The University of California's Irvine sector (I don't think it's a whole school unto itself, maybe it's just because they are talking about the extension program. Whatever.) is set to offer a class in the study of Anime and Manga. The class, which will be entitled "Manga and Anime Explosion: What, Why, How, and Wow!," is supposed to explore the history of the art forms and help explain this and that about them, blah blah blah. I could do a long spiel, but rather than advertise for this course, I'd rather question its intentions. Firstly, if they mean to say that manga and anime have become some exploding cultural phenomenon in America, I'd like to take a second to point out the hundreds, if not thousands, of anime that are either not licensed in this country, or are licensed but fail horribly due to apathy, disinterest, and a rather small fan base. I am sick of hearing about how anime is exploding in this country, when some of the most major anime sites still have a readership that barely comes to one-third of what sites like GameSpot pull. Yes, there has been a large push into the mainstream in Japan, but that isn't really culturally relevant for a screenwriter to be doing a course on in the Film Studies department at UC Irvine. Oh, and if you don't believe me, just look at a list of recently released fansub episodes and tell me how many of those are licensed. The numbers are pretty small.

P.S. I am feeling better, so I will do figure stuff tomorrow. And go back to work. YAY!