The Tryptophan Meter

Short anime post today. This idea came from a comment Charles Barkley made describing a dull game of basketball one night, classifying it as 'tryptophan!' I.e. A naturally occuring amino acid that has been linked to causing drowsiness. It got me thinking as to what animes could be classified as having a tryptophan effect. After watching the final episode of Tamayura earlier this week, I gave a 'tryptophan' comment to one of my friends. He agreed.

So here it is - the tryptophan meter! Now unlike Charles Barkley, I'm not going to say the anime(s) topping the tryptophan meter are necessarily the worst. Some animes are designed to have that effect and make the viewer flake out - it's an effective marketing tool in some genres. 0 will represent animes that have the complete opposite effect while animes with a 10 are literally swimming in it. Take this with a pinch of salt - this is merely for fun and my personal opinion. Each to their own.



0 - Kaiji, The Legend of Koizumi. No time for tryptophan in manly shows! Manliness utterly obliterates tryptophan!
1 - (insert your preferred ero material here) Hard to feel sleepy during that!
2 - (insert your preferred slashfest here) Adrenaline be smashing that tryptophan.
3 - Samurai Champloo. Sometimes a little chill with those groovy hip-hop instrumentals and rustic setting, but usually full of cutting loose and mayhem. Edo period must have been jamming! (If only)
4 - Garden of Sinners. Yeah, there's some damn fine action and gore. But there are some very slow points in the movies, heh. As if you didn't expect walls of text from Type-Moon material!
5 - Haibane Renmei. Some very relaxing, deep moments you can just sit back and just immerse yourself in. Then tragedy strikes - again. Tragedy be very un-tryptophan.
6 - Ergo Proxy. Well yeah, it's dark and brooding. But that city can really drain the fun out of anything, but that was the point. Not to mention the boat...But it has Pino, so it can't be all grim. Plus it has EPIC GAME SHOW!!!
7 - Hanamaru Kindergarten. Aww, look at the happy faces and pretty colours....wait, WTF did you just say, young girl?! Kids say the darnest things, lol.
8 - Mushishi, ARIA.. Nature at its finest. The good side of tryptophan...most of the time. Who wouldn't want to roam the countryside like Ginko does - those backgrounds are just delish. You could really spend a lot of time lying around in that fauna. As for ARIA, gondoliers - damn, they have it so good. You could trip to that world pretty darn easily.
9 - Tamayura. Ditzy, placid, simple girls in a very slow town walking slowly, eating cake and occassionally taking photographs. K-ON version 2.0. Series coming soon. Keep your pillow handy.
10 - K-ON! TRYPTOPHAN ALERT! (You're already knocked out before you finished reading that...) Girls sitting around eating cake and occasionally playing music...THAT is textbook tryptophan! Wait, did I ever finish that series....I think I did but I just can't be sure...Wait, was I even awake while typing this bit...


Peace.