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Everyone has a list of their favorite anime shows. That's a given. But do you have a list of the anime you consider so pedestrian, lame or terrible you wouldn't show them to you ex ever?

Lemme share my lame list. It's not in any order by the way.

1. "Bartender" - Show about a mixologist who can ease your troubles with a drink. Each episode comes with a history or story behind the cocktail du jour. Employs fourth wall techniques. Verdict: bleah and just plain boring

2. "Boys Be" - Tales of boys at school and the way they drool, pine for and leer at girls and women. Contains fanservice which means scenes where female characters inadvertently end up showing their underwear. Verdict: sexist and dumb

3. "Diamond Daydreams" - Show about the lives and loves of several women who reside or work in the nothern part of Japan. At times seems like an ad for certain locations. The character designs are among the ugliest I have ever seen. Memo to the show's animators: Go back to art school and learn how to draw. Then smack yourself for producing what amounts to nothing more than a disguised travel brochure.

4."Haunted Junction" - Kids from different religious backgrounds attend a haunted school with well-known ghosts from Japanese popular culture. Well they focus mostly on spectres Japanese school kids yak about such as the girl who haunts toilets. Verdict: A big mess. Supposed to be funny but is excruciating to watch. Has disturbing characters like a teen-aged girl overly fond of little boys. Gag.

5. "Gregory Horror Show" - MIni episodes about a mouse the unseen protagonist encounters in a place full of "scary" characters. The segments are too short and choppy. The characters are NOT scary at all since they are drawn simply. Think of wooden blocks then imagine them with faces and stubby appendages. The premise isn't bad but the animators faltered in the execution.

6. "Oh My Goddess" OVA - The first installment in a series that should have been buried long long ago. Geek meets one of the Nordic goddesses of fate. She ends up keeping house for him and falling for this very common guy. This show is nothing more than wish fulfillment for the guy who cannot get a date and still lives in his mom's basement. This tripe is an insult to any woman who can think for herself.

7. "Onegai Teacher" or "Please Teacher" - Half-human/half-alien lands on Earth and pretends to be a teacher to gather data on humans. Circumstances force her to marry one of her students. She looks like a well-endowed woman in her mid-20s. He is actually 18 but looks 15 because he was in a coma-like state for several years. They keep their marriage a secret and eventually fall in love.

Skip this so-called romantic show. If you have the DVDs, burn them and fumigate the room where these were kept. I found the relationship between the main characters disturbing and just wrong. The creator of this show should be ashamed for producing this putrid excuse for an anime. He or she deserves a flogging.

8. "Rahxephon" - Show where giant statues ( actually just prettier looking giant robots) wreak havoc in a walled-off world. Hero is a teen with a murky past. There is also a mysterious girl and a woman who is more than what she seems. Great animation, nice CGIs and compelling storyline at first. But I found the plot too convoluted for my taste and the pace of the show can be glacial at times. I couldn't finish this out of frustration and boredom.

9. "School Rumble" - HIgh school anime about a clueless girl, the guy she likes, the bad boy who loves her and their classmates. Typical show where someone can't tell the object of their affection how they feel because of certain reasons and circumstances. (e.g. the person they love just doesn't get it). Some people like this show. I don't. I got tired of the main characters' inability to confess their love.

10. "R.O.D." the TV series - Three sisters with the unusual ability to manipulate paper. They solve cases and are called paper masters for a good reason. One can create paper animals that do her bidding while another can fashion weapons out of paper. This is the tv spinoff of the popular "Read or Die" OVA about a bookworm who is really a special agent for the British.

The television show buchers certain characters in the original movie much to its detriment. The plot is more complex and folks double cross each other out of the blue. The series also runs too long and gets bogged down by the different subplots. This is one sorry spinoff to a decent, original movie.

I'm following five shows this season which don't seem to suck so far. One of them is a tale of ninjas living amongst us in the 21st century, Nope, I'm not talking about "Naruto Shippuuden" here.

"Nabari no Ou" (King of Nabari) is about Rokujo Miharu, a 14-year-old boy indifferent to most things. This small, delicate-looking apathetic teen works at a family restaurant but harbors inside of him one of the most sought after Ninja secrets called the Shinrabanshō. I've seen up to episode nine and as far as I can make out, the Shinrabansho is all the knowledge of the world. Nabari is the ninja world.

