Fallacies: "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up."

I've been meaning to write something about Marie Kondo's book ever since I first read it the summer of 2015. In going through this moldy old blog, I found a post saved in my drafts that I had been meaning to finish since November of 2016. As Marie Kondo has been a thing ever since, the intent of this post back in 2016 is still relevant now. There's a sequel book and a manga. There's a Netflix show. There's deals with the Container Store and her questionably shilling over-priced goods. So let's talk about her a bit.

The gist is that it's a how-to book on decluttering that keeps your life as well as your home neat and tidy. That's it. This gets conflated with minimalism a lot but it is not a minimalism book. Marie Kondo does not advocate minimalism, she advocates only spending your time, energy, and providing space to the things that actually make you happy and ditching the shit that doesn't.

I won't go so much into the hows of it. You gather your stuff by category and sort through it all at once group by group in a specific order. I read this book years ago and loved it. I've re-read it multiple times since and have listened to audio book several times as well. I used to pick it up again whenever I need a little clean-spiration. Years ago, the book itself ended up Kondo'd and that's a-okay.

Something that keeps popping up around this book, however, are click-bait type articles saying how Marie Kondo is full of shit. I'll be going through some of the arguments they bring up one-by-one. Because while Marie Kondo may shilling and hustling, but she is not wrong regarding her tidying method. 

brb, gotta go buy $140 desktop zen garden from Kondo's store, lol

#1. "She wants me to deal with an entire category at once? I have to get every book in the house and put it on the floor? It's overwhelming."

I came across another blog that talked about this and it was all "hur hur, if u can't do it, don't!  Know yerself, hyuck. U go girl." What a shitty train of thought. "Don't even try." That's the gist of the advice. Great.

That's it's overwhelming is the whole point. You're supposed to look at the pile of clothes, shoes, books, whatever and go "Holy shit!  How do I have so many? I haven't touched half this shit in years." You need the shock to realize you have too much fucking stuff you don't use. It's generally said we only wear 20% of the clothes we own. That means the other 80% eats into our space, our money, and our time. If you're rich or something and have a mansion to store stuff in and a maid to clean everything, then fine. But the rest of us sure as hell don't.

Make your stack of books/clothes/whatever and go through the entire stack quickly. "Can I part with this? Will I ever read this again?  Have I ever read it?" Ask whatever you need to ask yourself to decide. If there's any doubt, keep it. KEEP IT. 

I don't know why but some people think if they have doubts about keeping something they need to stop. As in stop, justify their choices, and question everything. This is your stuff and you only need to justify for yourself. When in doubt, keep. This is to minimize regrets. You can always choose to get rid of it later.

Some of these Kondo naysayers think the whole process is literal magic. That they're supposed to gather the entire pile and—poof!—they'll end up with a room out of a magazine. They don't understand you make the magic yourself.  It's all a matter of...

#2. "Keep things that spark joy? My frying pan doesn't spark joy. Should I throw away my frying pan, smart guy?"

...taking things too fucking literally.

Frying pan, y u no spark joy?

Some readers have gone through Kondo's books and really latched onto every dumb line they could. Like when Marie Kondo got rid of her screwdriver only to need one later and used her ruler instead. Or how Kondo prefers to put shampoos and soaps away inside of leaving them in the shower despite the fact that Japanese-style showers are different than Western-style showers and her bottles would slime. Or how she empties her purse at the end of the day. 

I can't empty my purse every day. I'm too forgetful. (But I can certainly compromise and clean shit out more frequently.) As for your frying pan, if you get plenty of use out of it, it IS bringing you joy.  I know fried eggs bring ME joy. Items that are useful to you are bringing you joy. It's not in the ra-ra way but in the "happy to have fried eggs" way. Stop expecting to orgasm over your frying pan already. It would never be that kinda joy unless you're a chef.

#3. "Okay, but that folding thing she does looks stupid. She really expects me to fold my clothes so they stand up? That's crazy. Imma busy mom/whatever, waah."

There are dozens of videos about the fuckin' folding technique. Search "Kondo fold" in YouTube and you'll get a plethora of demonstrations. Most of Kondo's media appearances feature the folding technique so it's unsurprising the folding "correctly" has become synonymous with Kondoing itself.

For whatever reason, how well one Kondos (yes, Kondo is a verb now) has been tied to folding things right. That completely misses the takeaway: most clothing storage works with folded clothes standing up in a drawer rather than stacked or crammed hanging in closets. AND IT DOES. Kondo just wants to make sure you can properly see what you own so that you wear it.  

She's not wrong. Now, I do not do the fold like she does. I actually do my own modified version of her fold and then line my clothes up in my drawer like a bunch of tacos lying side by side.

People who complain about the fold are being too meticulous. Honestly, they are probably trying to keep too many clothes. I'm using this pic from a Bored Panda article about Kondo memes (or whatever) just for the visual of the inside of that drawer. I could never live like that either! Whoever's drawer that's supposed to has too many damn clothes. And a lot of people are like this. You just need to Google "Konmari folding in drawer" and you will see loads of people pridefully posting drawers packed with clothes. The folding method itself is not to blame here. The mooks cramming up their dresser drawers are.

Thanking these socks will literally send you to hell. So will buying these socks.

#4. "She wants me to thank old socks.  I can't thank socks.  That's stupid and I'm a Christian."

