Ghajini

Spilling it while its hot. Here's a too-good-to-believe value deal. Give 5 minutes to read this, and save yourself three hours of the crucifying existence that is Ghajini.
Having loved momento, I was prepared not to be dazzled, but rather curious of the Hindi(rather Malayalam/Tamil/) take on it. I was however left quite appalled. I think the director was confused on what to shower his epsilon sized concentration on, a love story, an action thriller, larger than life altruistic humans, a brother of devil villain, or Aamir Khan's shiny new eight-pack. The movie tries to bring everything, excellence(in any) is a word unheard of. Just touch all famous formulas, and it can't go wrong eh? Well, it can, if you try.

The plot is all too predictive, so are the dialogues. Actually the predictability becomes amusing sometimes, but only when you have already given up hope.
The abstruse depiction of 'short term memory loss' phenomenon(mouthed lavishly by Pradeep Rawat(the villain)) to suit convenience is a gross headache. The memory lasts as long as the scene requires, and loss-moments occur at the most predictive locales. Probably which you already saw in the trailers. The director is just confused whether he is dealing with short-term or long-term memory loss, as when the bad guys beat up our hero and erase his markings(ooopss!! just spoiled a plot point for you), he doesn't remember anything of his romance(which happened well before the incident which took his memory). Hey, but the courtship is well documented in his diaries so not to worry. Our hero is just as pumped up after reading the heart warming diaries. No mention whether he remembered anything of before his hormones kicked in. Also a maniac, animus instinct for howling, muscle flexing and eye popping action seems to accompany this brain handicap.

Action scenes are run-of-the-mill Mithun-da wannabe. All accompanied with a constipated grumble on Aamir Khan's face, every indication that someone slept on the wrong side of bed. A little inspiration from Rajnikant might just have saved the film. Really.

Some things seemed on the right track, the stuff Bollywood excels in. A love story(rich guy, not so girl), a rotten-to-core-with-no-hope-of-redemption villain and the typical bubbly the-world-is-so-beautiful every-mothers-dream-daughter heroine accompanied with the so-not-possible-situational humor. But only to end this delusion, the story-writer decided more ingredients were required to make a really spicy treat so in comes a social cause, full with the coverings of IBN live. The casual attempt of sudden inclusion of real life issues with too-reel story just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Not to mention a god-so-nosy medical student who one wonders wither came from.

Even the camera angles seem wrong(not in the flashbacks, Bwood has learned that by now). All low cameras with hardly an overhead shot of the famous moon cut, as if the glare off it would ruin the film. Seriously, this was a huge disappointment from an Aamir Khan movie. Its I suppose become the top grosser of 2008(in one week). At least the marketing team seems to be getting the act together, what with the Khan himself offering haircuts for people to save Rs10 for that extra popcorn.

Was I too rough? Maybe, but I haven't blogged in a while, so quit complaining.

Geeky Abstract Thinking

(What's engaging my mind...please don't hate me)

Have you considered the colors you see might not be the ones the next guy does? Blue might be green and green red. Color is just the processing of wavelengths of light by the mind, with no chance of knowing differences between individuals anytime in life.

I don't understand why astronomers search for 'earth-like' planets for chance of life. Life is just universe complexity gone berserk, it might need carbon(for the complex structures), but otherwise temperature and chemicals on earth shouldn't have much significance. Consider, if earth had no floral population, would we have ever imagined life in the form of a tree? (By definition, life is something which has the ability to reproduce)
This would lead on to the consideration how rare 'intelligent' life would be even among lifeforms.

Language has a profound, too profound an effect on our thinking. Analysis of an object is mightily facilitated just by giving it a name. Else, much of the thought process is limited. Indians are surrounded by relatives, hence have developed an assortment of different names to cope with every shade of it. Eskimos similarly, have many names for snow.

Why is there technological advancement? Its obvious technology does not result in greater happiness. Happiness relates to not our convenience, affluence, but to our expectations. If telephone was never invented, we would be just as happy without a cell phone in our pockets. Exploration and achievement, looks more like a basic ingrained requirement of the human mind, driving our science forward.

