About This Army Thing

I am serving my conscription and army is basically my life now. Similarly to your usual mundane habit and day to day lifestyle, sometimes you just refuse to talk about things that you are doing since it’s took out so much of your your life now and it sickens you whenever you mention it .Not to mention, military stuff are all kind of top secret “your family will get kill shit if you leaked this” so you have to be reserved when talking about it on such a public platform. However, I think it’s time to talk about it now because why not?

People in my country love to tout our compulsory conscription as a rite to manhood and how it is important and beneficial. On the other hand, there are also people who find it to be a waste of time. For me, I am right between these two groups of conflicting viewpoint because  what the hell, I am indecisive like that and being neutral is the safest spot you can be.

The manifesto of serving your conscription always focus on how you should be a man and pick up a gun to protect the one you love. It says that it’s a necessity and you are actually doing somethings to protect your country. Without you, the country will not stay the same.

In theory and practice, it kinda make sense since we had enjoyed long lasting years of peace since the time when conscription is in place. However, you can’t help but think that this manifesto is too well embellish to the point that it’s sounds kinda propaganda and brainwashing-ish. I think the problems lies with the taunting play on your masculinity and how it’s portrayed as a clear cut cause and effect thing.

The manifesto insists that due to conscription(cause), we enjoyed our peace(effect) and if we took it out of our system, the effect will be gone away with it. It also insists that you are doing something important even though you know it’s not entirely true. It’s also too one sided and thru experince, you know that thing gets kinda fishy when it sounds too good to be true and indeed, the manifesto didn’t really cover the disadvantage of  conscription to balance things up. There are also no evidence to counterpoint the manifesto becuase there won’t be a chance to conjure up evidence unless the system is abolished, which you and I know is impossible for reason I would touched on slightly in the next paragraph.

All these conscription=peace are just a theoretical guess and it reeks of the  “don’t change thing that aren’t broken” mindset so one can’t really buy into it. It’s however too risky to experiment so no one really meddles with it and it contains resemblance of truth so people(myself included) still somewhat believe in the manifesto.

One thing for sure though, the lessons and drills you learned in the army are mostly useless and impractical during peacetime. You may get a perfect shot or an airborne badge but these skills translate to nothing but boasting tools in our real practical world ran by politics and economy.

You are just training skills that you might someday used it. It’s like taking a bet in buying properties in an unknown area, hoping that someday it will blossomed into something substantial when there are little to no evidence that your properties will do that for you.

The thing about toughen up and building your discipline through regimentation is all kind of bullshit as well. Once you serve your conscription for long enough, you will know that these discipline shit are nothing but an act. We are just acting in-front of our commanders so not to get fucked. Our commanders are also putting up the same kind of show to make believe that we are actually working towards something.

Not to mention, discipline in army includes regimental bullshit such as the ability to stand for long hours without moving, walking cohesively and keeping your room dust free, all of which are stuff that are so impractical outside of military life that they doesn’t really add up to your overall character.

They say that doing these regimental stuff makes you less pampered but I think they have mixed up being spoiled with being an lazy ass in my case because I am able to do and adapt to all these shit without hint of reluctance since one day as shown in how I am actually coping well with the military lifestyle now.  What I am trying to say is that, I always could leopard crawl through mud and tolerate shit since the day I was born and the army has no part to play in making me able to do that.

I find that a better and more practical way to toughen you up and making you wake up your pampered idea is to intern in a company that actually make you do hard and stressful shit. I learned and grew up more in my 3 months of internship than in my 5 months of conscription and I don’t see that changing. All the leadership and planning stuff can also be better achieve with a good internship. It’s also more practical in preparing you for adulthood since that will be most likely what you will also do for the rest of your life.

But on the other end, it goes back to what I mentioned above, the correlation of peace and conscription.  As baseless as how “don’t fix thing that aren’t broken” is, if you observe closely enough, our world is actually run with this logic. Logic also dictates that it’s necessary and better to have a sizable of useless soldiers(such as myself) than having none at all. Not to mention,you actually do gain physical fitness and all kind of useless military knowledge in term of personal gains.

Things are getting long and I odd to end here. However, as odd as adding a disclaimer part way through is, I believe that it’s essential to make things clear here. I went thru the path of being a lowly men in the army and had experience life differently from everyone else before serving my conscription so one may have a different opinion and army might really be their wake up call.  One might also believe that they gained more if they so choose to take the path of being a commander. In simpler terms, your millage may vary and I am totally just wanting to cover my own ass in this paragraph.

It’s with these half-sure that I entered into the realm of self doubt and sometimes think that I would be deluding myself if I really think that  I am actually doing something beneficial for my country and myself when I serve the army. At most really, I will just be one of the many cannon fodders in a war that may never come but the value of cannon fodders is rather peculiar because they are an essential part of war no matter how useless they are. It’s these half half that I still can’t really make a decision or form a concrete for or opposing point about this army thing.

P.S: Oh, anime! I still watch and enjoy them. I think I am all kind of mellow now because I actually enjoyed Hyouka and thought that chuu2 was ok. I think I have a truce with moe now. GGG still isn’t my cup of tea and some facet of anime fans are still bothersome though. I am watching RahXephon now but it doesn’t really catch my interest after 6 episodes.

April Story is Moe and All About Lily Chou Chou is God Damn Weird

I watched April Story and All About Lily Chou Chou today. Both are live action film by Shunji Iwai. His only(?) connection with anime is that he’s a friend with Hideki Anno. The reason I know about “All About Lily Chou Chou” is because of a comment made on this very blog 2 years ago. I did promise in my response that I would check it out and since then, even though it’s 2 years too late, I guess I have fulfilled that promise.

But first, April Story.

April Story is this simple story about an awkward university student from Okinawa Hokkaido. The reason she left Hokkaido and went to a Tokyo University is to meet the senior she likes during high school. We will then get to see how she copes with her new life while being being awkwardly cute. She met a lot of characters along the way but all these characters are kinda just there. They were introduced then dropped off like flies after they were used to advance the plot. That’s kinda reflects how real life meetings truly are.

The portrayal of that awkward feeling of entering and experiencing something new are also very realistic. I am as awkward as her when I meet new people.

Even though it seems like April Story is striving for realism, ultimately, the whole motivation of the character is still puppy love stuff . Very naive, pure and idealistic. I can also see how people can interpret this movie as sexist since the whole motivation of our main character is driven by a boy. I am not so bother by it because I interpret it as pure and idealistic teenage romance. Some naive and idealistic shit is good for your soul if you don’t truly believe in it.

Ultimately, it’s not a film that I would recommend. It’s too quiet and uneventful. It’s also not far-fetched to say that this film is really about nothing. Honestly, nothing dramatic or eventful really happen. It’s just pathos and gayish sentimental fluff. I like it because it works on such personal level. I can’t see it working for everyone though.

