Oneshot-Laughter is Good For the Heart

Very short post. Just read a oneshot and it is just so adorable. It's a perfect blend of original "love story" and "childhood friends" plus a great sense of humor (reason for why I named this post as it is). Anyways, check it out. It's short, it's cute, it's funny and it's fresh. Brought to you by Kawabata Shiki, Shueisha Publishing, and Delish Scans: 08:05 no Hengao-san

"If I Were In That Position"

Hello visitors,

It's been quite some time since I've released a more "food for thought" post but here it is. Hope people are thought provoked; it is not so much of a news flash but something to think about if you haven't come to this realization on your own.

All of us (I am sure) have read mangas where the situations are so terrible for the characters that you cannot imagine what you would do if you were in that position. However, that doesn't stop us from imagining. Sometimes there are scenarios in mangas where the characters act with such idiocy according to us as readers yet  readers don't hesitate and point out how they would approach the situation-again imagining. What I'm getting at here is that as people read mangas (and stories in general), many can't help but project themselves onto the characters in the story, imagining whilst imposing their ideals and cultural etiquette and values and think, "If I were in that position, I would..."  Am I wrong?

I've seen various mangas with similar discussions of "what would you do" and people explain their attitudes towards the situation, attempting to explain their behaviors in that situation. The issue with the projection of readers onto the characters in a story is that attitudes do not speak for behavior in actual experience of the situation. We assume that we will act a certain way in certain situations that the characters are in however this assumption is usually a "I hope this would happen." SIDE BAR: The word "assume": There has been one thing that has stuck with me since I was about 11 years old and that is a tale my teacher told me about the word "assume". I won't get into it but basically, one should not assume because in doing so, one makes an "ass" out of "you" (u) and "me". The moral is that assumptions aren't facts so one should be careful in the use of the word----Now ideally, if the situation is terrible and traumatic, avoiding it all together is preferable but usually when people explain "if I were in that position", they put themselves in that situation. What I'm trying to get at is that true empathy, I would argue, is not possible.

None of us know what the heck we would do if we were in a position as terrible as the character is in unless we have actually experienced a similar situation. We can imagine putting ourselves in the shoes of another but that's all it really is. The most obvious example I can think of that gets hit with threads with people posting what they'd do are usually the trauma-ridden mangas e.g. bullying. Bullying is not something people can empathize with unless they're experienced it themselves in my honest opinion. Sure we can try to empathize through compassion but people who say this and that if they were in a victim of bullying don't know what they're say unless they've actually experienced it.

My hands aren't completely dirt-free of doing this (call me a hypocrite but no one is a true saint). I myself have b!tched about characters being stupid and this and that. I've also argued some points about bullying and traumatic events. However, I didn't come to this realization recently so whenever since I came to the realization, I try, when speaking my opinion, to be mindful that I don't know in actuality what would happen if it were me as well as mindful of the fact that my upbringing in my own culture and society has brought out different values and etiquette that are not exactly conventional for another culture. (Cultural upbringing and socialization of readers versus the targeted audience of manga will be another topic I'll post some other day).

So when one attempts to explain what one's behavior would be in the situation of the character, I don't think anyone knows for certain unless they've been in a very similar situation. I'm not saying that it's completely BS but just keep in mind that it is an assumption and if it's a "worse case scenario" it's more of .an opinion of "I hope if I were in that position..."

That's all for this post I suppose. It's been quite awhile since I've written something like this for my blog. Hope visitors enjoyed and if you didn't, move on =)

Best,
tohukyo

New Manga--Like Blind Love

I was considering not calling this "Like Blind Love" because I over-thought the possibility of someone getting offended so if you do are offended, please...I don't mean to be. (now onto the post...)

WARNING--CONTAINS SPOILERS!! (read the first two chapters of  Nanoka no Kare if you don't want to be spoiled)