Why does science follow mathematical laws? Why can an equation represent a trajectory of an object? The shape of a curve? Maybe human intuition(==maths), is itself shaped by the continual observation of these phenomenon. Hence what we call logic, is itself the basic playground of nature.

A really geeky one. A charged object moving in a magnetic force needs to have a force applied to keep it in uniform speed. While the magnetic force may be just permanent magnets with no expenditure of energy. See the absurdity? It could have been the other way.

How can two objects, inanimate, kept at a distance, exactly apply forces on each other??(Gravitation, electromagnetic) One of the fundamental things teaching children at a too young an age keeps them from seeing the wonder of. How can waves travel in space, void? I can understand the equations, the E and M fields dancing, enforcing one another, but that's it. Qualitatively its a mystery.

If you could develop an exact clone of yourself, complete with all experiences, memories and your sense of self, would you leave him in your place when you die? You could be immortal this way, but you yourself, would be dead.

Family is a concept, one of the oldest and most ingrained concepts in animals. Marriage is a concept.

'Friend', 'Internet', 'Success' are just words, a collection of alphabets. Its amazing how feelings and ideas have become interwined with such constructs. Its an interesting experience to think of the concept without the associated lingo, what it represents.


....maybe I will detail on some of these later.....

Oh Gawd...

Its a well excepted fact that we guys in engineering colleges have way too much time in our hands. And we make the best use of it trying to learn from others' mistakes, well documented, although arguably a little glamorised, in the paraphernalia of movies, serials, virals and such. However, eventually we do get exhausted by the knowledge onslaught and decide to take some time out. It is an outcome of a multitude of such breaks that I decide was worthy enough to present to you. After my long hibernation, I know this won't be sufficient, but remember the Grinch, and keep a mighty heart.

No issue perplexes us engineers, men of science, more than that of "God". This word, which middle-school maths teachers have great fun equating with {D,O,G} in introduction to set theory, is a concept their students are forever be mystified by. After all, in a world full of laws and equations and probabilities, is there enough maneuvering room for God to even exist? What follows, you are foretold, are my personal views, which I am sharing for discussion purposes. I hope to offend noone, but would be delighted if you leave a comment about your own views on this delicate topic.

What is God? I believe people consider him an omniscient, omnipotent person. By person, we comprehend a human. But arn't we evolving creatures? We know we have a vestigial appendix and the reminiscent of a tailbone. But of course we should talk of the spiritual realm, look beyond the physical. But this spiritual realm is a topic in itself, that would mean we all have souls inside us!(I am not disagreeing, lets just say the discussion is beyond the scope of this post). But why should this spiritual domain be given precedence over our 'real' world? Are we in some kind of matrix-like virtual reality? A version of mythology comes close saying that this whole world is to test our faith....but isn't that too snobbish on God's part? Why is there really is a need for a real world at all when we have this spiritual world(A more serious closer to heart question actually is - What is the need for the universe to exist at all?) Also, this world is too complete, too perfect, too complicated I consider to be a farce. God should instead be detached from all these worlds, like in a 13th dimension with 12 dimension world(s). But there is a better opinion. We should dispel the idea of a person(or maybe you didn't have it from the beginning, and I have totally bored you) and consider 'consciousness' as such.
(Sentient - endowed with feeling and unstructured consciousness; "the living knew themselves just sentient puppets on God's stage"- T.E.Lawrence)

So what is God? I believe what we truly consider by God is "the sentient force controlling the whole universe and which is able to take conscious decisions". But then, puff goes religion. Working on such a magnanimous scale, why would God take the slightest interest in the not-even-speck-of-dust planet like ours? Well, maybe because he specially made life possible here and we are his really dear children. In fact, this has some weight, as out of the thousands of scientific constants, (I have heard) even if one was slightly off by the fraction of a decimal, the universe would have a totally different structure, with probably no humans. But then, there would not have been anyone to ask of the existence of God, would there? Or maybe life would come out in a marvelous new form whose weirdness to us would only be comparable to our weirdness to them. But I am digressing.