All in all, I came out of the film feeling pleasant and hopeful and stupidly wanting to see more of this idealistic character and her idealistic view on romance.

Side note: Sometimes, I also can’t help but think that the whole point of the movie is to shoot these beautiful shots and show you how cute Takako Matsu is. If that’s really the case then Shunji Iwai definitely succeeded because Takako Matsu is really cute. I can see the audience falling in love with her character. She’s the ultimate moe character. Actually come to think of it, it’s truly the ultimate and most effective moe film out there, surpassing all the moe anime. Now I guess I understand moe because I definitely got moe-ed by April Story.

Oh, and I love the custom made Samurai film, the execution and emulation of that film is to the point and awesome.

Now, All About Lily Chou Chou is whole other matter all together.  It’s the anti thesis of April Story. It’s all about fuck up stuff and teenage angst. Its atmosphere is foreboding and just outright bleak. The whole story doesn’t make a lot of sense if you lay it down but the unrelenting view of the film is just so dark and subdue, you can’t help but think that there are something deeper and believable behind all these seemly confusing character’s personality change.

Whether or not if theres’ really something other than the obvious elements of bullying, teenage prostitution, escapism, rape, misunderstanding adults and teenage angst is highly debatable. Roger Ebert thinks that’s it’s just pretentious fluff. I, on the other end, am on the fence on this.

I can’t tell you whether there’s more subtext to this movie but the experience I got from this film can be described as transcendent. I can’t take my eyes off this movie even though I don’t quite comprehend what’s it trying to say because the mood of the film felt foreboding and melancholic. In other words, I don’t feel like I am watching a film as it felt more like an experience.

I need to let it simmer down and think more about it before I can conclude my feeling about Lily Chou Chou. I think I like it but I am not really sure since I just came out of the film 5 mins ago.

I Don’t Hate Code Geass … … Then I Changed My Mind and Think that It’s a Piece of Shit at The End of The Post

I would hate it if I took it more seriously. Luckily, Code Geass has make itself clear that it is trying to be goofy after the episode where Norio Wakamoto appears. Every time he appears on screen, I was reminded how this show is so ridiculous that I shouldn’t even consider it.

So what exactly did he first do to convince me that Code Geass is not worth paying attention? He, a 50 years old man, a supposedly wise and noble ruler who conquered half the world , told a 10 years old boy to fuck off to his dead mama and die! Right in his face! You have no idea how much I laugh at that scene and since then, the image of Code Geass being this 12 years old boy who tries way to hard to be serious and cool is forever imprinted in my mind.

Another problem I have with Code Geass is how they set up Lelouch as this smart and tactful character when he is actually one of the stupidest character I ever seen. He fucked things up so much that it’s not even funny. Any attempts to portray him as a smart and plotting character were jeopardized by the inane choices and mistakes he made.

First obvious example is definitely the episode where a cat stole his Zero’s mask. The episode shows how stupid and tactless Lelouch truly is when a fucking cat can fuck up his whole life. This episode is played off as a laugh but the implication of the issue is very serious. You see, the Zero’s mask is the only thing to connect Zero with Lelouch. At that time, in order not to be targeted by Britania, Lelouch tried his hardest to conceal his identity by making the mask. So if people found out that cat stole the mask and hence resulting in Lelouch secret identity to be known, he would be in deep shit. And let me remind you that all this deep shit is caused by none other than a stupid cat.

How the fuck can you take Lelouch seriously after he made such an amateur mistake? Hell, thinking back, is that ridiculous and recognizable mask a good idea in the first place? You would think a simple conventional mask with a voice distortion microphone may work better in case of episode like this. The mask also makes you question the maturity of Lelouch because it looks like something a 12 years old would think is cool. You know, like wannabe superhero with their ridiculously flamboyant outfit?

Then there’s that episode of erasing Shirley’s entire memory of him instead of just asking her to erase the memory of him being Zero. Wouldn’t erasing every memories about him somehow make his life more difficult? Sure, there is that stupid excuse of them having a quarrel to cover the discrepancy of people suddenly forgetting someone they knew for years but how long would that last?

Even if we take it that the stupid excuse worked because every characters in Code Geass are dumb, remember this, Lelouch only told this “quarrellings” excuse to the student council so what about Shirley’s non-student council’s friends?

In one episode, her roommate, a non-student council member, clearly indicated that she knew about the relationship between Shirley and Lelouch. People talk about stuff between them regularly. So are you saying that no one, not a single person talk to Shirley about Lelouch through out the show? If that happens,won’t that result in, I don’t know, fuck things up since that would mess up Shirley’s memories?

So what the hell is Lelouch thinking when he did that? That’s a rhetorical question because I know the answer. You see, Code Geass wants to create drama and tension. First, they want to portray how sad and resolute Lelouch is with his intention of being a terrorist and saving the world. Secondly, the writer is planning for the impending episode of Shirley regaining her memories so we can have this dramatic reunion when that happens.

However, keep in mind that all these drama and character building are derived from a stupid and unnecessary decision made by Lelouch. The complication of Shirley regaining her memories would never happen if Lelouch just erase her memory of Lelouch being Zero.

Not only that, it gave us more reason to think that Lelouch is dumb and shortsighted. Also, by taking this dumb decision, the impending drama of the complication of Shirley regaining her memories would just be be force and contrived because the complication would never happen if Lelouch didn’t suddenly turn retarded and erase all of Shirley’s memories about him. Normal logic tells you that you don’t fucking do things that are unneeded when there’s a simpler and viable way of just erasing part of her memories!

That’s not all, his episode with Mao is also illogical and stupid. There’s this scene where he tricks Mao into thinking that he is in a tower far from him by showing a pre recorded video. Now, you would think that that is a very clever trick by Lelouch but if you think about it, Lelouch is just taking unnecessary risk because there’s no reason to trick Mao into thinking that he’s far away. What’s the need to be on the scene when he can just geass the police officers to save C.C then bring her back to him? There’s no reason to risk Mao finding out that he is interacting with a pre recorded video because there isn’t a single need for Lelouch to be fucking near Mao to save C.C!

This Mao episode just undermines the whole “how smart this trick is” whooha because it’s not smart and Lelouch is just complicating so he can appear to be smart. This is like risking yourself through the used of fucking complicated algebra to solve the problem of 1+1. It’s unnecessary.

I don’t even want to go into how the “I can predict all your move” hijinks is just impossible and stupidly risky to pull off. I think I have elaborated enough on how this is just a hoax to cheat the viewers into thinking that Lelouch is smart. Speaking of Mao, how did he survive all that bullet in the body shit again?

