I got Tested

And I got scored.

Verbal: 570 - 79th percentile
Quantitative: 690 - 69th percentile
Analytical Writing: 4.5 - 58th percentile

So there it all is. It's really just confirmation of what I already knew, in terms of my strengths and weaknesses. I know I'm better at working with the English language than I am at solving math problems, but I've got an okay grasp on logic and reasoning. And my writing? Well, the grammar was fine. It's my analytical skills that came up a bit lacking, I'm pretty sure.

Guess it's a good thing I want to be an English teacher then, huh?

Anyway, yeah. That is what it is, and what it is is irrelevant for a while.
What I REALLY wanna talk about is where Japanese animation studios spend their money.

Compare the opening and ending cutscenes of, I'd estimate, 70% or more of anime out there. The opening and ending sequences feature much smoother animation with a better color palette and more attention to layers and textures. By comparison, the meat of the episode is choppy, static, repeated cuts with minor tweaks (like only animating a moving mouth over an otherwise still image). I realize I'm talking about fairly subtle stuff, a lot of the time here, but bear with me.

Here are some examples:

Naruto is one of those shows where about half of every episode is recycled footage. However, look at this, one of the Naruto openings. I love the silhouetted forms and sparring. Look how smooth and fluid they animate it without necessarily making it slow.


The 4th opening of Blood+


3rd opening to Eureka Seven


Hellsing


Let me just insert a plug here, because the show is awesome. I guess you could say I'm trying to identify a certain quality to these scenes. There's a show, however, that if you haven't checked out yet, you should, because it employs that quality a very high percentage of the time.

. . .
. . .

Go watch Avatar.

Out.