After three months of forgetting this blog’s existence, I’m back. What prompted this return post is a podcast called Anime World Order, I discovered them a while back upon the recommendation of some online friends who swore they found an anime podcast that doesn’t suck. The hosts are old school fans who know their shit, their commentary aren’t noobish like the ones found on most message boards, and for the most part the audio is bearable. For those who are late to the party like me, give them a listen.

One of their occasional segments is The Search for THE TRUTH where they interview anime con goers (to mock mercilessly on their show), and one of their questions was “other than Hayao Miyazaki, can you name three anime directors?” I laughed at the yokels for their failure to name any.. until I tried to name a few myself and panicked for a few seconds before random Japanese names started popping into my head and I managed to crap out enough to not entirely embarrass myself.

So how many can you name (without cheating), why aren’t their names more well known among the general anime community, and how important are these guys really? I’ve seen many posts of “lol it’s made by GONZO so it is gonna suck”, but shouldn’t the blame really be placed on the director instead? In the future I am going to pay more attention to the people working on the cartoons I’m watching (and not just the voice actresses with cute voices). May this new found resolve last longer then my last one to keep this blog alive and active?

And for the record, the directors I could name are:

1. Hayao Miyazaki
2. Shinichi Watanabe (these first two really shouldn’t count..)
3. Satoshi Kon
4. Goro Miyazaki (only because of the conflict with his father, that famous guy)
5. Makoto Shinkai
6. Go Nagai (one of the most awesome names ever?)
7. Mamoru Oshii
8. That Daichi guy who makes all those funny shows (Akitaro Daichi)
9. Killem all Tomino! (Yoshiyuki Tomino)

Hopefully I can still claim some anime geek cred