There are also some convenient editing throughout the show so they don’t need to give you logical explanation for seemly difficult task. For example, in one episode,  Cornellia nearly caught Lelouch( Lelouch fucked up again, he fucked up all the time) after she suspect that he is inside one of the mech in her army. Next thing, C.C appeared in Zero’s outfit to diffuse the suspicion of Corneliia and escaped.Cornellia decided not to follow C.C after she escaped because she just assumed that Zero would have an escape plan… …

Wait what? You have an entire army behind you and your enemy is just one fellow in flesh and meat yet you decided not to take the chance to pursue him(her) because you think he(she) has an escape plan? You just outsmarted and obliterated Zero’s entire army and you didn’t pursue him because of some baseless assumption that he has an escape plan? What the hell are you thinking?!

Whew, now I have calm down and acceptted that Cornellia just over-thinks the situation for no convincing reason, let’s get back to the convenient edit. So Cornellia didn’t pursue the fake Zero and disregarded  her suspicion that Zero is inside her army.  Now remember that Lelouch is still inside a mech with army of mech surrounding him so it’s still not easy for him to escape from there. However, instead of showing us how Lelouch escape from that army, we are cut to the scene in a sewer where him and C.C met up. How did he pull that off? You would never know.

Now this might seem like nitpicking but you see, won’t that be a good chance to showcase how smart Lelouch is by showing us the technicalities on how the did the escape?

Actually fuck all that, how about showing us how smart he is by solving the pinch when he is asked to eject from his cockpit instead of letting C.C magically appears and solves everything?

There are lots and lots of wasted chances like these to really show how smart Lelouch is but they are always solved with some dumb convenient shit. It’s either C.C suddenly have this magical power or people suddenly turn stupid.

I also don’t like how they skip major scenes such as how that tanned woman ended up in the bay after she got shot or how Suzaku and others survived the hadron cannon blast. It’s just borderline impossible and the writer is too lazy to explain on how they pulled them off.

Anyway, Lelouch is not the only stupid one in this show, our aforementioned mentioned Cornellia also did some stupid shit to outplay Lelouch in stupidity. After that episode of letting C.C off easily because she assumed she had an escape plan, her next plan to save the hostages in a hotel is to totally blew a hole to the hotel’s foundation and let it sinks then think of things they can do later on while praying that the terrorist wouldn’t notice that the hotel is sinking and start shooting all the hostages… …

I can also go on and on for the whole day with this. I don”t even mention episode 22 and how contrived it is with the “kill all Japanese” shit after the  geass malfunctioned deus ex machina style. I also don’t want to go on about not how Code Geass tries to tackle important and serious issue like terrorism and civil war without giving the attention they need.

Sometimes I really wonder if Taniguchi Goro intentionally made Lelouch dumb to criticize how laughable and immature real life idealism terrorists are. If that’s the case then Code Geass is indeed a very clever satire but I think I am giving it too much credits.

If you notice it, I am mostly talking about Season 1 stuff. So what about Season 2?

I think that’s enough.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I hate Code Geass. Fuck Code Geass, I wasted 50 episodes of my time with it. I was so nitpicky about it because I have high expectation for it and it’s 50 frigging episodes. Little kids wouldn’t understand how 50 episodes of time is precious and you can’t waste that many time when you reached a certain age. I gained no enjoyment from Code Geass. I don’t like it ironically. I think it’s a poorly written show with poor characters. I think it’s a show which thinks it’s very smart but didn’t put up enough substance to back it up. Fuck Code Geass.

Pornograph is Your Best Motivator for Getting Better With Technology

I am sure technology people starts off with their invention by asking themselves how to enjoy porn effectively. If that’s not the case, then I should start questioning myself because my first step in unlocking the true potential of devices I owned is always porn related.

I am serious when I say that the only reason I purchased an Android phone over an iPhone is because Android has better porn compatibility. It supports flash which many pornsites use and it has better 3rd video player that allows more compatibility with media playback. 720p with clear ass vagina and subtitles of moaning? No problem!

Then recently I learned how to stream media from pc to my android phone, all because I don’t want to transfer porn and hog up memory space. Now I can watch my porn more discreetly and save time transferring 1gb porn. Nowadays porn is going HD and Bluray so shit is humongous.

Password protected file and hidden file on Window 7? Definitely would not learn any of that without porn.

I also have no idea how masterful I am with shit like system restore, reg edit, harddisk partitioning and system formatting – functions and skills a normal person might never ever need/used -  thanks to those viruses I got from pornsites that fucked my computers up with porn popups. What’s with porn popups anyway? I thought popup is supposed to be bad?

Porn teaches me lessons on how to deal with virus. I would never have virus if not for porn. That USB flash memory hogging porn virus sure teaches me how to turnoff autorun for my usb flash drive, fucker.

After all those nightmare of dealing with virus, I learned how to discern legit sites over malware’s one. Tell me this, how in the hell would you venture outside safe sites if not for porn? You won’t, that’s what.

Then I also dabble with homebrew for my devices thanks to good porn app. Porn is why my PS3 and PSP are jailbroken. This is especially true when all my computers broke down and I have to rely on my PS3 for web browsing. Jailbreaking PS3 sure teaches me lots of techy shit that I would never need. Cryptography, primary-private keys, random numbers, ECDSA Algorithm, Wii/PS3/Xbox 360 security systems, decrypting, encrypting, content obfuscation, linux and all that jest.

Also, if not for porn, why would I want to learn how to convert video files into dpg and transfer it into my NDS with moonshell running? Why even install moonshell in the first place? What the hell is dpg anyway? I would definitely not heard of the dpg format if not for the desire of dual screens porn.

I heard 3DS has 3D video capability. Now we just need a hacker who wants their 3D porn bad enough to hack the shit out of it. I sure can learn more about flash cart and 3DS security system.

A Story of My Life

I saw a chicken cross the road today.

I Blog Because I am a Self Indulgent Bastard

Sometimes, I do ask myself, why do I blog? Is it because I have things that I thought are cool to say so I just indulge myself by writing them down while deluding myself that people would also think that what I wrote is cool? Or Is it because I want a discussion? Definitely the former and not the latter because I don’t actively seek out interaction with others. There are no discussions that can be derived from my post and I don’t want any of them.

I am a dull person, I don’t know how to response to a reply or make small talk. I am not interest to know how as well.

I don’t expect getting replies in the first place because sometimes I didn’t even put that much thought into what I wrote. So my reply would disappoint you. Do you want to be disappointed? How obvious should I make it that I am just writing a monologue to myself because I like doing that.

I used to read a lot of ‘discussion’ in the other blog. Hell, I even participated in some of them in this very blog. However it really begs the question whether these discussions are truly discussions because what I usually see are two different people, offering two different opinions while trying to one up the other to show who’s more accurate. Nothing really comse out of this because people would always stand by their opinion. They don’t want to be convinced and I don’t want to either.

