Lia: Musician hired by projects such as Clannad

The ending line, arigatou gonzaimasu, means “thank you very much”. Cute, isn’t it.

Meanwhile feminism in the US has produced the desire for private individuals to pay for thousand dollar contraceptions for feminist activists: they didn’t even bother to say this was a tax on the rich. As well as women selling their bodies for cash, hailed as the glorious progress of NOW, to pay for college (tuition costs that conveniently goes to pay for activists and permanent retention of Leftist staff at colleges)

I don’t know about you, but the Japanese cultural perception and reinforcement of femininity is a lot more attractive than American political power maddened policies. It hasn’t had 40-50 years of Leftist feminism to poison it, perhaps. To know beauty, you must first witness ugliness, and boy, do I understand that.

Falconry and other Birds of Prey

If you have never understood while some people hunted with birds, check this out.

The Artistic Expression

The same is true in martial arts, believe it or not.

Which is somewhat strange, if you think about it. But at higher levels, martial arts is simply the expression of the self. If you like strength and power, that’s what you will express in your movements.

Expressing yourself has many paths. However, it has to be the true you, not enslaved to someone else’s will and not hiding from yourself using drugs or self-deception. Drugs are not a way for you to achieve “enlightenment” irregardless of what has been said in the past.

Story Telling

When I first read/watched Fate/Stay: Night, I had never encountered the particular Japanese form of story telling it contained. I was familiar with time paradoxes and loops from Star Trek, and they were certainly interesting in a time, causality, and quantum mechanics perspective. People have done some work on alternative worlds such as historical fiction or alternative fiction. It was the first time, however, that I was just blown away by the sheer verisimilitude and impact of this mode of story telling. Fate/Stay Night is basically 3 stories that all start from the same space-time coordination. The same day, the same location, but because the characters made a few different decisions, it branched off into one of the 3: Fate, Unlimited Blade Works, or Heaven’s Feel. What was most well done was that these stories are told in order. In the beginning of the game, you are given some seemingly inconsequential choices. But none of them matters because you’ll always go into the Fate story line or die. Only until you finish Fate and get to the end, can you then loop around start a new story, and proceed to Unlimited Blade Works. It was very surprising. I was like, “Oh, Fate was a pretty good story. Some things I wasn’t too sure about, but generally very nice”. Then I went to Unlimited Blade Works and I was like, “What more can they do with these characters and settings, isn’t it getting boring now”. Well, I spoke too soon given my inexperience with Japanese visual novels. There was a whole heck load of more stuff to discover and read, because Fate was only… an introduction. Only an intro, even though Fate took tens of hours to finish reading and had a great beginning, interesting middle, and moderately satisfying ending. Stuff I would expect from a really good American tv series or book… but there’s 3 of em. And each one is better than the one before, in terms of expanding the characters, their motivations, the world, and the plot. Something my mind had trouble encapsulating and comprehending. How is this kind of art and craft possible.

Visual guide

A lot of wiki links concerning FSN is full of needless spoilers. But this one is very clean. FSN being the first visual novel I ever experienced, yet also the one I have yet to reread, occupies a special place in my memories.

Vibrant Harbour: Flickr

Vibrant Harbour

Haven’t posted a FLICKR round in awhile.

Vector Art Graphics

This is an interesting composite. Zoom out using your web browser and then compare the zoomed in picture. Shiny.

For all 15 pictures listed, read this article.

 

I first noticed that the skin tone was amazingly coherent,  with the color of the eye shading and the hair matching quite well. I thought it was simply good makeup work and color coordination. But of course the colors would match, as an artist was responsible for choosing their specific shade in an environment that could be controlled better than natural colors and pigments.

TSA satire and female make up

I found the TSA harassment video funny and somewhat accurate. Somewhat in the sense that under 18 females or children, are not excluded from the pat down.

More importantly, I went to this person’s channel

After the credit to the TSA video had her as one of the actors.

At minute 14:00 I had the thought that that is the same as what I think when watching H2H or Martial Art instruction videos or demonstrations. Detail orientated.

For the first part, her expose of her genetic background got me thinking on how inbreeding amongst humans is something nature is against. Physical form or perfection or performance is increased by diversity in the genetic background, not homogeneity or purebreedness. This, however, often runs counter to human cultures. Especially European royal nobility, the Hapsburgs, which were infamously inbreed. Or the Egyptian Pharaohs who married their sister to keep the royal blood pure.

It also exposes a self-bias in that people of different ethnicities, when they see her, think they are from their own cultural/ethnic background. People are most familiar with their own people.

When she mentions the bonds between family, it reminds me of Clannad (a clan) and why blood is indeed thicker than water. Most of the time at least, even though there are exceptions to all rules.

When she mentioned that her brother was beautiful in appearance and that she was envious, reminded me if Ore no Imouto. Unintentionally funny.

The makeup issue, well that’s something females would be more familiar with. My color depth and coordination is not adequate for such.

One of the little games I like to play, which you can see here, is setup a parallel thought process. On one thread, I am thinking of how attractive and charismatic she is. On the other thread, I’m thinking about issues dealing with logic and memory concerning the substance of what she is saying. Then I interpolate and try to guess how thread 1 impacted thread 2 or vice a versa. It’s one of various little mind games that I find fun to do. In my experience, most people react by mingling the two together as if they were the same thing. If it is a charismatic politician, they mistake the charisma and magnetism for the truth of substance. Or they mistake truth and substance for a person’s charisma, because they believe that only a smart or good person could say or describe such things. To me, there is a clear delineation.

@16:00 she talks about how musicians have degraded in terms of artistic lyrics or construction. Which I agree with and many other people I know would agree with as well, even though they are neither artists nor musicians.

Power Overwhelming

Courtesy of Sadie

Planetarian: the reverie of a little planet

Such mugen (infinite) loyalty. A short story set in a post-apocalyptic world.

My heart beats heavy at the closing curtains of the call. It is indeed a beautiful story. More so for those who appreciate human relationships and loyalty as a two way street, one with obligations and responsibilities as well as privileges.

Power of Culture

I was rather surprised to hear a song sung in English that used a Japanese word as the center keystone. So I went and looked up the authors of the song, TATU, who I found to be two individuals of Russian origin.

Two female Russian singers using a Japanese word as the keystone of their song, and then making a music video using Japanese animation styles in the bargain?

That’s the power of culture there. Not your own culture, but any culture that can be accessed on the internet or in other low barrier esque fashions. The problem with America culture is that most of the exportable kind is nihilistic and profit driven, rather than driven by an ideology of capitalism or liberty or family values or patriotism. It doesn’t matter what idea drives a cultural value, so long as it is a strong idea. One that people will go to extremes for. Japan is a nation of those who pursued their ideals with extreme devotion. And that shows, even in these matters.