Then don't thank the socks. You're being kinda ungrateful tho'. I mean, they covered your stinky feet at least once and you can't utter a thanks before chucking them in the trash bag?  But whatever. The world won't stop spinning because you don't thank the socks. Thanking objects is a cultural thing anyway. She used to be a Shinto priestess. And you're Christian? So what? You ain't going to hell for thanking some socks unless you're, like, shanking someone as you do so. Jeez, thank God if it bothers you that much.

#5. "Wait, I gotta throw things away?  I can't recycle or donate my old items?  What if I try to resell things instead?"

Knock yourself out. Nothing says you can't recycle, donate, or resell items. What I suggest you do is look at the cost in doing so, especially when it comes to reselling. 

For example: It doesn't make sense to have a garage sale to sell $30 bucks worth of knick-knacks when you need to pay for the permit, set up your sale space, get up in the morning, and work the sale for several hours. It wouldn't be worth it for me. Plus, it's best to get the old stuff out of the house asap. Nothing worse than junk hanging around and cluttering the floor.

#6. "I'm not rich.  I can't just get rid of things I might need later.  It would waste money."

This is a big myth and it's easy to get sucked into it because the face of Kondoing in the US (at least) is about people who have lots of stuff and lots of money. They may not admit they have money, but it's obvious. I'm part of a few Kondo groups online and I see before and after pics all the time of big spacious houses, fancy furniture, and sleek appliances. Lots of these folks have closets bigger than the room I live in. They can easily get rid of something and go repurchase it later.

Look, I'm pretty much fucking poor. I get it. It doesn't appear Kondoing is for you when you see people of means making Kondoing videos on YouTube because, like, it's sooo hard having so much stuff and the means to buy it. Right? What a hard-knocks life. But I was surprised at the things I owned. Old keychains. Purses I hadn't used in years. Shirts and pants I wore as a teenager. Old shitty drawings I made. Pens that didn't work. Childhood toys. Yellowed, old, blank paper. Every pay stub from every job I've ever worked. Rich or poor, we all actually have junk we don't use and need.

We are the caretakers of our stuff. Even the useless junk. We have to clean around it. We have to sort it. We have to launder it. We have to give it space in our homes. I have better things to do with my time than be a caretaker to a bunch of old shit I don't even use anymore. I hate dusting. The only thing I hate more than dusting is having to dust items. The fewer things I have to dust around, the better.

The fact is if you haven't needed or used something for years, you aren't likely to need it in the future. We keep a lot of things out of guilt and fear and rarely out of actual need. Google "sunk cost fallacy." The money or time you've spent to acquire your stuff is gone already. And if you can't find something because it's crammed in a pile of junk, what do you do anyway? You buy a new one. This just wastes more time and money. So cut your losses and move on already.

#7. "I'm a book lover and lurv muh books. She wants me to get rid of my books."

You are surrounding yourself with things that make you happy. Unless you're a hoarder, there's no way every piece of crap you own could make you happy. If you're a collector of dolls, spoons, or whatever, then keep your collection because it makes you happy. No one is arguing with you. 

The people who love books are the most vocal because Kondo doesn't think we should hang onto a bunch of books and papers. "Meh blerb blerb, but I luv muh books. I luv tah read." Then keep the damn books if they make you happy. But what about that sweater you haven't worn since 1987? That used paper cup from Burger King? The shoes you don't wear anymore because they pinch your toes? Your backpack from high school? You know damn well all that shit don't bring anyone joy except a hoarder and we all know hoarders are sick people. (I'm saying that in the kindest way possible. Hoarders have problems and need professional help.)

But I think we need to be honest with ourselves here: most Americans do not read books. They just don't. A lot of us have books to make ourselves look smart. You're supposed to own books. Smart people own books. Sophisticated people get large, overpriced books to plop on the coffee table they never use and display the candle they never burn. If we don't want to look stupid, surely, we must own books. "Look at my perrrrrrrsonality showing on these shelves!" I guarantee most people are not bibliophiles who just love books so damn much.

5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #3. One Outs (2008)

Based on: the manga by Shinobu Kaitani. 1998-2006.
Claim to fame: Insanely homoerotic opening credits.
Dubbed: Sadly, no.
Subject: Baseball.

Not since the high school football anime Eyeshield 21 have I ever felt so cheated about not getting a proper adaptation of a series. I'm still undecided on which was worse: that Eyeshield 21 had 145 episodes of censorship + watering down Yusuke Murata's artwork + long, drawn-out filler-rama that progressively meanders to Nowhere'sville; or that in 145 episodes the Devilbats never fulfilled their goal of getting to the Christmas Bowl even though they get there, totally win, and their journey there is fuckin' sweet. (Come on, that's not even a spoiler at this point.)

"Wait, what are you doing, Beck?" you ask as you look back at the title of this post. "What about One Outs?" Similar to Eyeshield 21, the characters of One Outs also play a sport hugely popular in America (American football vs. baseball); have a seemingly impossible end goal championship game (Christmas Bowl vs. pennant); and are also comprised of a group of generally low-ranked underdogs (Deimon Devilbats vs. Saitama Lycoans). They have one super-talented semi-stoic dude (kicker Musashi vs. ace batter Kojima), a kind-hearted naive catcher guy voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi (Monta vs. Ideguchi), and a wicked fan-favorite motherfucker with crazy bleached hair whose underhanded schemes improve the performance of the players as well as keep the team whole and running (quarterback Hiruma vs. pitcher Tokuchi). And like Eyeshield 21, the manga version reaches the end game while the anime ends prematurely.