So we see how god might exist in my world. Since, I keep hearing about people (intellectuals) passionately denying the existence of God, I would for once try to take the other side. The universe has just one more complication, one more singularity, one more infinity to be evolved. I do tend to get an unreal feeling when I consider these abnormalities. Consider, did universe have a beginning? If it had, what about before it? Yes I know, the beginning of universe was itself the beginning of time, but what exactly does it mean? Similarly, does universe have a boundary? Its kinda absurd to say it extends forever. But if it has, what's beyond it? This questions might already be clear to some, but personally I find them really perplexing. In the end, lots boil down to just faith. I have faith that the science laws, which predict the big bang, I have faith in the existance of America, even though I have never been there. The world might just be created this afternoon, with all our memories and ideas planted in place!

Now we come to religion, about which again I have my own two cents. I have absolutely no interest in worship of idols or rituals and various festivities. In my opinion, even if God is overseeing us, why exactly the all-powerful scarcely care that are remembering him or not? Won't he be much above these things? However, I do not detest religion. I accept and hail its therapeutic and psychological effects. It is a means of bringing people together, of giving people purpose in life(and also an economic model in itself). In fact, I believe one of the major tasks of the subconscious mind is preventing an individual knowledge of his own insignificance. We are but less than an evanescent flicker in the fabric of space-time, full realisation of which(I don't have it either) would surely destroy a person. Religion, origin of the immortal soul and life-cycles I imagine had this at the heart of their genesis, the self-defence of sub conscience mind at work. And this will be true always, no matter the technological age.

So the conclusion....
After all my efforts in the philosophical banter, there is finally a conclusion. Existence of God, does not matter....Yes, you read that right, scroll back and read again. At least, it doesn't matter in the way you should live your life. You should do what you like, and enjoy, but of course it should be a sustainable living. Because God, is too busy to care, and you are too insignificant to be cared about. By sustainable, I mean, you can't just spend life idling away, and maybe thief/rob when you need money. Not because it is immoral, and God will punish you, but because it is not sustainable, the society will punish you, and you will end up in jail, which you might not enjoy. Hence, morals have not lost their value, because they should only increase your enjoyment; the kinder you are, arguably the more kinder people will be to you. Principals also havn't lost their value, but you should only have them if they give you satisfaction, fulfilment. Be a vegetarian because you like the thought, not because it is ungodly.

We have come a long way. Let us summarise.
Today, lordvarun explained to you his own take on the stuff he hardly understands anything about. He convinced you he isn't capable of forming any opinion on this 'overseer' business. He said he doesn't doesn't understand religion but sees no harm in it. And the final outcome, to the thrill of all present, was that everyone should live happily and promote world peace.
Thank you for your time

Vocab blues

I have always been a bit of a snob when it comes to my English, even when I was in an ICSE school. Following that up with 4 years in CBSE didn't help to dispel that notion.

However, I was certainly forced too disabuse myself of any such ideas after coming to college. Here I found people who'd read Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto in Class 10th (if you havent heard of it, suffice it to say that it's a pretty big deal), then there were national level debate champions and so on.

I hope I don't sound toooo smug, but after 2 years of college, I have fared reasonably well even with all these new threats to my position. Now, it's time for the GRE.

The GRE is of course, not a particularly gruelling test, but it does require a certain degree of command over the English language. Moreover, I enjoy finding out new words, a past time you may or may not have experienced. The problem with using these abtruse words (now there's an example!) is that they make you sound all pedantic and anal....an image I'm not anxious to project in coll.