Otherwise, it would be two people agreeing and both of you would go on masturbating one another because it makes you feel cool and it’s only polite to return handjob when people give you one.

Now, I do like comments because they are solid proof that people are reading your stuff but I don’t really care about them because I don’t expect comments. It’s like receiving chocolate for no reason. I don’t particularly like chocolate to actively seek them but it is a nice bonus if you offer them to me. I really do appreciate that you took the time to offer me some chocolate but I don’t really care if I don’t get any.

Same goes with comments that became ‘discussion’ but I don’t like this one as much because I need to offer you back some chocolate after receiving some. It’s troublesome and I am just repeating points I made anyway. I like it that you share your opinions, but I don’t like it that much to care. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate it but I just don’t care. It stills make me slightly happy but that happiness is so minor that it makes no difference whatsoever. Not to mention, if I want a different opinion, I would search them on google. I still appreciate your enthusiasm in wanting to share your opinion but it wouldn’t make a difference if you choose not to share.

Then there is also the case of you sending me expired chocolate with your vile comments. Now I don’t really mind them because I just threw them away like how I threw away expired chocolate but I still have to do the action of throwing away. It’s not difficult and I don’t feel anything from throwing shit away but needing to constantly do this simple yet unnecessary task can be tiring. Also sometimes, trashcan stinks but I only need to tolerate them for a few seconds and nothing of importance is lost.

With that said, I still rather not having to tolerate that smelly shit even though it’s painless and harmless fluff. Still, as harmless as they are, sometimes, these smelly shits just pile up and make things annoying. It’s all ok though if they don’t pile it up and to be frank, I don’t get many of these. It only happens like once a year but I only get like one comment per year anyway so I don’t really know what to make out of it.

I don’t like starting conversation. I think small talk is insincere and dishonest. They are unneeded and I am not interested.

People also don’t talk to me unless they need help. I also only talk with others when I need help. Just that I seldom have problems I can’t solve myself so I ended up not talking to anyone. I don’t know how people can make small talk. I don’t understand how people can have so much smses that they filled up their inbox. I am also not sure about the use of messenger because now I just open them to check emails and in-case people want to talk to me(this never happen).

I don’t usually @ twitter to others because I thought twitter is something for you to have a monologue with yourself. Same goes with facebook. I do comment on other’s facebook post when I thought of something witty to say or there are asking for something that I just happened to know. Otherwise I don’t comment. I also didn’t use the Facebook’s ‘like’ function once because I personally think that all of what people shared are mediocre. They don’t impress me and I don’t see the reason to like them because I honestly don’t.

As you can see, from the previous paragraph, in my mind, worthy interaction can only start if I want to impress someone, have funny things to say or helping people. I am not someone with any impressive records to showoff and I just assume my sense of humour is too weird for people to find it funny. It’s also not everyday that I can help someone so I don’t start any conversation.

I like to blog because it’s not a conversation. I am just indulging myself with my own monologue with no reason other than it felt fun having monologue. I understand that a conversation is the same and can be held without any reason other than indulging oneself but conversation would affect another person because you are wasting their time to indulge yourself. That’s very self centered and I am very self aware that I am boring so I know it’s not fun talking to me. It’s also not fun talking to them anyway.

Maybe blogging is like a pseudo conversation without direct contact. Maybe I blog because I can substitute the joy of conversation with others by conversing with myself. I think I am on this level of intelligence that I want to converse on something a little deeper but not too deep because I am not smart but I have no interest in whatever people are talking about. There are no profile like that other than myself so I just end up having monologue.

Blogging also act as a pseudo conversation because it’s out in the public and there’s a chance that people did read it. I like to tell everyone what I think but I don’t care about verbal feedback. It’s a one way thing.

I don’t know why it felt fun telling people what I think. Maybe it’s a ego thing. Maybe it’s because it felt awesome and magical that your thoughts can turn into words and became something concrete, something you can leave a mark on. Yes, that’s it!

But why is leaving a mark important? That’s a good question. I don’t know the answer. Maybe it’s about showing off your personality. Maybe because you think you are cool and people would like you if they think that you are cool. Maybe you want to showoff your inner thoughts to appear deeper so you can validate yourself. But people might not think you are cool and you are might not be able to validate yourself so why do it? Maybe this is what they called self indulgent, self pleasing and the reason why masturbation feels good even though it’s not the real thing. It’s something primal, primitive.

Now all of that just sound sad and lonely but not really, I don’t even know how lonely feels like and you don’t see me blog a lot, do you? In fact, I am so not lonely that I refuse to talk to others because sometimes I find it bothersome. A world without people is the best if I somehow can survive without the help of people producing food and all the entertainment shit operates and maintains themselves. That’s impossible so I do appreciate people, I just don’t like talking to them. I can choose to talk or not to talk to them though so it’s ok.

I also like blogging because you can tell others what you think without directly affecting others unless they want to. I am only wasting my own time here and I like wasting my time. Facebook and Twitter may serve the same purpose as blogging but people are following you there. They are forced to read your stuff because it’s on their timeline. This is why I don’t really like using them and always apologize off screen after posting my self indulgence shit there.

Blog is different because it doesn’t force itself onto others. Now, maybe they subscribed your blog on google reader and you are still pushing shit into other’s face but google reader is different because it’s easier to unsubscribe as no one would know you did. Facebook and twitter makes it very clear who unfriended or unfollow so I can see how it can be difficult not to put up with their shit because you want to be polite.

I am also not on an aggregator so there’s that. I think I spoke too fast because for some weird reason, I am on animeblogger.net. I think I did submit my feed when I first started out just for shit and giggles. Nothing happen for 1 year and I totally forgot about it then boom, I am on there and I can’t find any way to remove myself. Ahh, who cares, animeblogger.net is a dead town anyway. No one visit them anymore.
Edit: I totally forgot that comments can be constructive criticism… HA! What am I talking about. There are no constructive criticism in the comment section.

Legend of Heroes Part 1: Legend of Heroes 1 and 2

My first encounter with Legend of Heroes is at some Internet space where I overheard people saying that it is this legendary Japanese RPG that nobody knows. Being a connoisseur of everything obscure, I know that it’s carved in my destiny that I have to play it so I began my search for it.

Thankfully, unlike Westerners, the Chinese didn’t make a lot of games back then so they have to import and translate tons of Japanese game to fill in the market. Just so happen, all of the Legend of Heroes series has official translation and it’s quite popular around China/Taiwan. This is where I praise myself for knowing two languages and stroke my own dick because I am awesome for being able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

With that, I just went on and started playing the first game because I am very anal about chronological order.

But before that, here’s some basic information about the series:

Legend of Heroes is the ‘popular’ flagship rpg series developed and published by Nihon Falcom. It’s first a branch off of the Dragon Slayer series. So the first game is actually titled: Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes. It’s first release during 1989 for the NEC  PC 88. I wouldn’t get into details on what the hell is the Dragon Slayer series because that would take up another 1000 words and to be frank, I am not too familiar with them myself.

