Shapes & Colors

I am quite literally THEE scaredy cat. I refuse to watch horror films and will wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares after watching one. That being said, I am ecstatic that our peer-chosen film is a psychological thriller!!!

Perfect Blue is, as previously stated, a psychological thriller anime that follows Mima Kirigoe, a popular J-pop singer. She decides to leave the singing industry to pursue acting and starts taking on more adult roles. She begins experiencing a blurred sense of fiction and reality and is haunted by her past self. To sweeten the deal she even gets a stalker who is ridiculously obsessed with her!!

As the film progressed, things became increasingly confusing as the viewers witnessed Mima's mental state deteriorating firsthand. She begins questioning herself and her sanity,

I think Perfect Blue is a commentary on celebrities and the issues that a lot of the industries they participate in (acting, singing, dancing, etc.) cause. When your career revolves around trying to please fans and the media, a toll can be taken on one’s mental health. Most people don’t reach celebrity status and therefore won’t know what it’s like, but I think it opens up a conversation about empathy and giving people respect and privacy whether or not they are famous or not.

In reference to our classroom discussions, Perfect Blue manages to depict the more extreme and unhinged side of fan culture, where personal boundaries and lines are crossed as fans believe they are owed certain aspects of a celebrity’s life. Eminem writes about this in his 2000’s hit song “stan” where he talks about an obsessive fan. In fact, Stan was once known as a combination of “stalker” and “fan” which highlights the celebrity’s true feelings about these overzealous fans.

I think this anime is a top contender for my favorite anime of the semester.

The storytelling and visuals were beautiful… especially the ending! The ending had me HOOKED… it could have ended so many times and I would have had a totally different reaction to each end. I had to keep checking the time thingy to make sure the movie wasn’t ending just yet.

While watching the anime I felt like there were heavy themes of tradition and modernization.

Mitsuha lives a more traditional lifestyle, being raised in a small town where everyone knows everyone. Mitsuha feels trapped and wishes that she could live in the more modernized Tokyo. In Itomori, tradition is upheld in the form of a festival that happens every year. Mitsuha’s grandmother explains the traditional ideals, saying: “The meaning of our festivals became unknown and only the form live on. But even if words are lost, tradition should be handed down.” This is a very conservative way of thinking, in the sense that traditions (like the festival) are kept to conserve the culture of the past, even though modern-day partakers don’t even understand the significance.

On the flip side, Taki is living a modernized life in the big city of Tokyo. He gets to go to a big high school and works as a waiter in a restaurant. He has endless opportunities in the big city and isn’t constrained like Mitsuha is in her small town. More interestingly, Mitsuha specifically wishes to be a boy living in Tokyo when yelling out her frustrations, while Taki never expressed any disdain towards his city lifestyle.

I am not going to lie, when I saw that the assigned anime for today had nineteen episodes my heart dropped a little. Thankfully, they were only about five minutes per episode so it wasn’t too time-consuming. The content of this anime is another story…

We followed the personified Axis powers of the world during World War II (Italy, Germany, and Japan) in a modernized and comical retelling of history. The anime begins with a United Nations -esque meeting where the various countries have come together to solve various problems globally. Thing is, it only goes down from here.

The main thing that stuck out to me in this anime was the blatant stereotypes used for the varying countries. The most obvious is that one person (out of the millions that reside in that particular country) is chosen as representation. Within said person, they often have very stereotypical traits, habits, and looks. For example, let us take a gander at Germany. Encompassing Germany’s history, during Hitler’s reign he was a proud supporter of Aryan supremacy, which places white, non-Jewish people with blue eyes and blonde hair as the superior race. Unironically, the German character shares these same traits and was also stern and disciplined (not a coincidence). Italy was a coward who was obsessed with pasta, America was egotistical and loved burgers, and Britain had bad teeth AND food.

Are stereotypes inherently bad? Although not all of them are bad, they open the door for harmful rhetorics and generalizations to be made about a group of people. They create a bias that affects how people interact with one another and can cause harm to innocent and unsuspecting people. I think it can be acknowledged that some things are popular in certain places of the world, but critical thinking and observation should be used so you aren’t immediately blind-sighted by thinking that ALL the people in a country fit into the same box.

