Happy to be from the West!

*May include spoilers. All media credits go to their owners*

Today I want to write about something that has always been on my mind whenever I watch anime or read something related to the Japanese culture - how differently society behaves here and there. And especially when watching anime, I find myself wondering whether the things they show there are really how things work. I mean, it's likely that school life is more or less exactly like it is pictured - children changing their shoes in the lobby, changing seating a few times per year and getting sorted into new classes once every couple of years. But is it really true that the most popular guy in school has food grades, is good at sports and acts nice to everyone?

When I think back to my high school times - which by the way ended like 5 years ago - I don't remember any of the cool kids being awesome at studying. Sure, there were athletes and yeah, there were nice guys too. But there were also random people who did nothing but drink and hang out doing, well - nothing, and their popularity was based mostly on being bad at school. Seriously, that gang in the back who never listened to anything the teachers said and played cards even during classes, that was "teh leetzor" gang to belong to. Now, I personally don't have a very vivid experience with the entire thing since we had 30 girls and 1 guy (poor dude) in the class - obviously the popularity contest can't really happen if there is no audience to compete before. The girls just formed groups based on interests or similarities and that's how it went. I also played in a rock band and liked playing video games so the fucks I gave about the entire girls-class thing was an absolute 0. But I did hang out with some of the cool kids from other classes because we had music to connect us and to be quite blunt - I don't think they were neither smart nor soulful.

Tomoya

Looking at school life in anime though, being a delinquent is generally looked down upon (which is completely the other way around here). Your grades should be at least a medium ranked to be able to charm anyone with your looks and kindness. Think about Tomoya from Clannad for a second. He was obviously rather handsome and evidently pretty kind and caring, but most of the people from their class still thought badly of him since he didn't care about studying. What kind of a society does it take to make kids think studying is awesome? In a sense, I think I would actually prefer that society. You are urged from an early age to strive for something and be someone. True, it will probably be challenging at times but by then you would already be used to it. You are constantly urged to form bonds, participate in events - student councils and committees are serious institutions and you actually get some credit for being the class rep. Then again, you would be competing with a mass of hard working ants who all aim for similar goals. Also, regardless of whether it's popular or not to study in the Western countries, if you do it well you'll probably have better shots at things. But to stand out from a mass of study bugs you'd have to be 100% dedicated to working your way through academics.

Here we come to another point that has always bothered me. The amount of dedication children in school settings are forced to put into things. I agree that one must be taught how to focus and reach goals, but do you really have to set goals for your entire life when you're 15? You don't even know who you are entirely and what you want or what you like. All you know is that people like parents, teachers etc have expectations and you need to set your aim in life to start working towards it with all your might. The day you walk out of high school you better have a new place to go to - otherwise you'll be kicked out of your parents place or thought of as a burden. Of course it's not any better to be dwindling about and not knowing where you are going in life for years and years after you finish your school life, like it happens around here a lot. But if you already set goals during puberty then it's rather likely you will wake up one day when you're 30, working on a meaningless post, and find yourself questioning whether you made any of the choices yourself or was your mind just molded to that direction by others. 
Young people actually need the time to fail and be free in order to find out what really matters to them in life. Can this really be accomplished by expecting them to choose when they're still children? I don't know. But I do know that there is a bunch of weird people in Japan who like to sniff girls panties and do extremely disgusting things to find some shelter from the iron setting the society has pressed upon them.

One last extremely important thing about being a teenager and finding out what is important to you is about love - and romance in general. In this sense I'm extremely glad that there are animes to sort of guide young people through it. Another thing I am glad about is how important they show the 'confession' part of the process to be. It's a climax point of the innocent love where you really need to pull yourself together and accomplish something. I admire the people who have the courage to face their crush in the broad daylight and confess their feelings. But that is not usually how it works around where I live and I believe it's more or less the same everywhere else in the West. 

Here people get together at someone's house -> get drunk -> start making out. After that it's probably pretty obvious one or both of the parties like the other. 
"I like you!" "Yeah, your tongue in my throat gave it away." 

Sure, I've witnessed some innocent love myself even, where the boy and the girl actually tell each other how they feel, go for walks, hold hands, kiss for the first time. But that ends with kids turning like 13-15 and finding out how easy it is to get someone to buy you alcohol. After that you don't really need to face your embarrassing feelings alone and if you lack courage you can supplement for it from the bottle. But that also makes it so much easier to go too far too easily. You get drunk and happen to sleep with a guy? Well now, no use crying over spilled milk, eh? The amount of sex that is shown on TV doesn't really help with the image what is good and what is not.