"So, why would I want to watch this?" you say. "Also, why do you keep writing dialogue for me?" Well, One Outs--even partially adapted--is still bad-ass. The fact that this is only a partial adaptation means you have no excuse to not watch it. It's like watching The Matrix and saying "well, he didn't liberate all mankind yet so fuck this movie." And like The Matrix taught us, sometimes it's better not to continue shit. Anyway, it's not as if I'm recommending Eyeshield 21. There's only 25 episodes of One Outs. And another benefit of only being 25 episodes means every episode progresses the story. Like one of my other recommendations--Initial D: First Stage--One Outs still feels like a full story with a beginning, middle, and end. Only someone who knows zilch about baseball would expect them to win the championship at the conclusion of 25 episodes. Now that I'm three paragraphs in, maybe I should write about the show itself, eh?

Kojima and Tokuchi chillaxing in the dugout.

I know I keep making Eyeshield comparisons, so let's get to where they differ. Firstly, what this and actually every show on my "5 Anime" list have in common is that none of them are centered on high school kiddy bullshit. Initial D had high school kids in high school, but it centered more on the racing and had several adult characters. We never had to sit in class with the main character or go to a school festival or something shitty like that. Akagi starred a young boy but every other character is an adult, including Akagi himself once the timeskip kicks in. The Saitama Lycoans are a pro baseball team. Ace hitter Kojima has been on the team for 21 years. Even if every show on my list primarily focuses on younger men (several racers in Initial D are in their early twenties, Akagi is 19 after the timeskip, One Outs' Tokuchi Toua is 20, and characters in the last two shows on my list are also early twenties), that's a small price to pay to not be in a damn high school.

Secondly, there is no stammering doormat protag in the form of a Sena counterpart. The star of the show is undoubtedly this guy: Tokuchi Toua. Tokuchi's not a baseball player. He knows the game and he can throw deceptive pitches, but he is a gambler at heart and uses his pitching talents to earn illegal wads of cash. The funny thing is that his pitching isn't even that spectacular. His batting is passable but not great. He's not a super-fast runner. His stamina for an actual game is shit. But Tokuchi uses his sharp wits and smart mouth to make things go his way and I love him for it.

Let's get to the meat: One Outs starts out with two guys from the Saitama Lycoans pro baseball team looking for a replacement pitcher after one of them hurts his widdle finger while training in Okinawa. They meet a woman called Big Mama (nice name) who takes them to a bunch of--mostly American--dudes gambling in the dark of night at a baseball field. They then proceed to gamble. This is not a great start.

I bet you can't guess which one's Big Mama.

There's nothing more grating than a show that begins with what are basically throwaway characters and makes us spend too much goddamn time with them. Now, these guys aren't true throwaways in the sense we never see them again. I'll call them Nakane and Glasses, because I'm pretty sure one of them was named Nakane and I'll be damned if I remember the name of the one with glasses. Neither one is all that important. In retrospect, we should've had Kojima and catcher Ideguchi as the ones who look for a new pitcher because Kojima and Ideguchi are the two members of the team that kinda become Tokuchi's boys. They keep secrets with him and strategize privately with him and it just seemed like having them meet Tokuchi first makes the most sense. If I recall correctly, the anime even improved on the manga because I don't think Nagane and Glasses were even on the main team and the anime made their roles stronger. To make another Matrix comparison, it'd be like opening the movie with Apoc and Switch instead of Trinity and Cypher. The latter two were waaay more important to the story so using them made the most impact and the most sense. But I digress.

This is the part of the show where it'll probably lose you if you didn't already leave while Tokuchi was flying around shirtless in the OP. Nagane, Glasses, and Big Mama have all sorts of conversations which just sounds like a bunch of prattle. "This is why you Japaneseses lose at teh gamblings. Blah blah blah." This show can get so damn verbose and over-explainy that your brain tunes it out automatically. It is heavy in the beginning and just when you think you're out of the woods, someone's explaining something else. Sometimes even with diagrams.

Explanation of the One Outs gambling game.

In rewatching the show, I can absorb what they're saying and it makes sense but upon my first viewing, it just felt like characters were talking just to hear one another speak. It's a problem that resurfaces and if you're not a viewer that can handle wordy explanations, this might not be for you. The good thing about the explanations tho' is that they definitely guide the baseball novices. The viewer certainly can't complain that the show never told them what's what.

Another reason the beginning might lose you is that it takes too long to get to the damn point, the point being getting Tokuchi Toua on the team and playing his special brand of baseball. Nakane and Glasses lose a bunch of money, Kojima comes to defend their honor or whatever, Kojima loses, Kojima rechallenges Tokuchi and only then does Tokuchi join the Lycoans.  All that shit takes three episodes with things not really up and running until episode 4. It's not boring by any means but it's the weak part of the series and when I rewatch this show, I typically start with episode 4 for that very reason.

Episode 3 is still important for first time viewing since it does a lot of the set-up. Tokuchi joins under strange conditions: the One Outs contract. He makes an arrangement for compensation with the team owner by using the number of outs, with the contract getting alterations as the games progress. While the anime unfortunately doesn't get the point where this all explodes spectacularly in the owner's face, we still get to see that bastard lose his shit.

One quality that really makes the show a favorite of mine is that sometimes Tokuchi resorts to deceptively simple trickery to get results. It almost felt like he was teaching me something to use in my everyday life. A single heard sentence or a single white bandage can completely change the outcome of a game. It was this show that got me jonesing for anime that use psychological solutions but Akagi was the only one that came close to what I was looking for. (Coincidentally, or not, Tokuchi, Akagi, and Kaiji are all voiced by the same guy: Masato Hagiwara.)  