However, I can tell you a little about NEC PC 88.

Now, unlike the computers of our current generation where almost any hardware built can run Microsoft/Linux OS, computers back then have their own different builds running their own different softwares. NEC PC 88 is one of the more popular pc build in Japan. There are lots of very technical stuff  and some very interesting history surrounding all of it but I couldn’t quite regurgitate everything out because I don’t remember the details. However if you are interested to know more, you can always visit hardcoregaming101, which is like the only gaming information website you ever need.

I digressed but what makes Legend of Heroes(LOH) so popular is its surprisingly complex storyline. Now, you have to remember that back in the days, the stories of rpg are still all about saving princess and collecting ROTO equipments. So when I say complex, I just meant that it’s a lot more complicated than your usual save the princess fluff.

The story of LOH starts you off as the prince of a kingdom which name I forgot. In this Kingdom, at the age of 16, you would be seen as a grown man and can take over the throne from your king papa. However, the advisor of the kingdom has secretly plan a coup d’état and took over the throne for himself. The advisor, now trying to stop the prince from dethroning him, ordered his army to burn down the town the prince is living in .Luckily, our prince escaped and formed a rebel party to overthrown the evil advisor.

With that, we start the adventure of our handsome prince and how he tries to chase the advisor out and win back his kingdom. It’s a tales of friendship, meeting peoples, doing forgettable side quests, flying human kites to tall tower, fighting sometimes ridiculous overpowered monster, learning magics, riding dragons, saving princess and stopping evil advisor.

Along the way, you would learn more about the world of Legend of Heroes and understand that there are these dragon eggs which is like the only place where a old witch can interact with their goddess Freya. Take not of this because this shit is important in the 2nd game.

Near the end of the story, a princess, who is your love interest whom you interact with no more than 1 hour is kidnapped by the evil advisor and you have to enter a cave to save her. After defeating the evil advisor,  you would congratulate yourself a good job well done and prepare to sit back and enjoy the ending only to be interrupted by a plot twist. The plot twist is that the evil advisor is actually just a puppet whose whole purpose is to collect these two items you have to summon the lord of destroyer!

So now you have to enter this crazy gigantic cave with barrage of monsters just so to defeat this lord of destroyer. In the end, you would meet the lord of destroyer which is this bad ass looking dragon and all he wanted to do is to destroy human beings to keep them in place because humans are self destructive.

In other words, the number one JRPG cliche of angry but morally ambiguous god wanting to eliminate human race because humans are disgusting is borned! Then you defeat him Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann style and assure him that humans are not really that disgusting because you would be there, as a hero to guide them to a brighter future.

With that, everyone spend their life happily ever after and I just totally spoiled the whole story for you because Legend of Heroes is not really a game you play to have fun with.

The turn base combat mechanic is a dragon quest clone with no background arts or fancy animation. I played the NEC PC 98 version which was ported to window dos by the Chinese publisher and the graphic is still like your older 16 bit rpg. The music scores, although awesome, sounds a little bit like 8bits mess. It has beautiful pixel arts but they are far and few between. The character sprites are static and the story is really nothing amazing in today’s standard.

Other than that, it’s also a grindfest because enemies are all overpowered especially during the later level. You have the option to choose the easy mode but I played through the normal mode and god damn is it difficult. It’s at most a 10 hours game but I spend like 30 hours on it because I need to grind for 20 hours.It has a very useful automatic battle system though so you can grind easily.

The magic system is set up in a way where you have to talk to these wise man around town to learn magics from them. These magics have levels but they don’t level up automatically. Instead, for example, if you want to upgrade your fire magic from level 1 to level 2, you have to find the wise man that can teach you level 2 fire spell and replace it with the level 1 fire spell. In other words, you can skip from level 1 spell to level 2 spell if you can hold on till you find the wise guy later on that teaches level 2 spell.

You are allocated a limited slots of magic so in order to learn the magic you want, you sometimes have to backtrack the hell of it to find that one guy that would teach you that one magic and replace it with the one you don’t need. Luckily, there’s this item and magic spell where you can use to teleport between towns you have visited.

One thing of note though is that you won’t get lost because it’s quite obvious what you need to do next if you talk to the NPCs. There are no crazy Dragon Quest like cryptic shit where you have to find an essential item on a single space of the whole map. There are also many good systems like being able to save anywhere, being able to escape from boss battle and a quick retry option when you get a game over.  There are stupid one like skipping turns without warning when using ineffective items as well.

With that said, all these mechanics are very impressive during 1989 and to be frank, I find the whole experience very satisfying and rewarding. I have a smile when I see the credits roll and it became a very memorable experience for me. To prove that, I pretty much written all the stories and mechanics off the top of my head and I played the game 2 years ago.

It’s technically not a good game for today’s standard and like older RPG, you really have not much of reason to play it unless you want to relish in JRPG history.

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Now, onto Legend of Heroes 2. Legend of Heroes 2 is a direct sequel of the first game and is still under the Dragon Slayer title. Legend of Heroes 2 was released during 1992 for NEC PC 98. It has more pixel arts, a more convenient teleporting system, a magic system where you buy spell book to learn instead of hunting down old wise man and generally removed all the stupid quirks like skipping turns if you use ineffective items.

One issue is that there is no difficulty option and the default is one is freaking difficult. Unlike the first game where the difficult curve is rather balance and only get difficult during the later stage, the 2nd game started up with a crazy difficulty spike where the first enemy you met needs a lot of luck and skill to beat. Every battle is like a boss battle where you can get killed instantaneously. There’s no way to grind because you get killed on your first enemy!

There are also lots and lots of enemy. Lots as in like one battle per 3 seconds and their experience point given is pathetic. Worst still, unlike the first game, the experience point has a scaling system where the higher the level you are, the lower the experience point you’ll get. So you can’t just find a place with easier enemy and just run auto-battle while leaving your com on because it is possible that you gain 0 experience. I struggled through for 4 hours just to reach the first dungeon and get to level 8 after dying like 100 times at least. It’s tedious and demanding so I gave up and fired up my cheat engine to over level myself. With that, I pretty much breezed through the whole game in less than 10 hours.

I don’t feel good of course but I didn’t regret it because I get to enjoy the story that is way too sophisticated for a 1992 rpg. In the end, I was so impressed by it that I am glad that I cheated because if not, I wouldn’t get this far.

Now, the story of LOH 2 is a direct continuation of the first game where you played as the son of the main character of LOH1. It started off with a very intriguing cut scene of an astronaut who getting killed. Remember that Legend of Heroes is supposed to be this fantastical medieval story so an astronaut is really out of place.