That's why I think that it's an important thing to actually face someone with no extra help from alcohol and tell them how you feel. Sure, it's embarrassing and sometimes useless since you might already know what the other is going to say. But to muster up your courage and go for it while knowing you might be both accepted or rejected is something you will remember for your entire life. It gives the whole business a meaning. Making out while drunk and then dating them cause you might as well, will turn into a mass of hazy memories when you're older, none of them really meaning anything. I sincerely believe that everyone should have to confess at least once as a teenager to know what it really means to try to reach someone with feelings

Yet, I don't think I would actually prefer living in the Japanese society. Regardless of how many good points the collective consciousness has, it's important to be free too. If you don't feel the direction you've chosen in life is right for you then all you have to do is take your life into your own hands and work for the things you really want. And people will support you. But in animes people seem to be so tightly set in their own tracks that when the time comes to change something, it seems to be the hardest thing in the world. True, there are people like that here too, but at least societies urge people to go for what they really want. There the world revolves around what the society wants...

Thank you for reading my blabber and hopefully some of my points have reached you.
Will be back next week!

Real life topic anime

*May include spoilers. All media credits go to their owners.*

I haven't seen a lot of anime that could be classified as 'themed'. What I mean by that is - I don't really watch anything that doesn't have something mystical in it. Obviously these animes could also be referred to as 'themed' - mostly themed for boys because of the battles and abilities - but what I envision when I use that word is something like sport or music or art or culture. I think the very first anime about sport that I saw was Attack No. 1 - or maybe Captain Tsubasa. But little difference which one of them was the first because I hated both of them. I admit that I did watch Attack No. 1, or Mila Superstar as it was called in German on the RTL2 channel where I watched it, but only because it was just before Sailor Moon for some time. Mostly I was the fastest remote control clicker in the world when it came to any of the sports animes. Not sure if I saw any music animes back then - but if I did, I probably switched the channel just the same.

Chihayafuru

So having a vague memory of not thinking anything of these shows, it will not surprise you that I avoided watching any 'themed' animes for a very long time. The very first thing that sparked my interest years later was Chihayafuru - and I only started watching that one because of Uta Koi and the beautiful poetry. But to be fair, Chihaya and her friends were more engaged in Karuta as a sport rather than a noticing the rich history and context of the 100 poems. Still, even though every one of them had a special ability or angle for approaching the sport, I had no idea that was actually what captures the viewer when it comes to sports animes. So when Chihaya came out with her epic hearing, Taichi with his memorization skills and Arata just being OP and having a long history, I thought it was all some kind of new way of displaying action. Little did I know that that's exactly what you look for in these kinds of shows.

When it was then suggested I watch Kuroko's Basketball or Kuroko no Basuke, I was still clueless about what it was going to be and, frankly, also very skeptical. That changed within the first episode. When I realized that every single one of the characters was going to have a special power - very similar to supernatural or mystical powers that the characters in my usual animes have - I was all over that show. No joke. Did I think that some of those abilities were ridiculous? Of course. Would it really be possible for someone to have so little presence that he gets away with all kinds of sneaky tricks - surely not. Especially when he generally sucks at basketball. But is that an awesome idea to portray and make possible in an anime - definitely yes. Not to mention that epic copy-ninja style of Kise, Kagami's jumps, Midorima's long range shots and the monstrous Aomine. Can't say that the only girls in the show have any less worthy abilities. If Riko's special power is somewhat logical and might be possible in reality - even if not to that extent - then Momoi's power is just mental. And awesome. And OP. But when playing against it, it makes winning that much more desirable. All in all, I had no idea basketball could be shown with so much feeling and action. I watched one episode at my college the other day and a basketball player sitting next to me commented on how dramatic the show looked. He was right - and that's what makes it epic!

Very recently, however, I watched Nodame Cantabile. I admit that I chose it because it was on a rather high spot in the ANN top 50. I knew it was going to be an anime about music and even though my sister had actually suggested I watch Angel Beats or something of that name, I had never watched anything remotely related to music before. At least not on purpose. So as I started it, I had no idea what to expect. When the show evolved though, I realized that it was kind of in the same style as the sports animes. Most of the time they just pointed out how great musicians the main characters were, how much better than other players, but here and there they added effects like: "When he conducts, people start seeing flower petals" or "When she plays, it feels like we are all in a fairy tail". Sure, that might not qualify as a special power exactly, but I know enough about music to know how people talk about the pieces they just heard - at least in my own country. And mostly these talks do not involve flower petals - or black feathers and princes, which were also present, by the way. So hearing what was right and what was wrong with their technique or approach was pretty much like improving oneself on the battlefield - this time the battlefield was the competitive musical world.

Nodame Cantabile

And I loved it! The show was amazing, even with the sometimes overextended music and the nonexistent animation. Seriously - not too much fun to watch a conductor just stand in place, doing nothing. Still, it had humor and some extra relationship topics and most of all the growing of their personal skills and ambitions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is - if it ever comes to watching these themed shows, don't be too conservative like I was. They might be more epic than you know.

See you next week!  