Maybe it's just me but a lot of the time when a show or movie (anime, live action, whatever) tries to be "smart," it turns out to be this over-elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque mess of a plot.  From Episode 4 onwards, we got into game after game. Can the Lycoans beat the Mariner's awesome clean-up roster?  Can the Lycoans overcome Dennis Johnson's godlike speed?  Do the Lycoans have any hope against an entire team of dirty cheaters that will use every trick in the book? Of course, but the fun is finding out how, so pick this series up and enjoy it.

5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #2. Akagi (2005)

Based on: the manga by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. 1992-present.
Claim to fame: Is this the only thing selling Kindai Mahjong for the past twenty-four years?
Dubbed: Nope.
Subject: Japanese Mahjong.

So... some preliminaries to get outta the way here. This show is technically called アカギ 〜闇に降り立った天才〜 which translates into "Akagi: The Genius Who Descended into Darkness."  Or at least this is what Wikipedia has told me. That's one long-ass name. The guy in the picture is Akagi Shigeru and he's the star of this shindig. Is he a genius? That's probably up for debate. I mean, if he were a genius, I'd think he have better things to do than keep courting that death wish he's had since puberty. Also, being a "genuis" has neither relied on luck and coincidence as much as it does here. However, he's a smart cookie and plays some psychological games, so he gets to keep the genius title. I saw a review or two that didn't like that he's not above cheating but cheating's a pretty genius thing to me. It certainly beats relying on luck. As for the whole "descending into darkness" thing, I mean, meh. He's already a dark kid before any sort of descent occurs. He "descends into darkness" the way my teeth descend into those pumpkin pie bagels at Panera Bread. Goddamn, those are delicious.

Now you're thinking "this show's about a genius? And he descends into darkness? That sounds pretty hardcore for a show about a game best associated with little old Asian ladies like in the Joy Luck Club." Okay, yeah, I hear ya. This is the other thing that I need to get out of the way. This is Japanese Mahjong as played by a young sociopath against yakuza and, later, a fuckin' murderer. This makes it intense high-stakes gambling, which brings the tension and makes this shit fun.

Now I tried this show and the anime based off of one of Fukumoto's other works, Kaiji, at around the same time. It's very difficult to find a bad review of Kaiji. At least it was for me. I wanted something a bit brainy to watch. Not really "brainy" as in book-smart but "brainy" as in "plays mind games." In my opinion, Kaiji didn't deliver on that. I was sick of seeing the main character cry like a bitch and he was kind of an idiot that lucked into "not dying." I was going to say "lucked into life" but nothing about that guy's life other than not dying could be considered lucky. At one point, his survival is enabled by the fact a naked guy taped valuable jewels to his shoulder instead of sticking them in a condom and shoving them up his @ss like a smart person in that scenario would've done. I dumped that show and moved on to Akagi trepidatiously. I was not hopeful it would be that different and very happy to be proven wrong. Akagi pretty much gives me everything Kaiji could not.

We never learn much about the character of Akagi, but at least Akagi never relies on some naked asshole to save him. Maybe Fukumoto had Kaiji cry so much because Akagi doesn't. If it weren't for his enjoyment in seeing others squirm and wallow in defeat, sometimes I'd swear the guy has no feelings at all. We first meet Akagi when Akagi's thirteen years old but he doesn't look it. Or, rather, he doesn't look different from when we see him again at 19/20. He never undergoes any dramatic shift in personality or any great catharsis either. We never learn what makes him tick.

He's fucking crazy. Even as a child, he's just fucking nuts. In the first episode, we find out he drove off of a cliff. That's frickin' cray and this show never tells you why he's wired this way, so don't go looking for it. Frankly I prefer it this way. I don't need his edgy fuckin' origin. I can imagine an American remake of this shit starring Benedict Cucumber-batch (gotta whitewash that cast, y'all, 'cause Hollyweird says so) where two thirds of the movie is Akagi's tragic, abuse-laden origin and subsequent life as a street urchin and "omg, it's so sad." In other words, shit nobody gives a fuck about. Don't get me wrong, the viewer cheers on Akagi but Akagi doesn't feel sorry for himself and neither should you. At the end of the day, we just wanna see him cream his competition. Not knowing shit about him is part of his appeal.

Anywho, after playing lemming, thirteen-year old Akagi stumbles into a mahjong parlor where some poor, indebted sap named Nangou is about to cark it. The dude's losing bad. If he doesn't win, the yakuza are gonna kill him and collect his insurance payout. Nangou is desperate for a miracle and Akagi Stu becomes that miracle. Wait? "Stu?" Yes, because he's never played mahjong in his life yet he becomes a fuckin' master in, like, two seconds.

My bad: five minutes. Not to mention I just told you Akagi drove off a cliff and later just walks into the fuckin' mahjong parlor. The narration likes to hype him up a lot, too. We're pretty much told Akagi's legendary over and over again. I mean, sheesh.  At least, in terms of my stu-meter, Akagi's pretty low on it. While he does have some huge luck that comes into play, he's not above cheating or tricks to win when that luck's not on his side.  And it's not as if all the women want him and all the men want to be him. Well, one guy wants to be him but not in the way you're thinking. I don't even recall a single female character in this show. It's a sausage fest if I ever saw one.

The artwork is a mixed bag. Most characters look decent from the front but the profile shots will kill you. It really threw me off when I watched Kaiji so at least by Akagi I was used to it.  This guy below's not even one of the weirdest ones in the show.

