Quick note: Google just had an announcement regarding their 2009 year-end zeitgeist. Coming in at #8 on the entertainment list: “anime online” — it’s known that Google at least occasionally uses the level of search queries for its own strategic planning, and YouTube recently announced automatic translation of captioned videos. Google has very good, although far from human, translation capabilities; this is just SPECULATION, but tossing anime onto Youtube with captions and letting big G handle “localizing” it into the languages of the world would be a cheap if imperfect way of getting a global audience for any show — the cost would consist of the wages of a single person to convert the script into the right format and clean it up a bit (maybe not even that with the right software in the future), far less than even a single human translator for a single language. This is something that other companies, like Hulu and Crunchyroll, cannot do as easily, so it might be something that will show up in time.

The Zeitgeist list is at http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/press/zeitgeist2009/index.html

Watching the evil-mosquitos-working-for-vampires arc of Bleach on Hulu. I feel this series has jumped the shark with its flying whale.

It’s that time of year again! The time to watch anime about Ghosts, Zombies, and Vampires. Especially vampires. Here are my recommendations:

1. Shikabane Hime
   The living dead secretly roam Japan, and only special chosen undead young women can send them where they belong. Conspiracy upon conspiracy line the plot of this horrifying tale. [On Hulu]
2. Higurashi
   Not all is as it seems in a remote village. Hidden torture chambers, violent tendencies, and secret plots fill Higurashi to the brim with violence. [On Funimation]
3. Ghost Hunt
   Starts like Scooby Doo, ends more on the level of The Shining. Paranormal investigators and exorcists go from case to case, taking on poltergeists, demonic possession, zombies, and more. [On Hulu]
4. Hellsing
   Either the televisions series or the Ultimate series will amaze you with vampires vs. vampire action. Alucard is legendary.
5. Vampire Knight
   A different take on vampires. Cross Academy is divided into a day class and a night class. Unknown to most of the students, the night class consists of vampires, and the academy is actually an experiment to try to create harmony between humans and vampires. But not all vampires approve…
6. Elfen Lied
   Not a traditional horror series by any means, Elfen Lied starts out with a bloodbath and just gets more disturbing from there.
7. Kara no Kyoukai: The Garden of Sinners
   Not all of the installments of this strongly supernatural show are equally scary, but there are ghosts, mind control, and murder.
8. Le Portrait De Petite Cossette
   Weird paranormal horror flick with some CG elements. The main character has an antique shop and gets ripped to shreds over and over again because some old ghost thinks it’s a good idea.
9. Witch Hunter Robin
   The occult obviously has a role in this show. Witch Hunter Robin examines what it means to have such powers, and the trouble that it can lead to.
10. FINALLY: Plastic Little: The Adventures of Captain Tita
    Because nothing is scarier that really, really bad anime.

I’ve been watching Bokurano, a series that a lot of people find depressing. It is. But it’s also fascinating, horrific, and deeply thoughtful. Perhaps more NGE than NGE for angst.

Just happened to see that Yu-Gi-Oh is on Rotten Tomato’s list of the worst 100 movies of the past ten years. I’m not sure what to make of this. Several video game adaptations unsurprisingly make the list. Dragonball Evolution appears to have missed the list by a surprisingly wide margin, with a fresh rating of 14%, compared to slot #100′s Whiteout at 7%.