This is a newly scanlated manga about a high school girl who isn't that crazy about the idea of being in a relationship. She's not like those people who form shallow relationships for the sake of just wanting a boy/girlfriend like her friend here. In her experience, she once was in a relationship with a boy that was a little too needy. He was the type of guy who wanted the girl to be devoted to the him (typical traditionalist) but she isn't the type of person to do that. She wasn't the type to be devoted and loyal but she still loved the boy. Now...guys being guys, he tried to show-off his "game" and lied to his friends about having kissed her (probably because his friends were teasing him which is so typical). She happens to overhear and gets the wrong impression, confronts him and he gets too pushy about something along the lines of her being distant and almost forces a kiss on her, resulting in their break up. (sorry for that run-on but I don't feel like reliving that explanation). One day she's alone eating at some fast food place and overhears the couple she is sitting behind having an argument. The girl is breaking up with the guy because the guy is being distant. A day or two later, she just happens to walk passed the guy with a couple of his friends and overhears how the guy answers his friends' questions about the break up. Instead of being "typical guy" and trying to show-off, he explains with somewhat honesty but never lying. The way he explains it hits her with an impact and suddenly, she turns around and confesses to him thinking he can "heal" her but much to her surprise, seeing his face for the first time, she's in shock (and awe I think).

Ah..now that I'm done with the long drawn out spoiler explanation of my perception of how the first chapter (and a half?) went, but to sum it up, let's just say I'm excited about this manga's potential. Oh but first off, I'll get out the obvious possible cliche that's to come. Because of the situation, I'm totally calling that this boy is the younger brother of the guy that she dated before (or somehow related like a cousin). If the story doesn't move along that way then kudos but if it does...I hope it doesn't drag on and it strides well with it.

Now onto why I'm really intrigued by this manga--as the title of this blog indicates, I named it "like blind love" and what I mean is that I love the originality in how this mangaka write this story. The girl finds new love in a person whom she's never faced before- instead she falls for the sincerity and patience that she's longed for through his words and actions. What I like more about this manga too is that in a way, I consider this female lead to be quite the modern woman. My reasoning for this is because traditionally in relationships, girls are expected to be really devoted to their boyfriends and husbands and families--leaving their sense of identity such as a career of their own or their own relationships with their own friends. This girl, even though she had a boyfriend, she doesn't conform to popular convention and wants to hang with her friends whereas everyone else seems to think she should be devoted wholeheartedly to the boy. That's very typical shoujo as well (leaving all sense of identity and being totally devoted to love and all that). I feel that there is a lot of potential for this manga and I hope it doesn't flop.

Anyway, so far it's a good start and I like the originality. Praise to Chibi scans for scanlating amazing story (maybe it's about time to drop a few of the others eh? no offense). I hope I didn't butcher this for all of you readers. Give this manga a chance anyways if you were bored out of your mind reading my post. It's awesome and you wont' regret it for sure!

Best,
tohukyo

Irrelevant Randomness

This is completely irrelevant to manga and I should be studying/reading (midterm paper to do and exams) but whilst reading, my mind can venture off into random thoughts. I suddenly thought, I want to see episodes of Pink Lipstick, the South Korean Drama (I don't know why I specified when NK doesn't release any of the dramas it makes if it does make it) with Ha Jae Bum (actor Park Kwang Hyun) in it. Even though the drama was just excruciatingly long and also very soap opera-y Ha Jae Bum who wasn't the main character, totally made the drama lighten up with his heartiness and loving character. It really pulled me through a few years ago when I watched all 149 (30 minute) episodes with a prologue that was extremely long and painful to watch (was really bored and just felt like suffering through it). My sister was smart and just skipped episodes. The episodes with Ha Jae Bum really tugged at my heart strings. I can just remember how emotional I got when I go to the more heart breaking episodes towards the end. (As well as the disgust when his old man uncle/dad was cozying up to the young woman Jae Bum fancied....) Anyways, it's be awesome if there was some way to easily find those episodes starring him.

OH and a little environmental spiel for the sake of irrelevant randomness.
People have to realize that the world is disintegrating. In the last half century or so, we're killed more of the earth than ever before like cancer on high (if that makes sense). I hope people are more environmentally aware. Every little bit helps-recycling, reusing paper and such, (esp) conserving water, and all that knick-knack. Now what brought this on? Well here where I live, we're in drought conditions. Even though it's been raining some, our water supply is on the down low (way below, like almost 10%) and we produce a lot of commodities. Do you know how much water paper uses? How much water is used to make a single sheet of paper? I got really irked when my coworker (also a student like me but he does the more menial stuff and doesn't get the job done as well as I did when I was in that position last year)...when my coworker was printing a shit load of stuff for some undergrad or grad student and didn't even bother printing back to back. I don't care if it takes longer to print back to back. It's a sheer waste of paper and water when we're in emergency conservation right now!! Being a college student, for many, makes us hermits in a closed world (unless we let ourselves remain in tact w/ the rest of the world)  so I realize my colleagues may not know what the rest of the world is up to but seriously, we're in the 21st century, it's time to clean up our act even if you contribute a little. Haven't you seen An Inconvenient Truth? (If not one of the most memorable quotes that is a requote:) "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences." Sir Winston Churchill. Well that's it and that's my spiel =D Please be as environmental as you can. Also recycling-you can't recycle containers contaminated by food. People don't know that in my school apparently which makes it totally useless to have recycling bins in dining areas IMHO.