Unlike your face.

Now, I don't know anything about mahjong, but I've never been so invested in guys going "Pon!" "Chi!" "Ron!"  I looked up rules and can't begin to tell you what the fuck some of it means. This show explains very little and you rely on the character's narrations, reactions, and expressions to tell you everything else need. And there's a lot of reactions. A lot of shock and maniacal laughter.  Even with fansubber notes tho, it almost doesn't feel like enough sometimes.

And a hey nonny-nonny, coo-coo cah-choo.

I mean, I don't know half of what they're saying.  I had to go look up Japanese mahjong rules to help me out on some of this. I enjoyed Akagi enough that I didn't mind doing this and rewatching stuff, but I see the complication of mahjong as probably the biggest hurdle folks will have with this show.  "Why wud i watch muh-jzong wid ROOLS when i can see dragon ball super instead?"

Music and voice acting is pretty good. Nothing stood out as bad in that regard. There's an interesting set of characters but no one sticks around consistently. Akagi doesn't have a mentor, sidekick, or anyone in that role. He interacts with Nangou, a crooked cop, and later on a naive co-worker from a toy factory.  All of them participate in their own way in the story but we can't exactly pile them together and call them Team Akagi or something. Meanwhile, any opponents of Akagi's just take the train to Fucked Off Land. We never see them again with the exception of one who finds his ass on a slab in the morgue. It would've been nice to see some of them come back for a rematch or become friends or allies with Akagi. But alas, Akagi is a dark genius and dark geniuses don't have friends. Lose a mahjong match to Akagi and you might just go crazy.

Guy in purple lost so badly at mahjong he can't stand up without help.  [Not a joke.]

For just being mahjong, the matches are actually kinda thrilling.  If anything, there's too few matches despite this being a 26 episode series. While the first batch of episodes keeps a decent pace, the latter half of it is focused on a single match with no end. Why doesn't it end? Because it's still going on in the manga today. Seriously. Not only has Akagi not won yet, we already know he doesn't lose because this entire series is a sorta-prequel to another of Fukumoto's works—Ten—which has an older Akagi as a character.

So, uh, why was I recommending this again?  Oh, yeah, cause I liked it.  But, really, was it necessary to name one character Ichikawa and another Ishikawa?  I almost got as lost with that shit as I did the mahjong.

5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #1. Initial D: First Stage (1998)

Based on: the manga by Shuichi Shigeno.  1995-2013.
Claim to fame: Dated CGI cars and uptempo Eurobeat.
Dubbed: Yes.  Twice, actually.
Subject: Illegal street-racing.

I first heard of this show over ten years ago while taking a Japanese course at my local community college. Several of the other students loved it but I didn't get the hype. I was initially (ho!) put off by the artwork and subject matter.  The characters looked goofy and, well, street racing?  Why would I want to see a show about street racing? Then, during the 2015 Super Bowl, I wanted something to watch. (Texan that doesn't do football: ho-ho!)  I noticed three seasons of Initial D were available dubbed by Funimation on Sony's Crackle service. (It's not there anymore so don't bother. Crackle's really—ahem—cracked down on their anime offerings.  Ho ho ho!) Having nothing to lose and wanting to drown out my neighbors, I turned up the TV and started the show. Less than half an episode in, I was hooked.

The main character is this guy: Takumi Fujiwara, the meh-faced teenaged son of a local tofu shop owner. He makes tofu deliveries up and down the roads of Mt. Akina (fictional stand-in for Gunma prefecture's Mt. Haruna) for the family business using his father's Toyota Sprinter Trueno a.k.a. dat hachi-roku. That the car's an AE86 apparently means something in their universe but not in mine since I'm not a car person. No, you don't have to be a car person to watch this show. The characters explain all the important shit for you. While Takumi initially (ha!) has no interest in the local street-racing scene, his natural mad drifting skillz end up catching the eye of twenty-one year old Keisuke Takahashi.

Keisuke's a member of a visiting rival team—the Akagi Red Suns—and the younger of a pair of good-looking, rich, popular and uber-talented racing brothers. The show tells us the Takahashis are also called the Rotary Brothers but then exactly no one ever refers to them as such. They also have a cute female cousin who is sadly cut out of the show.  Anyway, the Red Suns planned on wiping the floor with the local racers the Speed Stars, but tofu-schlepping Takumi is someone Keisuke can't immediately beat.

"No fucking way, y'all!"

The dynamic between these two is probably what I enjoy the best and I wish First Stage had more of it.  Takumi's general apathy clashes wonderfully against Keisuke's firey personality but they don't interact nearly enough.  The series then follows Takumi's emergence onto the street racing scene which includes multiple battles with various challengers, a bit of showboating, and a bit of love in the air, too.  And also a singular panty shot.  Oh course, that was the scene my dad walked in on.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now "First Stage" refers to "Season One."  I love First Stage and it really feels like a complete story. It even got re-adapted a couple of years back as three movies with completely different voice actors. Along with the two English dubs that were done, that means each of the main characters has four different voice actors. (Not counting other language dubs, of course.)  If you're a viewer that follows Japanese and/or English voice actors, there's someone for you in each version and you'll probably recognize a bunch of the names here without me listing their other credits.

