It's been a rough time at work over the last couple weeks, as everyone on my team has been scrambling to be ready for our upcoming week of meetings in Germany. On Tuesday, I spent 9 straight hours in a meeting room, from around 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM. If you've ever spent 9 hours in a hole discussing agendas and action items, you know exactly what I mean when I say that my brain was begging to be euthanized right around noon.
Thankfully, I had access to sandwiches and my secret USB watch, while everyone else dashed out of the door for lunch at 1. So, as I munched on soggy lunch room sandwiches, I gleefully obliged my aching mind and bludgeoned it with some of the stupidest anime I've watched in years: Rosario + Vampire. After about 14 minutes of what the Japanese descriptively call "Panty Anime," my brain sank into grateful oblivion and I felt sufficiently dumbened to tackle the next 3 hours of meetings.
You may ask why I consider Rosario + Vampire to be the dumbest on a list of very dumb shows I've watched in the past. You may also ask what that blatant image is doing at the top of my rant. The second question answers the first. The level of fan service is so high, and such a focal point of the show, that I firmly believe that my He-Man rule applies to it: "If society has to choose between being remembered solely by He-Man (or, in this case, R+V) and being condemned to permanent and irrevocable destruction, society will choose destruction."
I mean, the default camera angle involves knee level - you don't count panty shots when we're watching this show, you count each scene where the girl's skirt miraculously manages to cover her frilly underthings. According to the official staff blog, each writer's meeting for the show involves serious discussions of character panties.
If you want meaning, plot, or anything of substance, you're not going to find it here. As I mentioned before, I am convinced that watching this show has a negative impact on my intellect - each time I watch it, its inanity causes parts of my brain to set themselves on fire in protest. Hell, each time a new episode airs, I let my friends know with conversations similar to this exchange with Hodgepodge:
Dom: Let's get stupid TOGETHER
Hodgepodge: OU!
Friend: What are you guys watching?
Hodgepodge: Rosario + Vampire
Dom: Or, what I like to call The Dumbening.
Hodgepodge: Indeed, pantsu-fest.
Why do I watch a show this dumb, you ask? Why do I submit myself to a show I heap such abuse on? Why do I have to turn my English Literature degree face-down every time I fire it up, as if it's a picture of my wife and I'm cheating on it?
Because I like the ending song.
I wish I was kidding about this.