For an interesting change of pace, today’s blog post is about a video game! Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a role-playing game (more commonly known as RPG) which means that players get to control a character that interacts with a virtual world. I am immediately reminded of Sword Art Online, as we got to see Kirito and other characters in the anime interact inside their own RPG, facing challenges as the virtual world became their reality.

In Xenoblade Chronicles 2 there were strong environmental undertones. The world consists of titans, which can be described as ginormous “island-sized creatures” that humans and various other creatures live on. Titans start as blades and go through a life cycle until they become fully grown titans. The main problem lies in the fact that the blades are not being equally passed out to the humans and they are repeatedly cleansed to harvest blade data, resulting in an incomplete formation. This causes a decline in titans as the older generation of titans is lacking a younger generation to replace them. With the Titans slowly going extinct there is less habitable land for humans and creatures to live on, and conditions become increasingly unsafe as anything below the cloud sea is uninhabitable. In terms of the assigned reading “The Drama of the Anthropocene” Cobb similarly states that Humans have a big influence on the world, and many of the actions done by humans, both in the virtual world and real world, have caused harm to the environment. In the virtual world, we see characters like Amalthus who want to destroy the world and do everything in their power to do so (such as stunting blade/ titan growth).

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is a commentary on environmentalism. The movie is set in a post-apocalyptic society riddled with toxins. Things are so bad that they have to wear (oxygen?) masks during the majority of the movie because the air pollution is terrible. The societies we see in the film (Tolmekian and Pejite) insist on fighting one another instead of working together against the issue. They also void themselves of any responsibility as to why the earth is how it is and blame other things (such as the sea of decay) for why things have gotten so bad. This is an allegory for our current society and how we have treated the earth. Most of the damage has been done by big corporations, but individuals cannot be absolved of all responsibility. In the past, the effects of pollution were still being discovered, but even then it is ignorant to think that actions like dumping garbage and toxins into local water sources have no consequence. Even today, despite the various warnings by scientists and activists, a blind eye is turned as the Earth tells of its suffering (most obviously seen through global warming and climate change)

I think it's telling how Princess Nausicaä, a sixteen-year-old, shows more compassion and determination in helping the Earth than others much older. They look up to her because she is the only one who cares enough about the Ohm and the rest of the insects to talk to them instead of firing at them (which is backward in itself- wouldn’t firing at them provoke more anger???) She even sacrificed her life for the baby Ohm, restoring peace between human society and the ohm. This parallels current society, as much of the younger generation is pressured to speak out against the environmental harm humans have caused to the earth.

While watching the movie, Princess Nausicaä reminded me of Greta Thunberg, a twenty-year-old, Swedish environmental activist. She has spoken on climate change numerous times, but unlike Princess Nausicaä, I don’t know if we will receive a happy ever after. She has faced much criticism for speaking out against climate change and companies and lawmakers alike prefer to push greenwashed alternatives and ignore the greater issue instead of actively trying to make a change.

I started the day bright and early at noon with a healthy bowl of cinnamon toast crunch. My spectacular time management skills had me arriving at the Graham hall parking at 1:50. Luckily, I found a parking spot on the ground floor with only 10 minutes left to spare till my shift! I met up with Cynthia, and we leisurely walked towards the Reitz Union as our shift time grew closer and closer. The Swampcon Staff assigned us to do Registration (conveniently located under the breezeway) and we made it with a minute to spare where we met up with Tyler and Aston. Things were slow when we arrived, so the previous volunteers showed us the ropes and explained what we would do during our shift. They even made a list for us in case we forgot anything. Our tasks included waivers, tickets, and prop weapons, after which the guests would be sent to SAI for UFID checks or the orange shirt people for bag checks

[literally ingrained in my mind I had to say it so many times]

At first, I was nervous to be interacting with so many different people, but my excellent customer service skills kicked in and it got a little easier. I saw a bunch of cool costumes and even recognized some characters from the anime we’ve watched and from other media I've seen. My favorite was a person who dressed up as Todd Chavez from Bojack Horseman. Apparently, there was a rare Kirito sighting, but I missed him and could only longingly watch as his head bobbed off into the Reitz forest. At a regular shmegular job I'm usually watching the clock to see when I can clock out, but during volunteering, the time went by so fast! I was originally supposed to work from 2 pm to 3 pm but ended up staying later because things got so hectic and I didn’t want to leave the other volunteers stranded. When I finally was able to clock out, the real fun began… I entered SWAMPCON!!