	Original (1998)	Tokyopop Dub	Funimation Dub	New Initial D (Movies)
Takumi Fujiwara	Shinichiro Miki	Dave Wittenberg	Joel McDonald	Mamoru Miyano
Keisuke Takahashi	Tomokazu Seki	Steven Jay Blum	Todd Haberkorn	Yuichi Nakamura
Ryosuke Takahashi	Takehito Koyasu	Lex Lang	J. Michael Tatum	Daisuke Ono

Takumi's racing friend Iketani is voiced by Crispin Freeman in the Tokyopop dub. Ayako Kawasumi (Saber, Fate/Stay Night) and Wataru Takagi (Eikichi Onizuka, GTO) voice Takumi's love interest Natsuki and one his friends—Kenji—in the original Japanese version.  Fans of Funimation dubs gets the duo of Colleen Clickenbeard and Monica Rial voicing the female racing team Impact Blue and Vic Mignogna voicing Shingo Shoji.

I actually prefer more of Tokyopop's casting choices—except for Takumi's dad, I mean, were they trying to pretend to voice a muppet or what—but they really fudged things up with all of their dumb changes.  As was standard with lots of 90's era dubs, Tokyopop tried to make Initial D more marketable by adding weird lingo, completely changing the originally poppy music into wannabe rap/hiphop junk, visually altering the races the way your kid brother would, and giving a bunch of the characters new or altered names.  Takumi, Keisuke, and Ryosuke become Tak, KT, and Ry. Those are the names they went with: they renamed them tack, Katy, and rye. Why not just go with Terry, Keith, and Ryan or something like that? It's like they wanted to keep their names but not keep their names, I guess. In one scene, Iketani—renamed "Cole" or all things—even refers to "KT" as "Keisuke Takahashi." So his name's still Keisuke Takahashi, he just doesn't go by, uh, his name? Bwuh?

Also, the altering of the races and music just takes a bunch of the tension and suspense out of it. Show me someone who doesn't get hyped when "Get Me Power" starts up before Takumi drifts (♫ Do it, baby. Get me power! ♫), and I'll show you a fucker without a soul. You know how Rocky IV is pretty much a bunch of music videos strung together? Now let's cut out all the music and re-edit all the montages! Tragic, amirite?

As a result of the above bs, there was a mostly negative reception for the Tokyopop dub and it makes me think maybe I got into Initial D at the right time: when Funimation had already picked up the license and put out a faithful dub and sub release. Bear in mind that if you poke around the Internet for an English dub, you might end up with the older dub. Unless you go to YouTube where Funi has the entire First Stage subbed for free. If dubs are your style, you'll find four free dubbed eps to try out as well. Funimation's version, as of this writing, is available on DVD for $17 and change over at Amazon.

Now, there are subsequent stages of Initial D after First Stage: Second, Third (which is an ova), Fourth, Fifth, and Final along with two Extra Stages and Battle Stages. You'll notice tho' I specifically list First Stage as my recommendation. Honestly, the quality declines in each subsequent stage. First Stage really feels like a full story with a beginning, middle, and end. Everything that comes after just feels like sequelitis even though the story continued for a long-ass time in the manga. I mean, Takumi comes into his own as a street racer so what's left in the other stages? Lots of neat folks we meet in First Stage really get pushed aside later. I wanted to see those guys improve or at least provide further racing commentary and interaction with Takumi, but the show proceeds to care about them less and less. There's also a radical art shift.  In Second Stage, the character of Ryosuke actually becomes a doppelganger to the main character of Takumi. It's super creepy!

The first two pics are Ryosuke Takahashi and the last one is Takumi. What-what. Why did they mess with the first design? It was perfect! Meanwhile, his brother Keisuke becomes more and more Super Saiyan. And they aren't the only ones that get changed. Shigeno's original artwork, as dopey as it can be, is most faithfully adapted in the First Stage. I do wish the show went even further will making the characters visually as expressive as Shigeno does. I really came to like the duck mouths, the smug faces, and the beady eyes. Shigeno can render a smug face like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, as little as First Stage adapts his artwork, the further stages do so even less. The character's faces actually get stiffer and stiffer and by Fourth Stage, it's like watching cardboard talk. This is where Funimation stopped dubbing, with the last Tokyopop dub at the end of Stage Two. Really, nothing of value is lost. You're fine proceeding as far with it as you like. For what it's worth, there's still some cool moments, some laughs, some awesome music and some nail-biting races in the later stages. None of it comes together like in the First Stage. Probably not a popular opinion, but there ya go. By the time I got to the end of Fourth Stage, it felt like enough. If you want the rest of the story, you'd probably be better served reading the manga. And certainly, if you're a viewer looking for a more modern-looking, slicker anime with trendier music, look no further than the three movies.

Okay, at first, I was really pissing on about the movies not having the original voice actors from the '98 series or any Eurobeat music. Plus, being movies, they condense a lot of material. The movies also keep the characters pretty stiff-faced. Compare a scene from episode 1 of First Stage with a scene from the movie adaptation:

Initial D: First Stage (1998) vs. New Initial D Legend 1 - Kakuksei.

The '98's artwork gets more "love points" or whatever from me. It just looks more expressive and "snug," I guess. The movie's artwork still has merits of its own: crisp, with clean lines and bright colors. I also got a better feel for the races in the movies. While the '98 version brings fun with the Eurobeat, these races felt more dramatic visually. Just look at this lighting.

