I don’t know what’s going on in this video, but I don’t like it.

When you’re a 14 year-old anime fan, and you hear that an Anime movie has won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, followed by an insane amount of hype, you can’t help but feel a little excited. You watch the trailer, and think: “Wow, this must be amazing! I can’t wait to see it!” A few years later, you finally get to watch it. It… doesn’t hold up. …This was supposed to be an awesome movie, right? Then why do you feel like you’ve been cheated? You rent it, and watch it again – twice. Maybe you just didn’t “get it” the first time around. …But no. You don’t get anything from the experience but an empty void. There was something there, but it was so vague and lost within itself it just evaporated before you could grasp it. The story is thin, most characters are either pointless or plot devices, and, to top it off, the ending (before the credits, I mean) is a downer.

It is with my deepest sorrow, thus, that I state: I hate Spirited Away with a passion.

Okay, granted, part of my hatred for this movie might come from all the hype thrown at it. I just don’t think it lives up to it, outside of its artistic value, but people seem intent on simply not finding any flaws in it, just endlessly praising it to the ends of the Earth. It probably doesn’t help that I found out it was up against Disney’s Lilo And Stitch and Treasure Planet for the Oscar. Pixar wasn’t in the competition that year, so it was the one chance Disney had at the Best Animated Feature award. One chance, two movies, both good, and both movies lost. To this.

Man, it had no Gokus, no fireballs, no katanas, no nothin’! It was the worst anime I ever saw. Courtesy of the TvTropes.com forums.

KOKO

Those images are apparently not Photoshops, but (supposedly) actual photographs of some Chinese girl who calls herself KOKO and uses makeup to make herself look like a shoujo manga character. As a lifelong skeptic, I would have naturally doubted the pictures’ authenticity were it not for a couple videos that you can view at some site called RocketNews24, which seem to confirm that yes, she looks like a total freak in motion too.

There are also more pictures at that site, but, you know, I spent as little time looking at it as I could. It took me half an hour to realize that the obnoxious noise I was hearing was the sound of my own screams.

This bloke seems like a typical delightfully dweeby dork, until he starts rambling about how he empathizes with the main character of Urusei Yatsura or whatever. Thanks to @vyabsley for the tip!

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This chap used his “replica anime sword” from Bleach to frighten a burglar from his home, validating the horrible purchases and life decisions of hundreds of fatter, less fit anime sword collectors the world over. Thank you, Mr. Terrey. You are an inspiration to us all.

There’s a video at the full story.

It seems the LeetStreet Boys’ claim to being internationally recognized has some weight to it. It takes a very special kind of person to be so awkward that a Japanese TV network would come to do an interview just so they could make fun of him too.