Anyway, I came across this site called freerice.com, and have spent an entertaining 2 days guessing completely into the dark. Here are some examples:
setaceous:
1. bristly, 2. lucky, 3. furious, 4. sexless
If you already know the meaning, you should really not read any further. There are only more words of a similar sort.
Now the meaning is of course not so important as the process, which is the fun part.
now do you call a lucky person,' he is setaceous in all he does'....or,
'he was setaceous when he got her letter'....or, 'Varun is setaceous when it comes to girls'....
the last one might be construed to have some meaning but only by a stretch, but the rest obviously don't sound right.
The answer is of course, bristly.
Another one is hyssop-is it a herb, or a monster. The answer here as well can be had by groping around with sentence...it turns out it is a herb
Now here's where my strategy failed- decorticate. How on earth did someone coin this word for peeling I don't know. In a sentence: "He was decorticating the banana". Even those snooty professors in Harvard wouldn't do that....but apparently someone does.

As I came across more and more weird words, I stumbled onto a site which specialises exclusively on weird words, and pretty interesting it was too.

For example, did you know of the word 'lollapaloosa'? Here's the history of the word:
"You can’t easily misunderstand the meaning of this American word, since it’s so obviously contains within its sounds the idea of something excellent or highly desirable, just right as the name for the annual Lollapalooza pop festival. It has been spelled just about every possible way down the years (the Oxford English Dictionary has it under lallapaloosa). Its extravagant enthusiasm may be judged from an early appearance, in Miss Minerva and William Green Hill by Frances Boyd Calhoun, dated 1909:
“Lordee, Lordee,” he gazed at them admiringly, “you sho’ is genoowine corn-fed, sterlin’ silver, all-wool-an’-a-yard-wide, pure-leaf, Green-River Lollapaloosas.”
Another early example is in a baseball game report in the Fort Wayne Sentinel of May 1903, one we may be glad to have missed (the reporter said disgustedly that one pitcher was all too accurate, since he hit the bat almost every time):
There wasn’t enough ginger in the players nor audience, either, to keep a colicky baby awake, the only excitement being furnished by a loquacious individual in the grand stand who was rooting for Evansville, and he rooted right, too. He proclaimed himself the High-past-potent-grand-mufti-lallapaloosa of the Amalgamated Knockers’ Brotherhood and had a bigger assortment of mallets on hand than a croquet factory.
That was one of its earliest appearances in print, since it seems to have been around in the language for only a few years by then. Other early usages suggest an origin among card players, such as in an 1899 report in the Daily Herald of Delphos, Ohio, about card sharps fleecing a hick: “Another got a lallapaloosa, consisting of three clubs and a pair of spades, and took $85 of the farmer’s money.” In 1897 the Idaho Daily Statesman had another: “‘A lalla-pa-loosa,’ answered big John, and threw his hand to Scovel. There was a jack of hearts and a deuce, tray, four and five of diamonds.”
Where it comes from is uncertain. Lulu and lolla, both also meaning something good, are recorded earlier, and lollapaloosa may be an extravagant outgrowth of the latter. Suggestions that it may derive from appaloosa, the name of the famous breed of Native American horse, are ruled out on grounds of date."

This is of course just one out of thousands. Imagine, a single word carrying an entire history with it. Etymology, as the science of studying words is called, is particularly fascinating, as you may might discover by just digging into the word roots of common words.

Me and the Country

The semester has just started, and as one might imagine, I am relatively free during this period. So I spent my time going over the older posts.
One characteristic that I seemed to find recurring in all my posts is how they all seem to revolve around myself....me, my views and my perpective of the universe in general. Now Varun seems to branch out here and there, but I appear to be more than a little obsessed with myself.

Not that there's anything wrong with it- I love myself...to the point of worshipping. When I have enough money, I shall probably erect a temple to myself, and pray there everyday.....moreover, I generally dislike the standard young man/woman. I hate Delhiites, Ranchiites, South Indians, Assamese, and people from all communities. I particularly detest the standard IITians. So it is but natural for me to focus on myself, or my blog would be more of a tirade against all humanity.

However, it has occured to me that this cynicism, in absence of a stronger word, may be an unwise policy. There is something I didn't add to my blog on Bangalore- that I was confusing myself with these thoughts there itself.

Now I am too arrogant to change my views on people - I refuse to take an interest in them. Of late I have discovered non-fiction books, starting with Amartya Sen's Argumentative Indian. I read Shashi Tharoor in Bangalore, and since then the process of discovering my country has become increasingly appealing.