Hundreds of years ago, the leaders of the different ninja villages put it inside a human who they later killed. Don't ask me why. But like any good ole monster movie, the Shinrabansho appears again inside another host. It can grant the host immense power but I've only seen it manifest three times and it took the form of roots and tendrils sprouting out of the host and wreaking havoc on his enemies.

Rokujo senses it as a woman who promises to grant whatever he wants if he so wishes. When it activates, Chinese characters also appear on his body.

He isn't aware of this until a teacher, Thobari Kumohira Durandal, and another student, Kouichi Aizawa, pester him to join their school club espousing the Ninja way. The truth comes out when the two defend him from attackers. The assailants were ninjas and so are they.

I won't go into details about the other subplots. Suffice it to say that the villains include a young man who uses a secret technique that can maim and kill others just with mere hand movements. The cost, however, is his own life force.

Attention "Bleach" fans. (I'm referring to the anime show and manga not the liquid bleach here folks.)

Ahem. Back to the news.

The Bleach movie called "Memories of Nobody" will be shown in 300 movie theaters on June 11 and 12. You can start buying tickets May 9 from the theaters or at www.FathomEvents.com But subscribers to SHONEN JUMP e-mail newsletter can buy advance tickets from May 2 to 8, according to the folks at VIZ Media.

Here's a synopsis of the movie from the VIZ Media press release: "Unidentified beings known
as “Blanks” start popping up. They are soon followed by a Soul Reaper named Senna who makes them disappear. Puzzled by these unknown beings and the even more mysterious girl, Ichigo and Rukia set out to learn more, but uncover an evil plot when a menacing clan tries to kidnap Senna.

Banished from Soul Society long ago, the clan’s leader has sent the World of the Living and Soul Society on a collision course, and Senna seems to be the key to his diabolical plot for
revenge."

Cue suspense music.

Here's the latest news from the land of "Bleach", the popular action anime about soul reapers.

VIZ Media based in San Francisco has secured the license for "Bleach the movie: Memories of Nobody!! According to the company's press release, the film will have a limited theatrical release in major cities throughout North America this summer with the DVD release to follow in the winter.

"Bleach" is a popular ongoing shonen series in Japan which is based on an equally popular manga by Tite Kubo. In America, the anime airs on Adult Swim.

"Bleach" has also spawned several video games but I haven't played those so I can't tell you how they rate with me.

Do I like the show and manga? Hmmm. The main character, Ichigo Kurosaki, is on this blog's design, my car's rear window sports Ichigo's temporary soul reaper logo and dangling from my bag is the character Kon who is a modified soul kept in a stuffed toy. Yeah I like "Bleach." A lot.

If ya need more info, the "Bleach" Web site is bleach.viz.com or www.viz.com.

I found this on YouTube courtesy of andylau12345. Thanks dude. Hearing the "Voltes V" theme song brings back fond memories of watching mecha anime while I was growing up in the '70s and early '80s in the Philippines.

There were so many robot shows then, it seemed there was one mecha show every day. There was "Mazinger Z" with its weird villains and "Daimos" with its Richard/Erika love story. But "Voltes V" was my favorite with its tale of orphaned brothers and longing for a missing/dead father. Plus Voltes V usually dispatched the enemies by carving a V in their bodies with a sword. I always thought he did that to make sure the baddies knew who crushed them. That's "V" for Mr. Voltes V. And don't you forget it!

Of course even then I wondered why the evil guys never attacked the heroes as the robot was transforming. It seemed to me the best time to attack since the robot would be at its weakest. But why ask why.

The only other non-robot show I watched faithfully then was "Candy Candy" which dealt with the Cinderella-like life of one orphan girl. I was 9 when I saw the episode where Anthony, her first love, died in a riding accident or something like that. I bawled for an hour then memorized the sappy ending song. I remember sniffling again when I sang the song afterward. Hey, I was young and easily moved then.

A co-worker asked yesterday why I don't update this blog every day. Hmmm. I'd love to just do this instead of covering crime but I think my boss wouldn't be too thrilled with that.

