flu means anime

Last month I came down with a terrible flu. I wondered where I could've picked up such a punishing version of the virus. Wherever it came from, it hit me hard, forcing me to spend several days in bed, weak and feverish. With my appetite so affected my usual meal regime was thrown out the window, and my trips to the bathroom were more uncomfortable than usual. I had such a bad cough that I ended up going to a walk-in clinic, getting some heavy duty cough medicine and an inhaler to stave off pneumonia.

In those moments of wakefulness, between sips of tea and soup, I found myself turning to old anime. Namely, I watched Hikaru No Go and Great Teacher Onizuka again. Oh, how it does bring me back. The voice acting in both of these series is really quite excellent. And the music! Haha oh man it brought a smile to this old brain.

Out of curiosity, I started reading the Hikaru No Go manga, and so far it's been a real treat, seeing the source for the anime. I think I can recommend both to pretty much anyone dipping their toes into the mediums. It's also gotten me thinking about playing go again, though I remain terrible at it, despite my various attempts at learning over the years.

In preparation for the movie, I also started reading Battle Angel Alita and I gotta say, it's really not aged well. At least, not aged well for me -- young me loved seeing Alita fight her way up the Spire (and beyond) but adult me wants to throw the whole thing into the sun. It's just so stupid, so clearly written by someone obsessed with guns and martial arts and disembowelments and constructing thought experiments. I don't think I have anything in particular against thinking about artificial situations but there needs to be some plausibility to it, to the environments that brought it about -- what Battle Angel Alita asks you to swallow is far too much. For example, there's a character that can experience the history of anything he touches, and in one scene he gains the skills of a sword’s original wielder by holding it -- this is homeopathy for touch, and it's truly one of the dumbest things to pivot a plot around.

The movie was also shit, and not because of those big dopey eyeballs.

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