I've been putzing around with digisubs since getting my DSL. Yeah, yeah - they're illegal, yeah I'm killing anime - I've been killing anime for the better part of a decade, I've heard it all. It's just that I was mooching off of others' venial sins instead of committing my own up to now. And I spend way, way, WAY more than I should on DVDs, much of it on stuff I only sort-of-liked when they were fansubbed, so ppfthptpt!

Along those lines, I actually sat down and watched the infamous "Endless Eight", which, indeed, was as close a simulacra of eternity as I care to waste my time watching. After a while, I realized that it probably didn't seem as tedious and pointless from the animator's point of view. After all, every show they've ever had to work on had some combination of some these "shounen stations of the cross" summer-vacation events, just not all crammed into the same half-hour episode, or even the same half-hour episode repeated eight times. To a certain extent, the "Endless Eight" episodes are a very inside-baseball meditation on the highly structured and mannerist excesses of post-moe Japanese animation, wherein they have to do their onsen episode, their obon matsuri episode, the "test of courage", etc, etc, etc. "Endless Eight" just verbalizes those etceteras, at Andy Kaufman length.

About the sixth of the Endless Eight, I stopped registering the details of the show, and went into a hypnotic fugue, where it all turned into colored flows of aesthetic impressions. I was ready for the eventual shaggy-dog ending when it came; I only groaned in annoyance afterwards. They *almost* got past without a big ol' helping of What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?