What Are You Watching???

When I was first married to my wife, I would come home from the lab, eat dinner, lay around the apartment for a little bit, and then end up going back into the lab for a couple of hours. Such was the life of a graduate student.

Sometimes, when I would get home at night, I would turn on the television and try to relax a little bit. The flickering light from the idiot box would help me to forget all the images of electrons realigning themselves to form new bonds, the course of reaction mechanisms, and the shape and distance from the nucleus of various electron orbitals. In short, it was a way to escape chemistry for a bit.

One of my favorite guilty pleasures was to watch anime, usually Inu-Yasha, because that was what was on Cartoon Network at about the same time that I came home from the lab the second time. Sometimes I would be particularly restless and I'd stay up until Cowboy Bepop came on.

"What are you watching?" my wife would ask from the bedroom, walking down the hall to the living room. "Anime," I'd respond, somewhat listlessly. My wife, since she was tired, would simply roll her eyes and ask "Why do you want to watch that. It's not even English, it's just dubbed."

"I like it," I would respond, returning my attention to people dicing one another with swords and grunting/roaring/growling. "It helps me unwind."

Fast forward a couple of years, and now we've moved to North By God Carolina. When I would come home from work (this time, around 5-ish), I would turn on Cartoon Network, and there would be Rurouni Kenshin, which was even more awesome, because I didn't have to wait up for it, but there was still plenty of sword fighting. They even had swords catching on fire thanks to all the human fat that was caught up in the tiny folds of the blade. Awesome.

Which reminds me...I never got to see how that series ended. I should check that out...

Anyway, I came home one day to find my wife watching...gasp!...Tenchi Universe, which is a show that I never got into, but I could see we were making some strides here. She would also watch this cartoon called Hamtaro with my daughter.

Things finally started changing when my wife was sick in the hospital with pneumonia the winter after the boy was born. She apparently woke up in the middle of the night, couldn't sleep, and flipped through the channels, settling on Cartoon Network which was showing a Hayao Miyazaki movie (I think it was Pom Poko). This was the point where she became more than just "interested" in Japanese animation, be it via a movie or a series.

And now?

Now, my wife is fucking obsessed. After her friend died last fall, she got hooked on watching this show called Bleach, because he had been such a fan. And when my wife gets hooked on something, she doesn't do it half-assed, let me assure you. She has watched the entire Bleach series. She waits up on Tuesday nights so that she can download and watch the newest Bleach releases subtitled in English. She reads the Bleach manga once it has been released and translated into English.

We're not so good at reading Japanese, but we can recognize some of the symbols for numbers...at least up through 13. All thanks to Bleach.

But, it doesn't stop there.

She got the kids hooked on it, too. Which is odd, because bleach comes with a 14+ rating. They're not allowed to watch iCarly, but Bleach is fine. *holds hands up* She's set the rules, and I follow along. The kids have become completely obsessed, too, mostly because this is a little more grown up than, say, Spongebob or Handy Manny. I think that's why they like it.

We have CDs of Bleach music. And mp3 files of Bleach music. We have family Bleach night. We have plans for Bleach-themed Halloween costumes (I'm going to be Kisuke Urahara/Mr. Hat and Clogs).

Icing on the Bleach cake (which we've already had, by the way)? We have a kitteh with a Bleach-inspired name.

Since one of the kittens has half an orange face (she's a calico), my wife named her "Pichigo" (pronounced Peach-ee-go), because of the peach coloring, and in honor of the main character from Bleach, Ichigo Kurosaki. My daughter came home yesterday with a list of names she and her friends had brain-stormed for the kittens, including the name "Rukia", named for (arguably) the main female lead in the show, Rukia Kuchiki. She also came up with the name "Grape", which I'm still a little confused about. At least Rukia has a source.

And...I give pause because I refuse to turn this into a kitteh blog, but I wanted to update people who thought I would be drowning the kittens or grilling them for dinner or something. There were only two kittens in the box. We didn't see the mother any more, so we've taken them in and we're now...hand-feeding the kittens. They have a happy little home in a basket in our bedroom for now, and we're going to adopt Pichigo as our own. My wife's friend is pretty sure she'll take the other one, so the kittens have found good homes.

I just hope they like watching Bleach.