[youtube width=”320″ height=”264″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IFotfsTNqs[/youtube]I admit it: I watch anime. I watch a lot of anime. I even make it available to a select few people by providing links to full downloads to recent episodes of Bleach and Naruto. I really had no problem with it watching the cutesy stuff, the horror stuff and the fantasy stuff. I find it more intriguing and more entertaining than regular American television. I had no problems with it. Until I saw the commercial above while waiting for the 9pm airing of Naruto on Cartoon Network.

I wanted to hide my face in shame. I remember writing on DigitalET about the Superman Returns toys that made me cringe and here we are with a Zabusa’s fake sword (with action sounds!) and a giant, plastic shuriken (throwing star). I think I can look past the crappy toys, though. What I can’t look past are the craptacular actors. Ugh. Why, oh why do they end up trying to fit humans into anime characters? That is part of the joy of anime – people can do spectacular things and look and behave in ways that are completely unrealistic in our world.

How in the world can the kid playing Susuke say ‘Victory is mine’? He destroyed only one rice paper target while the Zabusa character sliced up 3? With sound effects, no less! While the kid playing Sasuke was trying to get his toy to fly the Zabusa character should have just run over there and beat him senseless. And just for kicks he could make sound effects every time he hit him. Seriously, the kid had one long range weapon that takes a while to get ready vs. an angry swordsman with a short range weapon. As fast as that thing was flying Zabusa could have easily covered the distance between them and slapped the kid around.

Seeing live action actors in these roles makes me want to bang my head against a wall and then bury it in the sand. I don’t want a human face on Sasuke. And this poor sap who is playing his part in the commercial…I want to punch in the face. Maybe THAT is the reason why I don’t go to anime conventions. I’d end up chasing down, tackling and bitch slapping the cosplayers.

Of the live anime-to-live action translations that I’ve seen, I can honestly say that “Initial D” is ok, as long as they don’t show humans and they concentrate on the cars and “Death Note” is passable. That is if you don’t look at the character Light. He’s supposed to be a good looking guy that girls go ga-ga for. Urg. The computer generated character of Ryuuk, on the other hand, is pretty darn cool.

Ninja toys. Meh. In my day we had the real thing. No, jack asses. I’m not saying I’m old enough to have been in feudal japan. When I was a young lad we walk home from school in Norfolk and we’d stop by this store called “Independent Sales”. Outside they had one of the largest flags waving that you’ve ever seen. Inside was just stuff. All the junior high and high school kids went there to buy their chain wallets or their velcro wallets. However, if you went to the right section you could buy all sorts of real, metal throwing stars, butterfly knives, butterfly swords, sai, escrima sticks, nunchuks, tabi socks and kung-fu shoes. It was a weird store. But we bought the stuff. Heck we even threw them at each other.

Plastic ninja shuriken and sword indeed.