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If life were more like anime...

by Lee Zion,
If real life were more like anime... If anime were more like real life...



I'm sure we all wish real life were more like anime. Most guys would sure love to be like the anime protagonist who has five cute women all throwing themselves at him. And most women, for their part, find themselves drooling over bishonen with pink hair. Besides, wouldn't it be fun to get to school by jumping from rooftop to rooftop?

If real life were more like anime, then we'd all be mech pilots, or travel to other dimensions, or have cute, furry pets that have magical powers. Or, in the case of Magic Knight Rayearth, all three at once.

If real life were more like anime, you could eat all you wanted and never gain weight. You could go to Hawaii without your parents, or your parents could go there without you and come back to tell you that a little wife-swapping never hurt anybody.

Hillary could teach philandering Bill a lesson he'd never forget by zapping him, Lum-style, in a very sensitive area.

Unfortunately, anime is not like real life. In real life, people get their W-2 forms and go fill out their 1040A tax returns. In real life, people buy renter's insurance. In real life, people buy aluminum siding. These are things that are out of the scope of most anime characters.

Which brings us to an important question: What would happen if anime were more like real life? What would happen if anime characters faced the same concerns the rest of us did in our mundane, quotidian existence?

Here's a modest sample of what our favorite anime and/or sci-fi shows would be like:

Arbitrage III — Ross Syllabus is a tough cop on a planet that issues Tax and Revenue Anticipation Notes in order to invest the borrowed money at a higher interest rate.

Car-Insurer Orange Road — Madoka and Hikaru fight over Ryunnosuke as they read the actuarial tables together.

Champerty the Mighty — Tsutomu gets more than he bargained for when he becomes joined with a female cop in a lawsuit, participating in the case on speculation.

Galaxy Fault Line Yuna — Yuna works as a seismologist trying to determine the source of a series of earthquakes.

Grand Mal 1/2 — After having a seizure, Mr. Saotome can now move only part of his body.

La Blue Chip — Sexy young girls invest in high-profile stocks because they're better performers.

NASDAQ Little — Captain Tita gets a lesson in playing the stock market from a sexy 16-year-old girl.

Star Trek: Generations — Captains Kirk and Picard travel to the "Nexus," a place where county officials determine whether a property benefits from development before assessing fees.

Tojo's Bizarre Adventures — Watch as a bucktoothed little man with glasses gets his country embroiled in a minor misunderstanding known as World War II.

Usury Yatsura — In his eagerness to impress bikini-clad banker Lum, Ataru Moroboshi fails to notice he's signed up for a credit card that charges 25% interest.

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