Random thought of the moment is that it’s been a while since I’ve gotten hooked on an anime series. Most anime series are like most other media - made for the casual masses with lots of (random action/overdramatized romance/weirdness for the sake of being weird/make-’em-laugh-at-any-cost comedy). Then there are people who can create something with these elements and actually do it well, sometimes even putting some interesting thinking into their projects (but oh so rare). If you know of a recent series that fits in the last description, let me know…

So I was totally surprised when I was hooked on a straightforward series, Naruto (anime people can tune out now since you’re probably sick of hearing about it ). It’s nearly finished with it’s second year, currently up to episode 102 (but once you start watching, they’ll fly by - really). The animation quality is high, and it’s the first thing that hooked me. Most of the series that I’ve been hooked on were created before computer animation was well-integrated or used at all - so watching something a little more modern has been a treat. Also, it’s a lot of fun watching a beautifully subbed episode knowing that it had been aired in Japan only a few days prior (I love computers - and of course, the fans who work hard to translate and subtitle each episode every week). The surprise was how great these subtitling jobs are - usually much, much better than the subtitles on US-released DVDs.

Naruto is a lot of fun. It’s already passed the non-anime people test (friends who didn’t watch much anime really liked this one). So go download it (it’s free and legal until it’s licensed in the US) and watch (get the episodes released by Toriyama’s World, and AnimeOne/Aone for the rest).