Not really sure what to put here other than I’m excited for the class trip.

I missed the last one to Tacoma because I was coughing up my lungs sick and didn’t want anyone else to feel that way.

It has been about five years since my one and only trip to Seattle’s International district. I’m curious to see what has changed.

I am looking forward to shopping and picking out ingredients for the potluck.

I want to make miso soup from the recipe my dad got me from Dubai from the restaurant owner of “Sushi, Sushi”, who is Japanese from Japan. So the recipe is an example of a cultural crosscurrent, as the ingredients are modified for making it in Dubai and not Japan. And it still tastes good.

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Just photos over the years I want to use or reference maybe.

These are from Japantown and Chinatown in San Francisco from a journalism conference in Feb-March 2013 when I was on my previous college’s student paper as the photo editor. A lot of the shops had “No Photography” signs and I was short on time, so I didn’t get a lot of photos. The ones of Seattle were from the International Club field trip in 2012.

Also stressed out and wanted to look for some “kawaii” items and still focus on the medical side to otaku culture. There are a few studies I have to read through, but here’s the link to one done by the Research Ethics Committee of the Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences in Hiroshima University – The Power of Kawaii: Viewing Cute Images Promotes a Careful Behavior and Narrows Attentional Focus – ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

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So I’m while looking up my bibliography sources, I came across cyberculture and started thinking of two media based sources I want to explore in regards to that, one of them the webcomic “Fisheye Placebo” by Yuumei, as it was on Deviantart that it started on.

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While going through the texts and in class the theme of the “American Dream” and picking yourself up by the bootstraps, the self-made, self-reliance mentality common in America, the central focus on the “self”, applies much less to Asian Americans who became successful. There is a much greater focus, followed by actual action, for Asian Americans to seek help within their communities and work together. Generally there is less of a community effort in seeking this and more talk when I look at Western persons who have obtained it, and a lot more bragging. Continue reading →

Observations from live action “Ghost in the Shell”:

Drew heavily from other science fiction films, video games and anime:

A.I Artificial Intelligence, Blade Runner, Appleseed, GATTACA, The Matrix, Cyborg 009, Batman – Nolan series, Independence Day (ID4), I-Robot, Mass Effect, Star Wars, The 5th Element, etc.

The film relied too heavily on previous media that the overall look and feel came across as the film being too insecure in its own identity, showing the general insecurity and fears that Hollywood has over anything that is not “white”, or is “untested” (Hollywood’s over-reliance on already books, comics, video games, franchises, reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels and already established actors, director and production crews in general).

I think that’s why they relied too heavily on other works visually.

I don’t think they’ve realized that what is actually killing the industry is not taking any real risks with original/new content and talent for as long as they have and it has caused things to stagnate. Also ignoring that audiences are “genre weary”, can’t commit to so many “tent pole” dependent franchises each summer and are wary of anything that’s been hyped.

It also “dumbed”, nearly everything down, leaving out important moments from the original anime film (such as the conversation between Motoko and Batou after diving). The symbolism of the lighting, shapes and outright stating the themes of the original film and manga, no attempts to be creative with it. Came across like they just wanted to get the core concepts out of the way, like tokens, and just wanted to cater to the action (which wasn’t engaging either). The whole film felt thrown together and lazy to the point that it was disrespectful.

Wished they’d branched out from the original 1995 movie more and included elements from the anime series, like the spider tanks used by Section 9. I think it would have helped expand on the concept of consciousness (and robots don’t have to be “robotic”). The spider tanks could have added the same element of cute/humor that BB-8 did for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.

I also think the “Laughing Man” storyline would have been more relevant to today’s more immediate issues with cyber security and privacy, and would have been easier to connect to a larger audience without having to “dumb” anything down and still include GitS core subject matter.

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