Convention season is here! And with conventions comes those inevitable days of gorging oneself and becoming fat by overconsuming freshly acquired anime. Those days of gluttony and indulgence won't be so forgiving once summer is over, so if you're feeling heavy with anime (or just want to keep that collection lean and trim) follow these rules to a healthier, sexier, more active you!
First, it is important for you to understand that anime-obesity is not your fault! The otaku brain is programmed to crave and overindulge in anime whenever possible. A long time ago, when we all lived in caves, resources were scarce and there was competition for everything (food, water, a cave with an ocean view, etc.). Early man never knew when his next meal would be, so his taste buds evolved to keenly enjoy the tastes of sugar and fat because those foods have the highest concentration of calories when compared to other foods such as crab grass and its close cousin broccoli. So, whenever sugar or fat was available, Homo erectus gobbled up as much as he could get his hands on without throwing up thinking that any day, a saber toothed tiger would chomp his head off and so there probably wouldn't be a next time. But times have changed in our modern day! Today, sugar and fats are everywhere in an unending supply! But our brains are still programmed to crave them.
The same can be said of anime. A long time ago in a more primitive era—an era in which early otaku had to physically get up out of their foam futons to change the channel on their television sets, anime was scarce. Early otaku never knew when the next anime series would come along, so his eyeballs evolved to keenly enjoy the viewing of any anime that came along. In those early days, it didn't matter if the anime was poorly translated, the episodes all hacked up and sewn together or if the tapes were11th generation copies that faded between color and black & white. If it was anything remotely anime early otaku gobbled up as much as he could get his hands on without his eyes turning square thinking that any day now, the USA and the Soviet Union would launch all their nukes at each other and there wouldn't be any more anime made for a long long time. Those awful, early days are now known as the 60s and 70s (or for those living in the USA, "The Dark Ages of American fashion.") But times have changed in our modern day. (And clothes look better, too.) Today, anime is everywhere, in a seemingly unending supply in all sorts of mind-numbing varieties (i.e. sub, dub, sub-dub, sub-dub-several-foreign-languages+closed-captions, etc.). But the otaku brain is still programmed to crave anime as if in those awful, early days. (I shudder at the thought!)
Now that we understand that anime-obesity is not entirely our fault, what can we do to reduce our intake of anime and restore our bloated collections to a healthier, more attractive size? Several so-called "Anime diets" have blown in and out of fashion. Only one I know seems to work. The others fail for various reasons. Here are some of them:

The "Cold Turkey" Anime Diet

As the name implies, you simply substitute cold turkey for anime. Next time you feel like going to the video store to rent a new anime title, don't. Instead, divert yourself to a nearby delicatessen and order a pound of sliced turkey luncheon meat. Then return home and force yourself to eat it. It doesn't matter how you make it, be it sandwiches or hors d'ouvres, just eat the whole pound. Repeat this procedure each time you have the urge to rent or purchase new anime. Eventually, you will condition yourself to equate that gamey, slimy taste of roasted fowl to anime. By then, one would hope that you've gotten so sick of turkey that you won't even think about anime anymore lest those putrid memories of processed pressed bird breast regurgitate themselves back into your brain. The effect I've seen of going "cold turkey" in my colleagues is quite chilling. They go from gay, carefree otaku abandon in which they rent or buy anything in sight, to sickly, green-looking, haggard, depraved souls who barf at the mere thought of stepping inside a Tower Records rental store.
In choosing this diet technique, you will find the results quite speedy in coming, but the toll to your body is also large. The reward is that you've stopped your intake of anime completely, thus putting a stop to the evil cycle that used to dominate your life. You may recognize this technique is also used by smokers and drug users when they try to kick their addictions. For them, they just stop smoking or taking drugs. There is no turkey involved anymore, even though it is still called "quitting cold turkey". The reason is because smokers and heroin addicts have determined that being forced to eat that much turkey is barbaric and inhumane, so over the years, they've just let that part of it go. However, since anime-obesity is a much more dire affliction, it calls for the more primitive, torturous methods as outlined above in order for the diet to be effective. I recommend this diet plan only to those iron of stomach and steel of conviction.

The "Beverly Hills" Anime Diet

In this diet regimen, you are allowed to purchase and collect as much anime as you desire and your collection will still stay healthy and slim. Too good to be true, right? Wrong! The only rule is that you must move to Beverly Hills. Why? Well, in theory, the diet is supposed to go after the root of the problem instead of treating the symptoms. Conventional thinking would have you believe that you need to control or modify your impulsive desire to buy anime. But that is just the symptom of the disease! This diet says that trying to change your behavior is ridiculous. The root of your problem is that you have too much money laying around with nothing to spend it on! Therefore, if you live somewhere where you drink water only from a bottle, you have to pay rent for your parking space, all your groceries are organic and instead of using makeup you just get plastic surgery, then you won't have any money left over for anime! This way, even if you really want to buy that URUSEI YATSURA DVD box set, you won't be able to because you have to save the money to buy tomorrow morning's cup of coffee! Instead, you'll just slowly rent the tapes one at a time until you're 40 and by then, you should be in the middle of a mid-life crisis which, although may not be as serious as anime-obesity, at least it is a "mainstream" problem so you should be able to start garnering sympathy for it instead of pity.
A note of interest: This diet is only called the "Beverly Hills" anime diet, but, in fact, can be used anywhere where the cost of living is notoriously high, such as New York, Hong Kong, London or San Jose (and greater Silicon Valley). Warning: Do not try this diet by moving to Tokyo! Although the cost of living is probably the highest in Japan, somehow, the diet does not work there. In fact, anime-obesity appears to become more severe in foreigners.

The "Schwarzenegger" Anime Diet

Like the Beverly Hills anime diet, this diet plan lets you buy or watch as much anime as you want. The only catch is that you start bodybuilding by strenuously lifting great, heavy weights until your blood vessels burst from the inside like a comic book superhero with an Austrian accent. Again, this diet tries to treat the root of the problem. Whereas before, the problem assumed was that you have too much money, this time, the assumption is that you have too much time with nothing better to do! Whereas some wayward kids with lots of idle time on their hands get involved in gangs or start doing drugs, anime fans, true to their nature, always want to do something different than their peers and so get caught up in anime instead.
The solution becomes simple: If you occupy all your time with some kind of strenuous, physical activity such as bodybuilding, rock climbing or Tae Bo you simply won't have any time left to watch or buy any anime! This kind of physical activity has the added bonus of making you more appealing to members of the opposite sex, which, in turn, will further help you reduce your anime consumption as now not only is your time being completely spent, but most likely, so is all your money. (It is a little known fact that Arnold, himself, was also an anime fan.)
At first glance, you may think that any of these fad diets make perfect sense and you may think one of them might be right for you. But don't be fooled! As I said, these diets fail for various reasons. The only diet I know that works is this:

The "Watch-Only-What-You-Really-Like" Anime Diet

This plan isn't really a diet at all. Instead, it is more of a lifestyle rule. Instead of going around and grabbing everything in sight, or denying yourself what really makes you happy, you instead simply concentrate on the show or series or artist or writer you really really like and don't stress out about what other people are slobbering over or what happens to be trendy this summer. If you do this, you'll still satisfy the need for anime, but your collection will be lean, trim and still attractive to members of the opposite sex.

David Ho runs RIAP, an American animation studio that takes anime as its primary influence. Visit http://www.riap.com to learn more.