And with the '98 series, it was pretty easy to forget these dudes were racing on dangerous mountain roads.  Sometimes it felt like flat, straights with nothing to them. The steepness of the mountains, the lack of proper visibility, the hairpin turns, and the spectator pov all feel more accurately rendered in the movies. Honestly, while watching some of the '98 series, I'd wonder how the hell the spectators could even see what was going on with the race. The movies are even a bit more faithful to the manga in terms of sequence of events, with the '98 version inserting a few races out of place to fill up the episode count and reach the end with the race it wanted to.

The movies really endeared themselves to me. Although different, the voice actors and music are still pretty darn good. Cliffnotes Initial D is still a cool story and probably plays better for the younger crowd and n00bs vs. the nostalgia crowd. The latter had such a hard time accepting the shift that there's actually fan-made Eurobeat editions. No complaints, but I did actually come to like the new music almost as much as the Eurobeat. Here's one of the featured songs:

Anyway, lots of personality, thrilling races, humor, and snappy tunes make Initial D a treat and one of my favorites. Definitely worth you checking it out. Either or both versions.

Why I don't like it when you drink...

If anything has added to my "lame" status over the years aside from my lazy excuse for fashion sense and generally quiet, anti-social nature, it's been when people realize that I'm pretty much a teetotaler. I swear, it's like you grow an extra head when you tell people you don't consume alcohol. You're a leper and no one wants to touch you. You can't "loosen up". I've been shown pictures of people boozing away and been "regaled" with stories of them vomiting and driving drunk and I'm supposed to clap and award these losers medals.

You see, I'm clearly not "living life" or so I'm told. I find this ironic considering the people who tell me that have been proven to drink to ridiculous excesses, presumably to escape the very life they so claim to luuuuuuuuuve livin'. If you need liquor to get over your inhibitions that damn badly, I hate to break it to you—okay, actually, I'd luuuuuuve to—but you haven't made any progress. You're like an old man and his viagra: needing a dose of something-something to get the job the done but still pathetically and woefully impotent.

Anyway, I digress. The fact is I just don't like it.

1. It tastes like crap. I like to call liquor "Bath & Body Works" because it tastes like some body spray I accidentally tasted. (HA HA ho, no.) I like to taste alcholic drinks out of pure curiousity and frankly I haven't found anything I'd consume on its own without using it in food or something. You may as well tell me you eat paprika by itself.

2. It ruined my birthday party. I was a little kid and a bunch of my relatives came over and got drunk. At a CHILD's party? I mean, I'd go to school and learn the dangers of alcohol and how it's killed people and then I get to celebrate my eighth or ninth or whatever birthday with a bunch of booze-hounds. That put a worse taste in my mouth than actually tasting the stuff as an adult. Beer and cigarettes do not belong at a child's birthday party and any time I see them there, I die a bit inside. And I thought getting packs of notebook paper one year for a birthday present made me a bitter pill.

3. No respect for moderation. "WHY CANT I HAS A GLASS OF WINE?" First of all, no one's talking about a glass of wine, stupid. This is clearly about people who just chug it away like it's water that's gonna win them a Wii, conveniently forgetting that woman died. Anyway, do you think me or anyone else for that matter gives a rat's ass about someone who only has a beer or two or sips a glass of wine with their dinner? Don't be retarded.

4. It's a ridiculous status symbol. Like a douchetastic pair of over-priced sunglasses or a groovy national landmark, people can't resist posing with it in pictures with a smug sense of pride. And then they actually publish these online! Do you see me smugly posing with a gallon of milk or a quart of juice, dumbass? You DO realize it makes you look STUPID, right? And unless you're an avid wine connoisseur or the owner of Budweiser or something, you don't need to pose with any alcohol.

5. It makes you indignant of the law. My favorite one? When people are all bitching about going to jail or paying fines on multiple DWI offenses. "Damn the law! Trying to save innocent drivers by punishing me! It'soooooo unfair!" BAAAAAAAAAAAAAW.

6. It ruins sober people. I've met a lot of funny, smart folks at work and school. Or at least I thought they were. Get these folks liquored up and watch out, bro! "OHHHHH, but I'm just livvvvvin' life." Sad, because I liked you before you turned into a babbling, potato chip-spewing drunken asshat with no self-respect. Lots of awesome actors, singers, and talented people wasted by this crap. Come on, you know it. Rehab this and rehab that.

7. Point, stupid counterpoint. "But they do it in EURRRROPE!!" Then solve both our problems and MOVE TO EUROPE. "I can DIE for my country but I can'ts drink!" The fact that you compare the lost lives of our military men and women in service to our country to your legal inability to get hammered shows why you have not been deemed mature enough to drink. "Why can't I HAS A GLASS WINE?" Because in loads of lovely, retarded internet arguments, it always comes down to a damn glass of wine. Hey, I think we all know it's not about "a glass of wine" so shut-up.

8. It smells... like broken promises and dreams of Christmas past.

9. I do not feel safe on the roads on weekend nights. I really don't do it and it makes me a bit apprehensive when I am out there. "Fifty-four percent of all teen motor vehicle deaths occur on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Thirty-five percent occur between the hours of 9 p.m. and 3 a.m." And those are just teens! Boo! I don't wanna die, homes.

10. My uncle almost hit me in the head with a plate. Drunk people + repressed problems is the recipe for a made-for-tv movie on Lifetime. Tons of people with crappy lives tend to turn towards firewater, denying the fact that once they leave Beer-Narnia or wherever they go, their problems will still be waiting for them. Hey, I haven't seen anybody's life improved by the stuff either.