Then it jump right into your adventure where you, as the son of a king, needs to man yourself up by traveling around the world. However, your journey is disrupted by a sudden influx of monsters roaming around. You found out that the source of the monsters may be coming out from a secret cave.

This secret cave leads to the underground where there’s a growing population living there. Through interacting with the underground villagers, you found out that the king of the underground world is plotting to take over the surface world by summoning and deploying monster armies. Now it’s your destiny to defeat the evil king and save the world.

I know the story sounds cliche but what’s impressive is how tight the plot is. It is operating in a macro level where the first astronaut scene is tied in with the ending and the premise of the first game is totally changed after knowing more about the underground world. You see, the population of the underground world started off living on the surface too but hid underground after the lord of destroyer from the first game came to earth a thousand years ago to wipe off human kind. The population is actually very technological advance and very modern. They are capable in creating super AI that controls the ability to even create monster before the hid underground.

Remember the dragon eggs and goddess that appear during the first game? Inside of the dragon egg is actually a very technological advanced lab that interacts with the satellite above and the goddess is actually a very smart computer AI. So when people pray to the goddess, they are just praying to technology because god doesn’t exist.

The map you used during the first and second game is actually GPS image send through satefuckinglite! Knowing this adds in a whole new perspective to the first game because wow! Not to mention, now the badass lord of destroyer is not only a dragon but an alien too! I also believe that this is the first turn base jrpg with a scifi twist. This is fucking impressive because it’s 1992 and most rpg are still about saving princess.

The characters also have very surprising twists to them that tie in very well. All in all, the story although a cliche now, is very mature and sophisticated in 1992. I grinned like an idiot after seeing the ending.

I would end my post now before I get into Legend of Heroes 3:White Witch because this is getting too long. I would also update this post with pictures and some other misc information after I gather them while I replay some of the save files I have for the 1st 2 game. I have yet to finish LOH 4 and 5 but I am looking forward to it because if they stay true to the LOH 2 spirit of tying everything all together, then I am in for a treat. Not to mention, LOH 3 to 5 has rather modern system and graphics so they are actually easier to get through.

Actually, you know what? There might not be a part 2 because I am very lazy. Otherwise, it might happen 2 years later or something because I am going to be busy for 2 whole fucking years without computer after August end.

Adaptation Could Be The Best Film of All Time But They Fucking Ruined it On Its Last Act

God damn it man, Adaptation was so good for 3/4 of the show but it kills it after they went on and do all the Meryl Steep taking drugs bullshit!

You see, Adaptation is clever because it’s about a real life screen writer writing  about a screen writer writing about a screen writer and all these 3 screen writers are the same person, Charlie Kaufman! So Charlie Kaufman is pretty much writing about himself about writing himself during the time when he really tries to adapt a book in real life. So ultimately, the story is based on a true experience of Charlie Kaufman.

The story starts with Charlie having to adapt this non fiction about flowers and orchid poacher. It’s a book that doesn’t really have any narrative structure. Charlie took the job and wanted to try something ambitious and unconventional, a Hollywood movie about flowers and nothing else because doing that is staying true to the book he is adapting.

He don’t want to fall under the Hollywood cliches of adding unnecessary romance or car chase jest. When his producer told him about shoehorning the two characters appeared in the book and add in some romantic tension between them, Charlie is opposed to the idea because he understand that that’s just Hollywood cliche.

He love the book and want to do justice to the author by not altering the true gist behind the book. The book has no narrative structure, no shoehorned romance, no beginning, no middle and no end. Charlie wanted to present the book as it is, he want to challenge himself as a screenwriter and show that this can work.

This movie’s theme of not circumventing to your Hollywood conventional structure was further fortified by introducing his fictional brother and a screen play lecturer. Both of them embodied the limitations of Hollywood cliches and writers’ boundary. They perpetuate that screen writing must have some boundaries and being unconventional is wrong. They say that a story must have rules and you shouldn’t break them. They say that in order to be a hit, you must have conventional elements and you should restrict your creativity freedom of doing something because it’s “bad”.

This idea of limitation is further perpetuate by his brother, a screen writer wannabe who came up with horrible and generic idea for a movie. The script of his brother shows lots of downfall of a poor movie: ridiculous  plot twist, childish depth, unnecessary motifs, and writers thinking that they are so fucking smart when they have no idea what the fuck they are doing.

It even took a jab on Hollywood producers because it’s shown that the producer likes his brother’s script and think that it can make millions when it’s this piece of crap story that makes no sense. It also criticize the audience because people who read his brother’s script think that this piece of crap is deep and edgy.

These mocking of Hollywood shit is 3/4 of the show. Along with it, there are moments of very real and interesting struggles of a script writers. It also has it good share of self depreciation jokes, honest to god masturbation scenes and a very interesting character study for a low self esteem genius.

All is going well and you would expect that Charlie would live up to his promise and create a revolutionary work about flowers and used a semi autobiography of himself to structure this non narrative with no overblown dramatization or your usual Hollywood shit. It’s going to show that screen writing has no limitations and is able to capture the true reflection of a normal non narrative real life.

Then all things go to hell when the movie shoehorned in drama that makes no sense, a car chase scene, romantic tension, token love interest , a conventional Hollywood like structure, a manipulative, rush and unnecessary sad scene and finally, a lame message about love and growing. All of which are Hollywood’s cliches that our main character is opposed off earlier on the show. Hell, they even make the main character implies that all those are fucking terrible. Here’s the actual movie quote:

“kay. But, I’m saying, it’s like, I don’t want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know… or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean… The book isn’t like that, and life isn’t like that. You know, it just isn’t. And… I feel very strongly about this.

Worst still, it suddenly turns things around and say that all along, his fictional brother is the correct one and Charlie is in the wrong and so he’s changing into something like his brother, which I might emphasize again, is that same brother that embodies what’s so wrong about Hollywood.

3/4 of the show is used to build up his brother as this mocking tool that was used to criticize lousy Hollywood screen writing and during the last minute, the movie tries to make him into a sympathetic character? What the fuck was that? Aren’t that contradicting the message you used 3/4 of the show to build up for?

Not to mention, it also pretty much rubbished a lot of character development because it undermines the insights of some of the characters. In this movie, there are these two characters who is the actual the author and the subject of the book that Charlie is adapting. They shared some really introspective insights on human nature and some amazing shit. But during the final act, without warnings or any build up, the movie makes them the bad guys through some unimaginative and generic means. This resulted in all the clever insights they shared being moot because they are now shallow characters and all those deep insights are a fucking lie.

Watching the final act just feel like the writer don’t know how to end what he started. He build up this huge bricks of potential but ended up crumbles himself because he tried to be too ambitious. Watching the final act is like a slap to your face because it’s telling you that the Hollywood ways of doing thing is the right one and be damn breakthroughs and creativity freedom.