Of course, I expected the books to be boring in general, but I discovered an awful lot which made me feel completely ignorant as an Indian. Reading Tharoor's book, I discovered the whole history behind the Emergency, which has fascinated me a lot over the past month or so.

So now after much circumlocution I arrive at the subject of my blog- India.

The thing that pissed me off most of all was that we were never, ever, taught anything about India's own history-modern post-independence history that is. The few scraps of information that do trickle down to us through our parents, teachers, are generally dismissive. Indira Gandhi is made out more as the heroine of the 1971 war than someone who tarnished India's history of being a vibrant democracy. The Emergency is only famous for Sanjay Gandhi's notorious purge of the slums, and his 'nasbandhi' campaign.

After coming to college, I came across more and more of these scraps. Economists, and here I refer to renowned, internationally acclaimed Western economists, actually lauded the Emergency as being the only period in India's history (till 1977) when the country was being run efficiently. The Emergency is well known for the fact that after its imposition, so many governmeny officials turned up for work that they ran short of furniture. Trains ran on time, and corruption was practically negligible.

History is in general considered very boring, be it in Harry Potter or our own schools- but this history is not irrelevant to us, especially now. After the highly amusing skit in Parliament recently, this piece of India's own romance with a dictatorship evokes many interesting debates, one very important one being the very need of a democracy, and whether India should sacrifice popular opinion in favour of an efficient administration.

After reading a lot about the Emergency, I personally believe that Indira Gandhi might very well have got away with it if she hadn't imposed the nasbandhi policy. I mean, the middle class was happy, and who cares what the poor think anyway?(I am not complaining, I myself don't care what the poor think)...Even now, when I asked my parents and a few other adults about the period, they don't recall it as a particularly bad time. In fact, if anything, many people view it as something good.

And this is from well-educated individuals who read the papers and everything. Not just this, several of my college friends (I do have friends, in spite of my tirade earlier), are forever talking about how a dictatorship would be just the thing for India. Then we could sign all the deals we want, persecute all the terrorists we like, with no fear of backlash from th minorities, and so on.

This is a very appealing view, and I'm sure it must have occured to the reader, or you wouldn't have read this far.

Why or why not such a thing should be good for India makes a very interesting discussion, and I am not going into it- I am tired already. The only thing which does bother me is that we have had 60+ years of independence, and we don't seem to be too bothered about what has happened so far- we don't know, and we don't wanna know is the motto.

Bangalore.

Since I spent the last 2 months roaming around Bangalore, I suppose it becomes obligatory for me to write a blog about it, and anyway, there really ain't that many topics in the blog currently.

Now, I don't want this to be a school-essay about how I spent my summer vacations. However whenever I read any intelligent accounts of people's travels, for example, the "diary" column on the last page of Outlook, they generally talk about little details of everyday life, and/or politics and high fashion in the city concerned. While it is definitely possible to give a similar account of Bangalore, I am really too mundane a person to indulge in that kind of a discourse.

For one, I love to eat. And its not as if I am a connoisseur of good food, its just that I love to fill my stomach to bursting point. Hence my stay in Bangalore is not an account of the minutae of its life, but rather a diary entry of how I gorged food in every corner of the city, or to be more accurate, M.G.Road and its vicinity.

Besides food, Bangalore offers an incredibly large number of bookshops, again in the vicinity of M.G.Road. Plus, Bangalore has a very mild climate. Hence, making allowances for the bad traffic, its really the ideal city (at least for me) to live in.

My first month in Bangalore was not particularly entertaining. My project (oh ya, thats the reason I was in Bangalore) hadn't really taken off, so I spent all my time exploring the campus of the Indian Institute of Science. I shouldn't complain though, since the campus is pretty large, and had some interesting trivia about it, for example, I didn't know that they had an IBM Blue Gene Supercomputer there. A quick wikipedia reference reveals it to be one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, though of course I was never allowed inside the building its housed in.

The campus is always playing host to some conference or the other, and me and my friends enjoyed more than one free lunches, without having to sit through the lectures.

