War of the Worlds

I know what you’re thinking but no, I didn’t see that movie. I saw a different movie. A tale full of whimsy and delight, Howl’s Moving Castle. It may not be Miyazaki’s best but it’s still of a very very high standard. Tuesday, my film teacher asked the class if anyone had seen War of the Worlds over the weekend and to my and her surprise not a one had. But what was most peculiar to me was my own absence from the theater. If you take a look at my 2005 movie calendar, where I log in my movie-going trips, you’ll note that I’ve only seen a handful of films thus far. Howl’s… brings our total to a grand, whopping 6.

I came to the conclusion that for my attention there had been a war of the worlds, or at the very least clash of the titans. And while one could say that I was the real winner of this contest of the champions (hehe, how I do adore the running gag), the match itself went to the Japanese entertainment industry, in more than one way. Although it can be said that I still ingest a fair amount of television, said ingestion is a mere shadow of its former self and has been on the decline for quite some time. Videogames, almost entirely comprised in Japanese origin, having usurped the majority of the attention and time I used to give the TV. Now to further assail the smaller allocation of favor TV has had in my life over the last year comes my new obsession with Japanese Television shows. Which ones I won’t or can’t say but just let it be known that I spend at least a half hour a day with these imported audio-visuals. This may not seem like a lot of time to you, but trust me it is rather a good bit of my leisure time after videogames have had their way with it.

There may be many reasons why this is so. Perhaps it’s due to the shocking lack of Mr. T. in our contemporary American television shows. Perhaps it’s a scathing indictment of the lack of high quality programs on U.S.TV or the deluge of vacuous reality TV shows. Maybe I just fancy Japanese TV more and I always would have. Or maybe all those years of playing Japanese Videogames have contoured my tastes toward these types of TV shows.