I had turned 28 on Friday and received volumes 1 and 4 of the Monster manga as gifts. I went ahead and bought volumes 2 and 3 of Monster to fill in the missing volumes and volumes 2-4 of Berserk to continue it (getting both series and a Haibane Renmei t-shirt from Robert's Anime Corner Store). Monster was one of my favorite anime at the beginning of last year, perhaps the best suspense-thriller anime I've seen yet and has very well developed characters (Heck, how many anime series feature a 30-something year old neurosurgeon as the main character?). With Berserk, I largely just wanted to continue on with the events in the manga after what is portrayed in the anime.

A couple of days ago, I decided to subject myself to the English dub of Crest of the Stars, gave up and started rewatching Monster. The night afterwards, I put in the first DVD of Vision of Escaflowne and watched the first couple of episodes in Japanese with English dubs. A few things came to mind at the time concerning each of these shows.