Public transport in Bangalore is the real pain in the arse. The buses are irregular, and the conductors have a very strict aversion to Hindi/English. Though this did come in handy a few times, as when I was blocking the Ladies seat, and the conductor kept shouting at me, and I couldn't get a word of what he was saying.

A rather good thing about Bangalore is the large number of colleges there, as a result of which you will always find quite a few aquaintances to roam the city with. In my case, there were something like 30 people from my college, and another 15, some of whom were pretty close friends. So the first month was pretty much consumed by movies, food, and books.

One rather recurrent accusation levelled at Bangalore is that once you have been to M.G.Road, you have pretty much seen all Bangalore has to offer. I mean, one mall is the same as the other.
However, I would tend to disagree. I admit that I myself most of my time in that vicinity, but the thing is, a new restaurant opens once every at least 3 months. And these are not some ordinary restaurants I'm talking about- these are specialty restaurants, each with its own unique cuisine to offer. 2 months is totally inadequate to explore them fully.

Having talked about the rather banal subject of food, we now turn to books. As it happens, despite going to a very large number of restaurants, my major chunk of spending in Bangalore was not food or even living, but books. I bought around 25-30 books in this period, I bored my friends and my sister (who was in Bangalore) endlessly about the merits of some author or the other. The used bookstores were particularly nice. Of course carrying all those books back home proved to be a back breaking job, but I think it was worth it. Reading all those books is of course another matter.

However, despite everything, you get the distinct feeling that Bangalore has not yet matured into a full time metro. Now I don't know why I'm saying this, maybe because most of the people I met were college kids, or maybe because Bangalore is really not as large as Bombay/Delhi, despite expanding like anything in the past few years, but still, the feeling was there.

As I reached the end of internship, and also the end of my bank balance, I reflected that Bangalore is the ideal place for someone straight out of college in a high paying job. Given the shiny new international airport, and the frenzy of construction, which includes the metro rail, I am pretty sure I would prefer Bangalore over a lot of other cities for working in.

Of Animes...

So lets talk on this subject which was just grazed upon previously. Much to the probable disappointment of my parents, I still remain a hardcore animation freak. The passion, which was pretty much starved due to the lousy programmes on Cartoon Network, and the serious facade required during +2, got a free reign in college as a reward.

I would not be an overstatement to say that personally, I felt like puking on seeing the new shows introduced on CN in 2004-06, the icon being Ed, Edd n Eddy. Even popular shows like Samurai Jack, n Powerpuff Girls did not remotely hold my fancy. Especially since they replaced the greats like Garfield and Friends, Johny Quest, Little Lulu show, and the evergreen Power Zone Centurians. And also, CN decided to cater to the local audience and thus offer its shows in Hindi! So Swat Kats became 'chote mia' and 'bade mia' , 'power Xtreme.... ' became 'Veer Shaktiman....'.

(This para was unnecessary, but I felt like throwing it in to vent my frustration developed as I remembered those days)

Whatever. I would like to consider I like more 'deep' shows, which a whole world of itself, logical even tho a bend of reality, and a good character development. Of course, a great story, power conflict, superhuman/godlike fighting go without saying. This was when I discovered the world of animes...
Animes are a Japanese super weapon. Once it strikes you, you become enchanted, ready to view subtitled episodes running into hundreds, spend nights collecting AMV's and wallpapers, checking forums for plot prediction.
(One thing I really liked about Animes in general, is that they arn't shy to kill off somebody if required for plot development)

Here are synapses of the various shows I have watched over the past year, and I recommend all of them in the order. Enlightened would point out that I merely mention the most popular shows, and that may be the case, as I always check out the ratings before starting one, and only those are available on LAN.