Maybe all this is an allegory of how ambitious and creative screenwriters are forced to follow the Hollywood ways because he needs to feed himself. Maybe it’s a subtle mockery of Hollywood and how all these cliches are fucking terrible so Charlie Kaufman intentionally makes the final act so awful to prove a point.

Yes, that’s it! It must be it! This would be how I interpret this movie now because I truly believe that Charlie Kaufman is better than this. He fucking wrote The Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind for godsake! He did the impossible and utilized Jim Carrey in a way that we can take him seriously. He made us forgot that Jim Carrey is this goofball Ace Ventura guy who makes us laugh just by showing his face. God damn it, man, Charlie Kaufman, you are a genius!

Oh, and I love Nic Cage and think that he is really a good actor. He is fun to watch even if he is always in bad movies nowadays.

My Top 3 Anime of 2011 Part 1 Where I Tell You Everything But My Top 3 Anime of 2011

Yes, you didn’t read that wrongly. It’s near the end of 2012 but now I am just starting to write about my Top 3 Anime of 2011. Before you call me late, I am preparing to write a 2010 and 2009 one just because I felt like doing it.

Now, if you ask me what’s my top 3 anime for 2011, I would just tell you that they are Un-Go, Mawaru Penguimdrum and Ano hi Mita Hana no Namae wa Bokutachi  wa mada Shiranai(not really sure if that’s really how you spell the title) off my top of the head. I can’t really think of any other 2011 anime other than those 3. They left quite an impression on me.

Then if I think harder, I can come up with names like Yondemasuyo Azazel San and Tiger & Bunny. Other than that, I know I have vaguely watched some other enjoyable stuffs but I can’t quite remember them without checking the internet.

But first, before I told you why I liked those three, I would like to address why I omitted some shows.

I omitted Hanasaku because it has terrible, cheesy and generic dialogs that doesn’t interest me and their characters make no sense and are very boring.  For example, that angry bitchy girl is always angry because of what again?

I don’t like how the show thinks that cooking tons of stuff your enemies dislike even though you secretly want them to like you so you get all passive aggressive with is some cool and brilliant non generic stuff. I groan and felt so  corny when I saw them doing that with their generic execution. It makes matter worse because the scene is presented in a way that  gave off the vibe that this is suppose to be cool and funny and edgy even though it’s not.

Talking about trying to be edgy, this show apparently think that making everyone a unfriendly douchebag who sprout non imaginative curse like “GO TO DIE” without much of a reason is edgy. I say fuck that and they really fuck that and change their “GO TO DIE” curse into something worse and that something worse is presented in way that we suppose to think that it’s funny because it’s a Japanese abbreviation of  “you are a big dumb potato” or something when it’s entirely generic and unfunny.

There’s also this supposedly inspirational scene about trying to motivate someone not to commit suicide. Hanasaku, trying to get all inspirational and stuff, start sprouting these generic inspirational speeches without feeling embarassed. Then the suicidal guy fell into the river and your usual quiet shy girl did the “unexpected” thing by diving into  river and save him because shy and quiet girl aren’t suppose to know how to dive so she did the unthinkable and now we are suppose to think that this character is cool. I say fuck that and fuck shoehorned personality.

Hanasaku has tons of cheesy generic executions like these. It’s an uninspired show.

Then we have Madoka. Madoka is this dark tale about magical girls having shocking genocide and angst.

First problem I have with this show is the barrage of manipulative music cues to signal you that this scene is so so sad and you should  feel so so sympathetic. I especially hate it when these musics are on during a scene where this Sayaka(the blue haired one) girl is so sad because her friend like the  guy she love but she can’t profess her love because she is this fucked up magical girl( which in this world means zombie girl with big sword).  I hate it because I don’t care about this Sayaka girl  but this music and that in your face animations kept on hinting at me that I should feel sad even though I don’t.

Now, her story can be compelling if we care about the characters but we don’t… … or at least I didn’t. Madoka has full of these type of characters that I don’t give a shit about. It’s a sad and dark tale but I need to make an emotional connection with the characters in order to actually feel something if terrible things happen to them but I don’t really care because they all are very boring to me.

They being all sad and angsty just seems so distance and doesn’t make that much sense for me. I pretty much laugh when they go all out and try to be all dark and sad because what I see is a bunch of melodramatic teddy bears crying their eyes out while having a frowning face.

Before you fry me with your Madoka’s defense, I would admit that I am to blame for not liking this show. It’s my fault that I don’t care about the characters. The show has done nothing wrong, I just don’t find the characters compelling. It’s all my problems, not the show’s fault.

However, I do have reasons for not caring about any of the characters and I mostly blame it on the dialogs.

For me, there are only 2 types of dialogs in Madoka. The first kind are these generic, unfunny, anime-ish slice of life, cute girls talking about girls things dialogs. All of them are about this cool transfer student or what you ate for lunch or “you talking like anime” unfunny self aware comedic bits and all that jest. It’s terrible and no one I know really like those when they appear heavily on the first 2 episodes.

Them the second type of dialog is character babbling expositions. We will always have scenes where we have like 2 talking heads and a little kyubey dumping all these expositions about magical girls, aliens and time traveling stuff. What the fuck happen to  the concept of”show, don’t tell”?

They go so far with it that even threw in exposition dialogs during sad introspective scenes  like when Madoka got so confuse about being a magical girl in episode 8 or 9. After Madoka sprouting some “I AM SO SAD AND CONFUSED” lines like a wimpy girl she is, Kyubey went on with his long ass explanation about entropy, alien stuff and rpg style of gather all the hate to fuel my energy talk. God damn it man!

They even have the nerve to give you a last minute exposition of the sad back story of Miami(that yellow hair big breast girl) before she fucking got her teddy bear’s head bit off and die. What the hell are they thinking when they did that? Am I supposed to be sad because you suddenly gave me a back story of this dying character that suppose to add more to her bland character? Now I am suppose to feel sorry for her death because of something you told me 3 fucking mins ago? If that isn’t manipulative then I don’t know what the fuck is!

If we are not suppose to feel sad, then the only interpretation I have for that dying scene is that it’s supposed to be shocking.

You see, when Madoka first started up, you are supposed to think that this is a generic, happy frill magical girl anime. You are not suppose to know that it’s dark or twisted or shit like that and get really surprise when this shit happens. You are supposed to go in with zero to no expectation so they can wow you with this shocking scene to show you how edgy they are.

It’s trying to manipulate your expectation by showing you the unexpected, except that I already know what I am expecting when I first got into the show.

I don’t really know who the fuck think that this is going to be happy generic frill magical girl anime when they first go in because I certainly didn’t! It’s very obvious from the start that it’s trying to be dark and edgy. The noise the fans are making aren’t helping.