It was like stepping into another universe. There were lots of people mingling and walking around, dressed in various attires. I saw cafe maids, furries, cosplayers… It was like the media myself and millions of other people had come to life. After such a hectic shift a break was much needed, so we went to the ~exclusive~ volunteer break room. After hydrating and munching on some snacks we made our way around artist alley and the vendor hall. It was really cool seeing all of these talented people who came out to show and sell their work. Walking through the hall and alley I heard various squeals and screams of excitement as guests would find a trinket from their favorite piece of media and would geek over it.

My favorite panel was definitely K-pop random dancing. Before this class, I didn’t know much about anime at all, but I was pretty active in the K-pop sphere. It was nice being able to sing along to songs and watching people running to the center of the room to dance when they knew a song!

Incorporating what we’ve learned, there was strong Otaku culture at swampcon. This entire event was made around connecting various communities and creating a safe space to enjoy media and create and participate in art inspired by said media. This was an eye-opener, as when I was growing up anime was shamed, and was something you kept to yourself. But now, seeing all this media being presented in such an enjoyable way for viewers made the experience well worth it. Will definitely be returning and who knows? I might do some cosplay next time :D

I am truly flabbergasted. I started the anime amused at the full minute of back-to-back production & company and ended with a whole lotta confusion and disgust.

STARTING with the opening scene. In part uno and dos of the Neon genesis evangelion trilogy I was trying to feel for Shinji. I knew that I wouldn’t understand one hundred percent since he’s a fourteen-year-old boy, but I tried to empathize with the outright toxic and damaging community he had around him and the effect on his mental health. But him exposing Asuka’s naked body as she lies unconscious in a HOSPITAL bed and masturbating to it,,, I was honestly speechless. To take advantage of someone in such a vulnerable state, and then spend most of the movie moping around and berating yourself… I couldn’t find any more empathy for him. AND the kicker is that Asuka KNEW and said he did it on multiple occasions. A REPEAT OFFENDER! Literally clutching my pearls I can’t anymore. Is this some sort of fanservice thing? Why do these creative minds decide to use their artistry to make such appalling material???

Then, when we get past that, [approximately] fifteen minutes later we see a THIRTY-year-old WOMAN kissing a FOURTEEN-year-old CHILD. I even googled the ages to confirm. From the past episodes, it seems as if they have a peculiar relationship going on. Nobody knows what a healthy relationship looks like in this show but Misato is kinda like a caretaker/ guardian to him. I saw this dynamic while she was trying to snap him out of his depressive state by encouraging him to make his own decision and pilot the robot. I guess as an extra boost of encouragement she kisses him and hints towards him getting “more” later. Fighting for my life to look past how wildly INAPPROPRIATE this is for the bigger picture, it seems as if the circumstances were unique. They were in a life or death type of scenario, and Shinji looked like he was ready for everything to just end (ex. Him not even lifting his head when that guy had a gun pointed at him). Misato acknowledges this and that she’s probably gonna die anyway, so she pulls this stunt as a last-ditch effort. Did it work? Shinji kinda just sat there staring at the robot for a good chunk of the movie so…

The next set of assigned episodes has gotten significantly darker and focuses on Shinji’s mental health. He balances the harmful rhetoric thrown at him by his community (friends, family, staff, etc.), while also trying to manage his personal insecurities of not meeting their expectations and standards. I’m not sure if his community is saying it out of malice or means it encouragingly, but either way, it's taken a toll on his mental health. He is still afraid to pilot the EVA because he doesn’t see himself as capable enough to do so. This creates a conflict for Shinji as he battles between wanting to help his society by fighting against the angels, while also not wanting to look like a fool because he cannot properly manage the robot.

In this state of self-loathing, Shinji creates various realities where everyone hates him which might illustrate how Shinji thinks others perceive him. Being in such a fragile state of mind allows the mind the race and create scenarios that encourage self-hatred. As reality begins to set in, Shinji begins to free himself from the shackles of his internal struggle and begins seeing things in a new light. This new realization of self-love and happiness finds him surrounded by friends and loved ones who clap and cheer him on. This a very touching conclusion to quite a sad but real-life depiction of mental health struggles