What's with all the rewatching?

When my littlest brother was growing up, we'd be able to keep him quiet by firing up whatever current Disney movie he liked on the VCR, repeatedly. He could watch the same movie over and over again. Most kids who grew up with VCRs, and now DVDs, have pretty much the same experience throughout their childhood.

I never had that. Disney movies were only re-released to the theaters every 7 years. It was a rare event when one of them would get shown on "The Wonderful World of Disney" on prime-time TV. Pretty much any TV show would only get re-run during the summer. Syndicated daily cartoons had enough material to stretch out over months without repeating (or so it seemed).

The first time I ever saw a movie twice in the theaters was with Star Wars. And it was a couple of months in between screenings. It just wasn't done before that.

And more recently, with my Laserdisc & DVD collection, I would maybe only rewatch even my most favorites every 4-6 months or so.

Just now, I finished an entire day of rewatching Madlax from the very beginning up through ep 22. Back on Thursday, to build up the anticipation to eps 21 & 22, I started on ep 14. Friday I watched 19-22 again. Saturday I finished my 10th trip through Noir by rewatching the last 2 discs. Then, because I mustn't have been misting up quite enough, I rewatched Madlax 22 again a couple of times. And earlier in the week, I rewatched .hack to compare the subtitles to the dubs.

I don't really have a good explaination for it. It seems to be focused on these shows. I can't extend it to other anime, so I don't think it's just the medium that's got me obsessed. There's other quality programs out there that just don't provoke this kind of behavior in me. For example, Monster is an extremely well done show and I like it a lot, but I don't find myself anxiously awaiting the latest episode for it (in fact, the Soldats had fallen a bit behind, and I've only just downloaded, but not watched, the last 2 episodes), and I have no real desire to rewatch them yet.

I've been trying to put my finger on it. I think the closest I can come up with is that Mashimo's work resonates with me in a way that has that "magic", that certain something, that consistently "clicks" for me. The only parallel I have is with music: Stereolab. I can instantly recognize a Stereolab song for it's unique qualities. On it's surface, their work seems like either some sort of lounge/pop, or experimental droning, and a lot of people just don't pay a lot of attention to it. But for me, it's like a little bit of "magic". It "clicks".

It feels like I've discovered something unique and special. On the surface, it doesn't seem to be much of anything unique at all. It's very straightforward in most respects. Simple, even. But it's exactly right!

It's like finding some kind of hidden truth...

(Yes, I've been watching too much Madlax... ELDA TALUTA ELDA TALUTA ELDA TALUTA.....)