the most important language in the world.
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2006
Blogger's Block #4: Ruby and Java and Stuff
The closing entry of the four-part medley, also from the same week — Ruby quietly catching Python on the bookshelves of 2006.
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2006
Oblivion
The same Steve, five months earlier, lost to a different obsession — Bethesda's open-world RPG instead of Japanese animation. Read together as the off-duty register.