Hoorah for Adult Swim!

[furtech]

I've really been enjoying two new shows: Samurai Champloo and Paranoia Agent. The former is a anachronistic period piece taking place around the Shogunate period of the mid-19th Century. Kind of a funky mix of rap-culture and samurai flicks. The major story arc is kind of uninvolving, but the individual stories are amusing.

The other show, Paranoia Agent is creepy. I haven't been this creeped out by a cartoon in a long time...I have no idea where the major story arc is heading, but this show has the most disturbing opening and ending credits I've ever seen. Love it.

As much acclaim that Cartoon Network has been getting for its designs for Teen Titans and Samurai Jack and Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, nothing produced in the US (or many other countries) comes close to the wildly imaginative shows coming out of Japan these days. Mind you, the majority of animated stuff is banal, shallow crap-- but shows with incredibly unique worlds and powerful story arcs also get made. Full Metal Alchemist, Trigun, S-CRY-Ed, Milk Chan, Ghost in the Shell and Wolf's Rain* are just a few recent anime series that have made it over that have worlds and stories not found in American animated series. The closest I can think of in recent memory are Samurai Jack and Foster's Home (etc.).

It's a shame that in a country as large as this, boutique studios making their own shows don't survive.

[*I almost forgot Fooly Cooly: an indescribable mix of baseball, coming of age and sex]