I met up with my college buddies a week ago, and since we were still waiting for another friend, we had lots of time to shoot the breeze. For some reason, our conversation turned to comic books and anime. I really don't know that much about comic books or graphic novels. As a kid, I read Funny Comics secretly because my mother never really allowed them in the house. I never really watched that much television either. I have vague remembrances of She-Ra (I bought books about them then, can you imagine?), Visionaries, AstroBoy, the Saturday Fun Machine. I never really learned how to ride a bike either. So you can imagine how depraved I was as a kid. I liked to read though: Ray Bradbury and Tarzan of the Apes and Edith Hamilton's Mythology. And I also watched a lot of Sesame Street.

Then in college, it occured to me that I knew zilch about them. Amid all the pop culture conversations I felt alienated and somehow sad that I couldn't remember who the leader of the Transformers were. We all lived our childhoods in Manila in the 80s, but somehow I wasn't in the same continuum as they all were. I was out of sync. All I have are blurred memories and snippets of noon time show dialogues which even then annoyed me to death. Imagine three hours of GMA Supershow with Kuya Germs and the Bellestar Dancers on Sunday afternoons while my mother waited for Lovingly Yours, Helen. No wonder I just buried my nose in books.

I once had a science-fiction class which successfully put me into snooze mode. I don't know if it was all the conversations about dragons, but I definitely learned that I knew jackshit about sci-fi, or at least, my peak hours weren't between 1-2.30 in the afternoon. But we would have film viewings. In between screenings of Metropolis and Blade Runner we had Ghost in the Shell and something about a boy travelling on a train to the planet Matel. (See, I have a really bad time remembering titles.) And Hayao Miyazaki's My neighbor Totoro and a bunch of other cool stuff. Anime wasn't just about Sailor Moon anymore, it was a whole new film medium with its own interesting history and sociopolitical explanations. Anime is the Japanese Cinema's Second Golden Age, after Kurosawa and Ozu. You can read about more about anime in this article which appeared in the New York Times.