Calvin's Ramblings

“How do you know that the person you were one second ago, is the same person that you are right now?” 

                                                                                                   – Eri Ochiai

Perfect Blue is a film that explores the dark side of fame through Mima, a former pop idol and aspiring actress. The film particularly delves into the toll fame and its dark side has on one’s psyche.

The film relates to the real world and everyday life because at one point or another most people want to be famous or at least consider what it is like; however, most people only think about the positives like the glory and the benefits that come with it. The thing that most people seem to forget is the numerous sacrifices made to reach the level of esteem they desire and dream for. People sacrifice their mental (and somethings even physical) health, their body and dignity, their privacy, and even their right to choose for this social status. Everything they do is always being judged and inevitably will end up letting some people down, even their selves at some points. 

I loved this anime so much! I ended up binge watching the entire series yesterday so this post will definitely have spoilers for more than just the episodes we were supposed to watch. I actually thought the chosen episodes would have been a good depiction of the show but i got hooked. Every episode had some sort of moral dilemma and i found myself pausing the episode just so i could think about what was happening. A lot of the show seemed to be centered on making decisions without emotion and by the end even Decim himself began to realize this was flawed. In the end, the conclusion seems to be that objective judgments are incapable of making decisions about subjective matters. It seems that Decim may make changes, as he finally begins to get a taste of human emotions, but we aren’t shown how these changes in the judgment process are implemented. 

I accidentally read some other people’s posts before starting mine, but I saw that somebody else noticed that Decim is mostly black and white, even his hair. They compared this to how he views people’s situations as being black or white, with no room for bad in anybody who deserves to be reincarnated. This resulted in some questionable decisions. In episode 4 (which we weren’t assigned), Decim ends up sending a victim of abuse to the void because she ended up being abusive herself. He didn’t consider the fact that her violent tendencies could be the result of her mistreatment throughout the life, and did not consider that she was passionate about caring for her children. This also resulted in a mistake in the first episode where he actually believed something one of the visitors said because he did not understand her emotions enough to know she was not telling the truth. When he uses his objective reasoning to consider a subjective subject, Decim often fails to understand the motivation and thoughts of the people he is observing.

Like many of the other anime we’ve watched, Violet Evergarden deals with the effects of war on people, mainly on the grief and suffering. The title character, Violet, is introduced as a girl who has been used as a tool for war since childhood, now struggling to adapt to civilian life and her human emotions. One thing that struck me was her disregard for her own life before and after her transition to a more human life. In episode 1, Violet asks Hodgins to dispose of her now that she was too injured to fight, seeing herself as only a weapon of war, while In episode 9, she tries to take her own life after realizing the pain she caused for the loved ones she killed. Both no emotion and too much emotion can be dangerous, but as the anime points out, all one can do is to try to make other lives better and it will have as permanent effect as past wrongdoings. 

The scene of Violet reading all the undelivered letters in the OVA reminded me of a short story I read in high school, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, in which Bartleby “would prefer not to” do anything, eventually leading to his death in starvation, which was explained by his past job in a dead letter office. While just words on paper, they show the complexity of emotions, and that much unacknowledged emotion can definitely be depressing. However, upon reading all the undelivered letters, Violet is able create an emotive work and share the grief caused by war, rather than succumbing to depression, further emphasizing the idea of turning pain into something good for all.

This manga sure knows how to be quite controversial. From the second the whole pooping fiasco finished it was clear the direction this manga was going to take. And that direction would be the radical nationalistic one.

For a manga published in 1998 it portrays an extremely dated viewpoint on wartime Japan and on the events that occured during WWII. Kobayashi rants about how Japan has been brainwashed by America and this brainwashing is still instilled in them to this day. He claims that America and other nations unrightfully took Japanese generals and such to court after the war and they framed all of the bad actions on Japan. I think that this topic in and of itself is very debatable and even though I have learned about all of the history before I don’t really know what conclusion I should come to. On one hand it is true that Japanese generals took a big hit from the war, however, on the other hand these generals had done horrible things regardless of whether or not Kobayashi wants to admit it. Both Korea and China were abused by Japan whether it be comfort women or the rape of Nanking there is clear history to tell us this. Kobayashi attempts to deny the severity of Nanking as well as put down the victims of Japanese occupation with his trivial evidence. I think that Kobayashi is trying to stir even more hate for China and Korea within Japanese society by putting these ideas out there. 

