Japan is overrun by monsters, terrible mutated versions of ordinary plants and animals; an ancient legend has come to life with terrifying consequences for the hapless citizens of a now tech-heavy Japan.  The only defense, a 15 year-old girl, Momiji Fujimiya, who is capable of putting these monsters to sleep, at the cost of her own life.  Sworn to protect her is the secret agency known as the Terrestrial Administration Center, who refuse to sacrifice her and instead are willing to take the monsters on one-by-one no matter what it takes.  And throughout is the hanging question of what it means to be Japanese in this modern era where the old legends are thought of as being petty superstitions.  This is Blue Seed, one of the earliest Anime series I was introduced to as a young teen.

                Back in the day, when I was but a young deviant and had discovered Anime for the first time, I was hungry for more; anything I could get my demented little hands on would do.  Thus, I would weekly visit my local rental store, which actually had a decent collection to offer.  However, as always, rental stores are cursed little places, as haphazard ordering, thievery misplaced videos and other terrible burdens, leaving me with some, but not all, of numerous series, and almost NEVER the first episodes.  Thus, I started Blue Seed on the fifth episode, wading in a little later in the series. 

                I have to admit, I didn’t like it then.  It seemed more than a little crude, made little sense and had this disturbing obsession with panties, specifically, Momiji’s.  But it was pretty, it had that going for it, and really, at that stage of my twisted development pretty was oftentimes enough, and so I found a copy of the first several episodes, and… well, context does fix a lot of gripes.  I still thought the adult humor and panty obsession was a little strange, but hey, I grew up on Tom and Jerry, who routinely beat each other for our amusement, how am I supposed to understand Japanese humor?  With actual understanding under my belt, I appreciated the show more, and over the next five years, and the wonderful emerging DVD and the unfortunate buying of episodes more than once, I finally had a complete set.

                Hoorah, old bean.

                It is time, my demented little minds, to speak of many things.  Of ships and sails and ceiling wax, of terrorists and Kings…  Or something like that.  Honestly I can’t remember the verse and am too lazy to look it up.  It’s not exactness I need here anyway, it’s just enough to make a point.  There is a lot of information that sears through my synapses every day, articles of great importance, articles written about opinions on events of great importance, opinion disguised as news, and news disguised as entertainment.  And that’s just the politics section.  Every day I find myself inundated with fact, fiction and some insidious mixtures of the two, all trying to tell me what I should feel and feeding me  just enough information to force me to think one of two ways.  We are told constantly who to trust, who to respect, and who to hate, and rarely given the chance to make an honest opinion.  Answers are redirected and avoided, the Fourth Estate regularly picks sides and all the while, we are told to “Trust us, not those other guys, they’re eeevvviiilll.”  Hiss.

                My, that was overlong.

                I guess I’m trying to say that I’m fed up.  It’s making me crazier than I already am and it’s hard enough to keep a step ahead of the authorities as it is, I can’t afford to lose more Sanity points.  Just this past week I’ve been regularly inundated with two ridiculous groups of theories that just won’t leave me be: The circumstances of our President’s birth, and the circumstances of a terrorist leader’s death.  These are the sort of conspiracies that give a conspiracy theorist like myself a bad name.

                Now I don’t usually rant about these sort of things in this place, I’d prefer to talk about fun things like movies and Anime, but I feel so close to the breaking point on this that if I don’t vent somewhere than you may hear about me on the nightly news and my attempt to hijack a schoolbus with a gun made out of popsicle sticks.  It’s just that overwhelming.  I don’t claim any secret knowledge, no inside source, or any sort of newsman’s pedigree.  What I do have is some plain old common sense and a willingness to look past partisan-tinted glasses and read the plain honest truth.  Our President is not a super-secret Muslim non-American Antichrist out to plunge our country into such devastating darkness that will take Jesus, Buddha and Gandhi to dig us out from.  I’ll even go so far as to say our last President was not a poo-flinging monkey sub-literate jackass who wanted to make this country serve our lord-and-masters Sony and Toshiba.  I think George W. Bush was a man who believed his party’s policies would make this country better, and when that didn’t work, he got involved in war, because wars make Presidents look strong.  He was a man in over his head doing what he thought was right.  I don’t hate him, and if I can say that, could we perhaps get some of this “Nothing Obama does is right/he’s not really American.” rhetoric to die down some.