I thought that I knew everything there was to know about the seedy underbelly of the internet. I grew up with very little supervision, and therefore I spent a lot of time on the internet, forums, LiveJournal, and all the various blogs that were contained therein. Imagine my surprise then upon learning that there was a level to the internet which I completely missed. Anime blogz.

I feel spectacularly lame, which is saying something when you consider that I am familiar with several Anime shows. I am not, however, familiar with blogz. I could not even begin to tell you why blogs with a “z” are any different from the more mainstream blogs. For the first time in my life a Google search had failed me. I could find no difference between “blogs” and “blogz,” and it was driving me insane.

It was a coworker who first introduced me to this concept of anime blogz. We were having a very casual conversation when she mentioned that she liked these blogz…with a “z.” She seemed a little bit ashamed at admitting this and I could not imagine why. I did not press her for any further explanation, but filed it away for future investigation.

After failing to find the difference between “blogs” and “blogz” I decided it was time to just visit one for myself. Lo and behold, these anime blogz are not actually blogs! Certainly not in the traditional sense. What I thought was a kind of blog seemed to be just a site with links and available video downloads for the anime shows themselves. What was the big deal? Where was the shame coming from? I decided to ask my coworker the next day why she seemed embarrassed about those sites, besides the fact that they had to do with anime, of course.

“Just read the Fr Z Blog,” she said, and would not speak anymore on the subject. I did not want to upset my coworker so I did what she said, and all I could see was a lot of very religious and very opinionated posts from a Catholic Blogger. I will admit that I did not go and read through every one of this posts, but from a quick search I could not find anything saying that there was something wrong with using these anime sites.

Finally I was left to conclude that what was happening with my coworker and her blogz must have been a bad case of Catholic guilt. Maybe she was skipping confessional or Sunday service to catch up on the latest Bleach? I did not know, and I was not going to ask. I only hoped she knew that just because the church did not condone it, that did not mean that it was bad.

At the holiday party that year I decided to try to make her feel better. I put my internet searching skills to the test and found for her some anime with Catholic themes. Surely that would help.