Besides, someone has to chronicle the evil things that people do. Might as well be me. I've been covering crime so long, I'm pretty much not shocked by anything anymore. But I wouldn't subject anyone else to this. The world I cover isn't black and white but shades of gray. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Now back to yakking about anime which actually keeps me sane.

I finally managed to catch up on all those episodes of "Naruto Shipuuden" I've missed. SPOILER ALERT. Naruto and the gang have recovered Gaara's body. Chiyo-baba, the Sand Village elder, is thinking of reviving him using her life force.

Yep, it took a long time for her and Sakura to get rid of her evil grandson, Sassori, who was a member of Akatsuki and a former partner of Orochimaru. And did we really need those clone fights with Gai-sensei's team? I like Neji a lot but their fights just dragged on too long.

Next episode is the manga chapter where Chiyo-baba uses Naruto's seemingly endless supply of chakra to revive the dead Gaara.

"Kekkaishi" or "Barrier Master" has grown on me. It went from a ho-hum monster of the week show to a more interesting show with sibling rivalry, angsty half monsters and an evil organization doing everything to take over Karasumori which is that patch of powerful land Yoshimori and Tokine protect as the current kekkaishi of their families.

The evil organization has launched an all-out assault against our heroes to wrest Karasumori away from them. Their leader, a fox spirit called Princess, isn't going to last much longer and their headquarters will fall once she's gone. Or so that's what one of her minions said.

Why Yoshimori's grandpa, who is way more powerful than him, is just sleeping at home is beyond me. At least his cunning and powerful older brother, Masamori, has an excuse. The evil spy in his group has seen fit to dispatch Masamori and his team away from the fray about to break out over Karasumori.

In "D.Gray-man", the Millennium Earl is peeved that another exorcist has come into being when her crystal ball turned out to be actually Innocence. It is a substance the Earl's foes, the Black Order, uses to fight against him.

In addition to the storyline, I also like this show's character designs. Fans were out in force at the last Anime Expo looking really spiffy in their exorcist uniforms which were probably bought from some store. They didn't look handmade.

Anyway, there's only four more episodes left of the first season. There's going to be a second season of "D.Gray-man." Ditto with "Kekkaishi." I can't wait.

I saw this cover of a PS2 "Naruto Shippuuden" game. I haven't played it so I have no idea if it's good. I was just looking for images of an older Naruto to use.

Ja ne.

Here are some of the newest anime to grace or litter the anime landscape this year.

"Zombie Loan" features three teens with an unusual part time job. Michiru Kita can see dark rings around people's necks which means they're about to kick the bucket. This skill is used by two of her classmates, Chika Akatsuki and Shito Tachibana, who are known at school as Boys A and B. They are the only survivors of an accident that killed many. Actually they died and are just extending their life because of a deal struck. Characters are drawn elongated and faces are very angular. Everyone looks like they subsist on one lettuce leaf a day. Action show. Has some humor. Nice Jrock opening and ending songs. Title refers to their employer. So far, it's watchable.

In "Oh Edo Rocket", Seikichi Tamaya lives in one of the row houses in Edo where the poor congregate. It is the era when luxuries like fireworks have been banned by the ruling government. It is a blow to our hero who is a fireworks maker. A girl who looks like that alien chick Eureka from "Eureka 7" asks him one day to build a rocket that could reach the moon. One of the ugliest anime I have seen this season. Terrible attempts at humor. Let's face it. I have less than 100 years on this planet so why waste it on a show this pedestrian and hideous-looking? Next!

"Kaibutsu Oujo" or "Princess Resurrection" tells the tale of Hiro Hiyorimi and how he ends up living in the household of a princess who grants him an immortality of sorts. His sister had invited Hiro to stay with her now that she's been hired as a live-in maid or housekeeper at a mansion on top of a hill. Her employer turns out to be this young woman Hiro pushed out of the way of falling steel beams. Hiro dies but she brings him back to life. This comes at a price for Hiro. He is now her servant and often puts his carcass in front of her whenever some monster goes after his black-clad mistress. He also doesn't live long and must continually be revived by Princess. Typical anime character designs. Seen four episodes. Eh. Would do in a pinch if I'm craving anime but nothing special about it. Could easily turn into a monster-of-the-week type of show. Tolerable for now.