Also back to the brainwashing thing. I think that regardless of whether or not America impacted Japan with their politics and occupation following WWII, America did good for Japan. The Japanese Government were the ones perpetuating the war longer than it needed to be. The likelihood of success continually diminished yet they dragged on the war and inflicted suffering upon the average citizen. They literally brought their country down just an attempt to keep their pride. Obviously America utilized a very severe end game in order to put an end to the war. I don’t know if I can say that this was justified simply because we don’t know how many more lives would’ve been lost if the war continued.

Wow. let me just start by saying Your Name is the single best piece of cinematic art that has ever been produced and I stand by that. This movie was stunning. The art was beautiful, the characters were perfect. Just everything about this movie. I have never felt so touched by a movie. Wow, okay. Let me stop gushing about this movie and start my blog post.

The movie starts with the introduction of two main characters. There are Taki and Mitsuha. The two characters are complete juxtapositions of each other. Mitsuha is more shy and timid and Taki is louder and gets into trouble more. This foil causes disrupt between their actual lives whenever they switch bodies. We see this when Mitshua gets made because Taki is picking fights as her, and when Mitshua tries to help Taki in his love life. He didn’t like that at all.

The most interesting part, however, was the motif of time and being linked together by it. I’m not gonna lie, I was very confused at some points especially when viewers found out that both Taki and Mitsuha were experiencing the same events three years apart. I feel like it shows that time [links everyone together. Time can be manipulated and even changed - we see this with the saving of Mitsuha’s village. I don’t know, It just feels like the movie was trying to tell us that everyone is linked to each other. I also wanted to emphasize the differences between Taki and Mitsuha and how they contrast again. Taki was from the city and Mitsuha was from a rural area where they didn’t even have cafes. She was so mesmerized by the city society and even expressed how much she didn’t like living where she did at the beginning of the movie. The contrast between technology and tradition was so interesting to watch in the movie.

           I admire the show for being very funny and enjoyable to watch based on all the characters and their stereotypes that are involved with each one of them. I think that by making countries into male fun-loving characters it downplays their role in war and is more geared to the history and making of the allies and their respective nations instead of full on battle and casualties. However, we do see many themes of colonialism and armed conflict at times.

           One of the interesting things I saw is that it didn’t downplay colonialism and how we see many of the characters submit to their superiors. Although it just tells history, it doesn’t show the full picture and context between the relationship the countries. Italy is seen as being subordinate to a very strong and caring Germany. Even the representation of a country has some bias when it comes to show making Germany being attractive and very helpful to Italy’s development. It also shows how biased it, especially how the reading shows how Hetalia received some backlash due to how it portrayed Korea in the show.

“The land is the only thing in this world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.” 

-Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

I was originally skeptical of this piece, as most video games aren’t particularly my cup of tea, and I wasn’t sure how much context I could garner from a compilation of cutscenes. However, I did feel a flush of relief when I saw the Nintendo logo, and over time became surprisingly invested in The Xenoblade Chronicles, as the concepts were very original. I was curious however, as why they changed some of the names in the subtitles, such as Homura being Pyra. 

We begin by meeting Rex the Scavenger, atop his Gramps. This introduction gives us important exposition, that the land of their world is running out as the titans begin to die off. We can even look in character design to gather an important message of this piece, in how drastically different Rex and Gramps look (besides the fact that one is a boy and the other is a giant dragon-like creature). Rex is young, with a clean face and very vivacious. Gramps is large, and everything about his appearance says ancient, from his voice to the moss growing on him. This is similar to the human race, the species that has only been dominant for a small portion of the Earth’s history. Like Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, this piece makes it apparent that mankind must remember its humble place. Humanity can die off, and the planet will keep turning. When all the titans are gone and humanity has no place to live, the cloud sea will still be swirling, and the Age of the Anthropocene will end. 

Gramps is well respected among the adventuring party as an elder. This makes a statement on the place that those with more experience have in society, as well as in the symbolic sense that Rex and company are aware of how dependent they are on Gramps, being self aware of their dependence on things beyond their own species. 

However, like in The Age of the Anthropocene, humans have become aware of this fact a little too late. It seems as though the world of Xenoblade hasn’t made any plans as to what to do when the titans die off, lacking that signature ingenuity and persistence that I believe are humanity’s best traits. They had hundreds of years to create methods of floating islands or some other way of survival, but didn’t. Even The Architect took a back seat to what was going on. 

Miyazaki always puts out pieces of art and this film was no different than his usual film. The music, the art, and just every little detail he put into it is one of the reasons so many people love Ghibli films. Their beauty always creates enchantment for the audience and their (sometimes)vague yet distinct story telling techniques do the same.