The Anime Movie Paradigm

*Includes spoilers (Seriously this time. I'm going to tell about endings of movies, be careful). All media credits go to their owners.*

Yo, guys. Sorry about the delay - it has been a crazy studying weekend. But I'll take this Sunday morning off and ditch the climate changes report just to complete my weekly task of blogging. Yes! Feel flattered!

Do you know how to recognize an anime movie that is going to end bad? Well now. Besides the fact that most of them don't end so well. 
It's when it all starts really good and adventurous. No joke. I have actually witnessed only a few of them that end well - most of them, no surprise, by Miyazaki. I guess that's how the man got famous. "Oh here's an idea - how about I don't kill of some of my main characters by the end of the movie...? That could work!" He sure was a pioneer, eh. And thank goodness, cause if Totoro had sacrificed himself in the end there to save the girls mother or some similar BS....  GRRR!
Sure, there are exceptions, like Hosoda's 'Summer Wars'. But that also starts out kind of slow and only evolves into a massive story. So it doesn't actually qualify under the 'good start, bad ending' category.
I'm going to make a list that proves my point.

Jubei

Ninja Scroll - We see a lone warrior striding down a bridge - epic setting - and soon a pretty epic beginning battle! That's about when you know shit is going to hit the fan. It really is. Sure, there are epic fighting abilities and battle scenes in between, but in the end he basically rejects his girlfriend's offer to spend the night, then she dies, then he kills everything, then he spends his life in solitude. Awesome, dude. You must be so happy with your life choices. I guess I can see sense in there too though - who would want their wandering hero to be a homebound husband, eh?

Millenium Actress - I'm not usually the type that likes to watch anyone's biography, but I had a feeling that one might be good. And it was - except it was obvious from when the director and his assistant arrived at the fragile actress' home, that things were not going to end well. Basically, what this movie shows us, is that it's okay to be obsessed with some dude you only talked to once in your teenage years for the rest of your life. No joke, 60 years minimum. That's like an extended overly attached girlfriend syndrome. And then, obviously, it's only going to end with: "Oh, he's actually dead already, sorry. Now go follow him in the afterlife." A bit heroic, I guess. But mostly alarming. Don't actually ever do that, girls.

Mononoke and Ashitaka

By the way, it's not like Miyazaki has all good endings. Like Princess Mononoke. Sure, the prince hangs out with Mononoke and her wolf crew and it's all fun and giggles, but basically what is said is that humans are vile monsters who like to kill the forest-kami and wolfs are smart enough to know that. Even the happy ending with the head being returned and all, it's still going to be a sucky future for most of those people from the village and not to mention the prince. Sorry, dude, I don't think she's ever going to give in. Luckily lots of women from the village want you.
Also, that Sprited Away stuff - not so happy either. Yeah, Chihiro saves everyone but then they promise: to meet each other again some day! Just a wild guess but I'm thinking, what, 10... 20 years? I guess Chihiro would have stuff to learn from the Millenium Actress. 
And one other thing - Howl's Moving Castle may have ended well, but what it  mostly showed was how the poor boy was in pain the entire time because the girl could not start believing in herself fast enough. Seriously, am I the only one who thought it was an agonizing movie? Thank goodness it ended well after all.

Chiaki and Makoto

Now The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, hmmm. A happy one? A sad one? I'm pretty sure it's Hitomi and Van all over again. Didn't Chiaki say he was from waaaay further in the future? Even if he did wait for you like you asked, Makoto, I'm pretty sure you would either be an old lady by then or he would be a child... Not so awesome. And you just had to go and waste all those jumps, didn't you. And on pudding and karaoke! Bastard! I have to admit that I still felt sorry for her. Also, Chiaki is the nicest Japanese male name, in my opinion. Oh yes, you are, oh yes, you are!

Gin and Hotaru

Of course, when it comes to pure dramatics, I don't think this one can be beaten - The Forest of the Fireflies. I'm not going to actually spoil the synopsis here, but since this movie is already in the list, well.... It's a nice movie, cool mystic stuff, Japanese folklore and shinto mixed in there. Awesome. Aaaaaand as soon as you learn about Gin's condition, you know it's all going to be fucked up. Dammit. The characters are pretty good, at least. The girl is lively and dynamic and the guy is pretty straightforward and open. Coolio.

But nothing will probably ever beat 5 Centimeters Per Second. Not unless someone makes an anime movie about kitties and puppies dying in horribly heartbreaking manners. 5 Cm per Second is a movie you watch and think to yourself: All life is meaningless. The world is horrible. 
- Great, that's exactly why I want to watch anime <.<
Luckily afterwards you realize how great choices you've made in your life and see that you're such a smart person for not being a loser weirdo who can't get a grip on his/her feelings and make a move.

Today we salute you, mister Shinkai, for making everyone, even that homeless guy at the corner store, feel like they're the happiest person in the world! Thank you for that.

Takaki and Akari

See you again next week - I'll be on time, I promise :)