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In This Issue

• Jem and the Holograms Suck Major Holo-Ass
• Students Get Involved, Eat Pizza
• Kids Aren't Worth It
• Can You Tell Me How To Get, How to Get to HIV
• Corporation Brightens Otherwise Bleak Childhood
• B'nai Mitzvot of Yore
• Cap'n Planet Saves World, Gouges You
• Bad Street Brawler Jerks Off Crime Off the Streets
• Science Proves America's Youth Turning Japanese
• On the Glorious Afterschool Special
• Chicken Soup for the Athletically Inept Soul
• A Researched Dildography
• Rider Strong Gets Stalked, Interviewed, Married
• Furry is the Way to Be

Ben Schwartz

You might not have noticed, but American youth culture is slowly but surely losing ground to the Japanese. More and more children are rejecting traditional American values: today kids are respecting their elders, selling their used underwear on Ebay, paying attention in school, and eating the family dog (and their vegetables). They have traded He-man for Dragonball Z; Barbie for Sailor Moon; Nintendo for XBox; Rover for Tamagatchi; Popples for plush Pokemon dolls; Monopoly for Pokemon cards; Transformers, My lttle Pony, and GI Joe for Pokemon action figures; glue huffing for Pokemon cartoons.

How did a country formerly incapable of creating anything more captivating to American audiences than Godzilla movies acquire such power over the minds of the country's most valuable resource? Perhaps the process began in the 1980's, when parents and politicians concerned about the country's economic future begged that young people "act more Japanese." Perhaps Japanese corporations are using their advanced foreign technology to extract precious marketing data directly from the living brains of small children (explaining the recent highly publicized string of kidnappings). Or maybe they just have a talent for manufacturing the sort of cheap, cute, kitschy crapola that kids love so much.

Regardless, it must be admitted that the Japanese products have a certain surreal, edgy charm. For example, while American companies were busy making their feminine hygiene products as sterile and dull as humanly possible, the Japanese created not only a Hello Kitty douche, but a Hello Kitty vibrator as well, so their customers can have something cute to play with when they're thinking about bumping uglies. But that's the sort of sophistication you'd expect from the culture that brought you Happa-Tai ("leaf squad," roughly translated) and their hit video, "Yatta!"

Of course, no campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the young can succeed without cartoons. In this arena Japan once again proved itself quite capable of economically raping America with its own metaphorical penis. Now, fantasies of destroying the world with explosive jism shot from one's 50-100 prehensile tentacle-cocks being as they are more or less unique to the Japanese psyche, those cartoons weren't the ones marketed towards (American) children.

Rather, they took advantage of the interest in the martial arts sparked by such absurdly profitable cartoon/movie/ merchandising franchises as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Armed with an ancient repertoire of secret plot formulas, they created animated series featuring superpowered kung-fu masters in other dimensions whose hair turns blond when they power up (Dragonball Z), giant fighting robots with atomic swords (Voltron), ditzy schoolgirls who destroy evil homosexuals from yet another dimension with magic bubbles (Sailor Moon), and adorable yet formidable tiny monster pets who fight incredibly cute battles using their unbelievably cute powers to determine who is the cutest monster of all and win magical prizes for their masters (Pokemon). And of course, every Japanimation series is at least as marketable as its Americani- mation counterparts.

We have to face facts and admit that America's days at the top of the pandering-to-preconsumers heap may be over. Sure, maybe we are starting to make our own video games, but it's only a matter of time until the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series are ironically sued into paying their lawyer fees by ferrying prostitutes around in the El Camino whose 68 year old owner they brutally carjacked. Oh well, at least American manufacturing technology is still number one when it comes to pop stars. For now.