Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

May 24, 2012

Allan Keyes is back once again to point out some of the more interesting aspects of Japanese culture.

While in Japan, I resolved to watch a lot of the local television, so as to get a better sense of daily life there.  Being the lazy, anti-social couch potato that I am, this was a fine plan. One of the things I was keen to watch was some run of the mill anime. I don’t mean the stuff that we all know here, like Gundam or Sailor Moon or Naruto or One Piece –I was looking for the general filler that runs there but doesn’t cross over big. Think of our Saturday morning cartoons – I wanted to see the Anime equivalent of these:

And shockingly enough….I really wasn’t disappointed. Most of what I watched involved fights between various high school heroes, mechas or space soldiers. Meh. I can see that anywhere. But there was one program that really kept my attention. It was moody and kind of creepy. From what I was able to discern at the time, the plot went something like this:  Generic  high school guy notices the girl next to him in class asleep at her desk.  At day’s end, she wakes up and leaves a small puddle of drool on the desk in her wake.  So like any normal kid, the guy…..decides to take a taste. Of her drool. Left on her desk. Hooooooooookay. Well, the kid gets sick as you would’ve expected, but instead of Hep C or mono, he starts suffering withdrawal symptoms.  If he doesn’t taste this girls’ drool every day, he gets sick. As the story progresses, they seem to share a “drool bond”, where they can sense each other’s emotions through mutual (and clinical) tasting of each other’s drool.  And there’s even more strangeness with hidden scissors that I won’t go into, since I couldn’t adequately explain.

I spent a few days online trying to find out more about this strange show, and I finally found the title: “Mysterious Girlfriend X” – isn’t that a perfectly Japanese title? God knows what kind of wacky title a show like that would have if it was created here – Swappin’ Spit perhaps, or maybe Drooliver’s Travels? (Ok, I admit I’d watch a show with THAT title). Turns out that the anime is based on a popular manga, thereby proving that a large segment of Japan has serious saliva issues

Because this is really not cool:

Tags: Allan Keyes, anime, bmj2k, cartoons, Gary coleman show, Gundam, Janet Reno, Japan, manga, Mr. Blog, Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride, Mr. BTR, Mysterious Girlfriend X, Naruto, One Piece, Rubik the Amazing cube, Saturday morning, Saturday morning cartoons