1. Rurouni Kenshin

Can't recommend enough. This is the arguably the most different and the most superbly marvelous of all the shows I have ever watched. First of all, no super powers(O__O), just plain a**-kickin sword fighting. The lead character Kenshin Himura, is a legend, a soft-spoken Japanese revolution hero, feared as 'battosai the man-slayer' during the coup. However, he has left the front, and become a marauder, carrying only a reverse blade sword to protect people but never kill. However, it is inevitable that his past would come back again and again to haunt him. A strong scene throughout the series is that no person is literally evil, all have had their circumstances and have their own point of view and sense of justice, which might be a little skewed...but we always have our hero to point out the correct way to them.

There are also 2 OVA's which you would not want to miss if you do decide to watch it, the first 'Love and Betrayal' is a masterpiece, dealing with Kenshin's life during the revolution. The other 'Reminiscence' is in the future, telling us what came to of out characters, and is just sad.

If you want to feel what true patriotism for your country is, watch this.


2. Full Metal Alchemist

This is another great one. It made me take a break from Prison Break, so you can imagine. We are introduced to a world in an alternate reality, where they have alchemists, their replacement for physicists. Alchemy is a science, with its own laws and principles. Our protagonists are two brothers, Edward and Alphonso Elric, alchemists, who lost parts of their body in a disastrous alchemy experiment(which of course was in the forbidden domain) they tried. Now they are on a quest to find a way to regain their limbs and become whole. What they stumble upon turns out much much bigger, with them destined to be at the fulcrum. One of the best storylines ever, with a perfected narration technique which will keep you in expectation.

There are a mere 52 episodes. Plus a movie which is gives the ultimate conclusion to the series.
Highly recommended.

3. Bleach

This is a complete show. With a huge(100+) range of characters, good storyline, lots of powerful fighting and nice humour. Its not really a show, its a lifestyle. You get really close to the characters, heros and villains alike.

Central character, Kurosaki Ichigo, a teenager who can see ghosts for since he can remember. Eventually he comes to know of the afterlife, the soul reapers, the place called Soul Society, and gets intricately involved with its matters.

The serial has over time, developed several stereotypical elements like riatsu(power level - dbz), power ups, and like. Still, its one of the most popular animes currently and running strong. With 160+ episodes, not dubbed but subbed, still with no end in sight, it is a leisurely undertaking, not something for a weekend timepass.


4.Dragonball Z

You ask, why is this so down in the list? Well, though I was seriously crazy about this series for a long time, eventually after watching all episodes dozens of times, I have gotten quite tired of it, and would probably see little of it in the future.

This was I believe, what started the anime industry in the west, and the first series Indian kids were exposed to. (the frustration of a whole generation of Indians shall lie on CN for stopping this series on a pivotal point and then rerunning the series several times stopping at the same point).

I shall not delve on this much, after all its one of the oldest and most loved series of all time. Vanilla Dragonball and Dragonball GT should not go without mention, even though I did not appreciate them much. They deal with the childhood and future of Goku, in that order. Not to forget, there are a dozen or so movies too, which you might want to see if you are feel unsatisfied(after watching a total of 400+ eps). I recommend 'The future of Trunks' and 'Bardock, father of Goku', they provide more insight/backstory to the DBZ universe.


5. Death Note

This was a surprise. I just randomly started watching it and it turned out pretty good. In fact, I read its become something of a phenomenon in Japan.

This is a series with no violence, at least not in the traditional sense. It tells of a super-student and genius Yagami Light, who finds a notebook with a unique property. Whomsoever's name thy shall write in it, with the mode and time of death, shall die so exactly. He starts using this to kill all the criminals and cleanse the society. The police ask their top detective, L, to take the case. Thus a battle of mind begins between the two as who discovers the other's identity first.

A short series, finishes in just 34 eps. Although the stating episodes were highly promising, the series kind of turned downwards after 17 or so episodes, the last ones felt extremely crammed with not enough explanation.
Still, definitely worth a watch.

-------------------

Avatar, deserves a special mention. Its not exactly an anime(no japanese roots) , although definitely inspired from it. As from Rahul's opinion, I would recommend Avatar, but if you are or have a 12 year old kid with you. It is pretty childish and innocent, some jokes are repeated beyond repair, and the characters are not too deep. Ok, its not that bad, many of my friends watch it, but not exactly my taste.

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