And god damn it if this shocking scene only works if you are fooled by the show’s lame attempt in trying to look  like something but be something else.This is why shock value is bad for a story because if you anticipate it beforehand, you would lose all the impact. That happens because shock value is a very shallow and insubstantial plot device  that add nothing else if you know that it’s coming.

On the other hand, a non shocking, well written  and more substantial plot device like a character’s death still has its impact  even if you know it’s coming because with this device, it’s not about the result(his death) but the journey(why he have to die or how he died).  You can’t get any of that from shock value because the “what”,”why” and “how” are all because of the simple reason of trying to shock you.

Oh, and the becoming a god ending and the whole collect energy for alien race is really nothing new. In fact, coincidentally, I just finished Xenogear few months before Madoka and they have similar concepts with the alien collecting energy shit and god related ending with some differences.  Maybe that’s why I am so underwhelmed by Madoka.

The whole seemly happy fairytale gone wrong theme also appears in Windaria. I got paralyzed by Windaria for how unexpectedly hard hitting and tragedic  it is. I would admit that lots of it has to do with shock value but Windaria had an advantage over Madoka by being really obscure and seemly innocent from the look of it without those dark foreboding  Shinbo art-style that scream “EDGY”!

I don’t even want to talk about the time traveling stuff because I have enough of that from Stein;Gate, which now then I remember that it’s also a 2011 anime.

Stein;Gate is very aimless and boring for the first 13 episodes then it got really cool after that. However, I thought the main character is nothing special because I have a very narrow definition on what I deemed as cool character where I compare everyone with Onizuka from GTO so all of them loses out.

I also find his romance with the red hair girl to be very embarrassing to watch because they acted really awkward and out of characters when they did all those kissing shit. It’s like  you got this goofy mad guy trying to act all serious and charismatic manly like saying “I WANT ONLY YOU!” with a straight face when he was joking about being a mad scientist  not long ago.

Other than that, it’s pretty cool and I kinda dig. Stein;Gate would most likely be number 6 or 7 for my top 2011 list which is not as high as it seems to because I only watched like 12 anime from 2011. It’s a good show but I am still bitter about how boring the first 13 episodes are.

I still haven’t watch Bunny Drop. I would tell you why I like Ano Hana next time because that seems rather contradicting after I talk at length how manipulative and melodramatic Madoka is.

Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto is a Samurai Show That Has A Evil Head Floating Around Doing Evil Stuff

We are good looking people who have romantic interests for each other so fangirls can squeal while we do romantic stuff

We know what Bakumatsu is and Kikansetsu is legible Japanese but what the hell does Irohanihoheto mean?

A simple google search for Irohanihoheto shows that it’s the first phrase in the Iroha poem. The Iroha poem is some witty poem that manages to use every (ancient) kana exactly once. Doing that in a Japanese poem is like constructing a 26 words English poem that use all the alphabets once. In fact, the word ‘Iroha’ itself  is like the ABC of Japanese.

The alleged meaning of the poem is about some deep philosophical Buddhism shit. It’s something a crude man like me, whose vocabulary is the full range of ‘fuck’, would not understand. But from what I can gather, it has something to do with how karma is ever changing and formless.

We are your ikemen for your yaoi fanfic

I am sharing all this because context is very important in Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto as half of the fun is to see how they weave history into this fantasy samurai show.

So here’s the basic story and context for the show. Akizuki is the descendant of this sword wielding Chinese badasses whose job is to use their special sword to seal off this magical head of a vengeful warrior. This vengeful warrior was a rebel during the Qin Dynasty. He was beheaded and his decapitated head got really piss off with Qin Shi Huang because Qin Shi Huang was an asshole. This piss off head got so angry that it became magical and float around doing evil shit.

Below, I will try to account on the real legend of Qin Shi Huang and add in how Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto revised this later on.

To give you an idea of this Qin Shi Huang guy, he is that guy who worked people’s ass off to build the Great Wall of China. His achievement includes unifying China, perpetuate the use of coins, burn lots of books that criticize him and got so bad shit insane that he is actually trying to find the elixir of life. Oh, and he totally worked people’s ass off even after his death by asking people to build tons of statute warriors to protect his grave. As you can see, he is one big man child who sometimes has sand in his vagina.

So being an asshole like him, he send out troops of Chinese wizards to find the elixir of life because fuck people, he want to live forever. One of this wizard is Xu Fu, which legend has it, migrated with 3000 children to Japan while in search of the elixir of life. If legend is to be believe, this Xu Fu guy is one of the best con artist in history.

Xu Fu went to someplace that might be ancient Japan to search for the elixir of life. During his first search of the elixir of life, he realise that Qin Shi Huang is a big man child who won’t hesitate to kill off Chinese wizards who have failed in their search of the elixir. With that knowledge in mind, and the fact that Xu Fu knew that this elixir of life bullshit is one huge bullshit, he pretty much gave up and started to plan his lies.

He went back to China and told Qin Shi Huang hat there’s this greedy deity in Japan who asked for more giving  in order for an exchange of the elixir. This is why he needs a platoon of armies, 3000 children, lots of money and other materials so that he can go back to Japan in order to please this greedy deity. Qin Shi Huang , usually a smart guy, got duped by Xu Fu and granted him his requests. Xu Fu, seeing his plans worked, laughed and went on having a good life in Japan.

And here’s where Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto revised this piece of history. The show totally ignored all of the above and says that Qin Shi Huang asked Xu Fu to seal off the vengeful decapitated head(mentioned in paragraph 5) in Japan during his searched for the elixir of life because fuck Japan, they need evil head in their country.

So the story of Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto began, 2000 years later, an era where Japanese got bullied by evil Americans into opening their ports and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration.

Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto is set in 1868, which is near the end of Bakumatsu where all the exciting big wars happen. It especially focus on the events that happen after Sakamoto Ryouma death, namely the bloodless edo war and such. To put it simply, Sakamoto Ryouma is this guy who pioneers the Meiji Restoration and our main character, Akizuki Yojiro, was once a bodyguard of his.

Troubling times call for extreme measures. With knowledge that there is this almighty evil head in Japan, people started to search and unleash the power of the sealed head for their own personal reasons. Some people want to use power to wreck havocs, some want to use it to save Japan, while our hero, Akizuki, just want to seal that motherfucking piece of shit while being sad that he can’t save Ryouma.

I has blue eyes when I sense evil head and I know no english because I is ancient Japanese Samurai

With that, we began our journey on how an evil head floats around to conspire real and important events in Japanese history … … with real historical characters … … and some sweet sweet romance between two good looking humans … …. and a plan for revenge … … and some sword and gun wielding actions … … and evil evil foreigners, all of which with instances of badly drawn animations.

Oh! Japanese woman in 1868. Must be sexist then! Here’s my chance to be the white knight who is anti sexism. Now I can finally be famous. Rape Jokes.