11. People destroy themselves and then want free organs. Truth, I tell you, truth! These people whine and whine about dying and needing a kidney or a liver after forty years of hard drinking and get all bitchy when you won't let them farm you for parts. Then they get their whatever and don't curb their bad habits. Aren't there better people these organs can go to? If you want to destroy your liver, fine, but don't make it everyone else's problem. Don't make people pony up for your medical care when you didn't give a damn about your body in the first place. Speaking of which...

12. It wastes money. (1) How much more government bread are they gonna spend on "prosecuting" spoiled rich jerks when John Law doesn't even mete out any real punishments? Let's just leave Lindsay and Paris alone. Then, when they hurt someone or destroy property, sue their asses for a megaton of cash. Rehab is a joke. Jailtime is a joke. Ankle bracelets are a joke. Stop wasting tax payer dough unless you're serious. (2) If you're so damn poor, stop buying beer and pay your rent! If I bought $50 worth of gum each week for myself, you'd think I'd have a serious problem, right? $50 worth of beer isn't any better.

13. Ridiculous level of public acceptability. In an era of "Jackass" and other MTV garbage, it's no small wonder why these antics are lauded. There is no sense of shame anymore. In fact, it's a worse crime to be a virgin or live at home than it is to have a drinking problem. This is because people who drink, like shoplifters and constantly pregnant welfare moms, are just "livin' life".

Hey, if all that crap ^ is "living life", no thank you! :)

EDIT: Forgot one! #14. Free license to act like a jerk and talk trash. But you didn't mean it because YOU WERE DRINKING. Hey, you chose to drink sober and you probably really think those things anyway, so you meant it by proxy. Prefacing insults with "He's a really nice guy but" don't help either. Especially when you then crack a joke at his expense and expect the whole table to laugh. Boo.

Yeah, I know, I'm a jerk, too. Hey, at least I own up to my shit and don't hide behind a bottle.

Job Hunting: Let's hate this shit.

So the economy's really balls right now and a shitload of us--myself included--are looking for jobs. It really is an employers' market and I'm getting real bitter with some of this bullshit:

♦ Job fairs. Good lord I hate them! Half of the booths there are always for scam schools, fast food, or the military. Yeah, right. Me and thousands of others went and got bachelors and masters degrees so we could go to Career Point or flip a burger. I went to a job fair and they were all "bring multiple copies of your resume", so I ramped up that shit and printed loads. Nobody would take one. WTF. The job publications in the newspaper are just as shitty.

♦ Ugly inefficient websites. Because everybody wants you to apply online but few of them know how to do it correctly. One company split up all of their jobs into five different groups so I'd have to check five different websites for jobs. Oh, hell! Anybody use that Taleo thing? That thing's crap! No, I do not want to fucking choose my country, city, and state over and over again. More than one employer has listed categories i.e. "Finance", "Human Resources", etc. and all it does is fuck up my search results. If you only have fourteen positions open in the whole damn company, then you don't need twenty-plus categories to sort them!

♦ Horrendously long online applications. I swear, some of this shit takes thirty minutes or more. And sometimes they time out while you're filling them in! So I fill these out and then three weeks later, I get an automatically generated rejection notice or some shit. Thank you for wasting my fucking time. One company did this right: I filled out basic info and sent a resume. They replied they were interested in me and THEN sent me a link for a long-ass form. Weed out people first with a short form or resume before you waste someone's fucking time.

♦ Filling out a paper application when you've already done an online one. WTF? Is it Backwards Day? This has happened so many times and I wonder just what the fucking problem with their printer was. Print that shit. Why the fuck are you making me do this crap OVER AGAIN? I went to this one interview and I had already filled out an online application AND had a phone interview. So at this stage, I figure it's a simple face-to-face because they already have my shit. Well, I get there and then they give me all of these fucking forms on a clipboard and an effin' pen: What is my name? Where do I live? My phone numbers, e-mail, job history, am I a U.S. citizen? What the fuck is this shit? Turns out somebody was supposed to send me a PDF of this stuff. So I could refill it out again? Why don't you just print out what I already filled in? If you have new forms for me, fine, but it makes no fucking sense to have a huge application for me to do online and then make me do it over again! You fail the internet.

♦ Fuck you and your experience. How is anyone supposed to get experience when nobody will hire the non-experienced? Twice I was asked if I knew Quickbooks. I said I'd learn it and they got all doubtful. Oooh, because I bet Quickbooks is so fucking hard. Look, just because some of you suits are shit with programs doesn't mean the rest of us are. The university I went to saw no need for Quickbooks or Peachtree, which I admit is a little dumb of them but it doesn't change that software is software! NOBODY should need several years or even months to learn any software when it comes to basic usability.

♦ Promises to call me later go unfilled. You know what? You DON'T have to promise that. Just tell ME to call you back or something. I'm getting sick of "we'll call you" like we're gonna touch base or I actually have a shot at the job. False hope really burns my grits. They never call. It's almost always no phone call and a rejection e-mail instead. Everytime someone says they'll call me, I feel like going "OHHHHHHHH RLY?" and pulling that owl-face. I get it, you're busy. Then DON'T TELL ME YOU'LL CALL ME.

♦ Taking for fucking ever to decide. I was up for this one assistant position and I REALLY wanted it but I was gonna run out of money in like a month and needed work bad. They kept saying they would decide later in the week or next week and literally kept bouncing it around for a whole damn month. I was forced to withdraw myself from contention and take another job. These assholes knew I needed a job. Don't fuck around with people's livelihoods. Just make a damn decision. How do three people take a whole month to hire one entry-level person? HEY, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.