Future topics

So as my title says, this is just a list of future topics that I'll be writing about with a few notes. It's more for my use than yours but just so people can see what's to come (maybe).

There are things from every genre that I like (almost every) and I haven't even gotten to the stuff that I really like (other than the gender bender posts-crossdressing and physical transformation). Here are a few topics I'll definitely want to write about:

1) (Fine) Arts
Notes: I have a fondness for the classic fine arts which has to do with how I perceive most mainstream pop culture manga seems to lack substance or is inferior in terms of substance when compared to the classic fine arts. There are subgenres that go into this category but for this post itself on Fine Arts, I'm probably going to include graphic art like drawing and painting, traditional dance, theater/acting, and classical music related (I may do pop culture music at some point but there's not much there). However, depending on how long the posts get, I'll probably cut stuff out and post it another time.

2) Ballet
Notes: I have a separate category for this compared to Fine Arts because I absolutely adore Ballet mangas specifically. It is also because the subgenre ballet is more concrete in the sense that I can easily think of mangas that fit in the category. I already have a list of the mangas I'm going to recommend in this category because this subgenre is limited in the scanlating world

3)Time Skips
Notes: This is different from time travel mangas. This topic will be more about mangas that start out with characters in youth. They'll have a story developing but then years past and their story continues with their reunion. I'll admit that this subgenre I have set out is quite vague and I'm going to be flexible on the time skip part but I won't recommend anything that I think is shallow or superficial.

4)Shounen
Notes: I'm not a huge fan of shounen so this is a "maybe" topic but I do have a few that I enjoy reading and rereading every so often. Since I'm not a huge fan of shounen and I identify myself as more of a shoujo/josei (now seinen-ish) reader, I think it'll be easier for me to write about the few favorites I have in the shounen genre. Compared to Shoujo and Josei which I read a lot more from, it's more difficult to write a whole post just on each of those genres whereas shounen, it's limited so it's easier. Well this is a maybe post.

5)Authors
Notes: There are quite a few authors I want to write about. So far I only have Yoshizumi Wataru (which I need to finish) and Wann. There's quite a lot actually than a few. Some to list: Maki Youko, Emura, Arina Tanemura, Saitou Chiho, Souryo Fuyumi, Ogawa Yayoi, George Asakura, Lee Hyeon-sook, Narita Minako, Sakai Miyu, Yoshino Aki, etc.

6.) Historical Fiction
Notes: This is my one of my favorite genres of all time. I don't want to elaborate right now but I give anything a chance to win my favor that goes back to the historical periods in any world (well not anything) so I know a few good ones under my belt included Japanese history which I think some people aren't as fond of compared to other historical fiction.

7)Mangaupdate polls
Notes: I like popping into Mangaupdates once a week at least for their weekly poll. Some are interesting, others aren't so much but there have been more than a few polls that are total starter topics as "food for thought" posts. I've been thinking about doing it for some time but because it's quite time consuming to write a whole "food for thought" post, I thought I'd just move it to the side

8) VS [Versus]
Notes: I said almost a year ago (still a few more months til it's a year), I said I might work on scanlating VS [Versus] because I find it a wonderful and amazing story. I'm not so sure when I'll get to that since currently I'm not using a laptop with Photoshop functions. My other laptop shitted up so when I came back down to school, I brought another laptop for personal use. The way I'm going to do it is probably clean as much as I can and later typeset.

9) ETC
Notes: I think this is good enough for topics wise. I have a few drafts posts in my blog that I haven't looked into in a while. So I may start on releasing those depending on how much time for school, work, life, and this =)

'Til next. (midterm seasons now til the end of the quarter, work is at a busy deadlines season too ack....)

Stealing Intellectual Property?

Lol the title is a little bit of an exaggeration but I googled myself (tohukyo) which is a little narcissistic BUT I did it because I wanted to check what accounts I made over the years using the username to ensure personal info isn't revealed. Turns out I've created a number of accounts that don't do that (found one that did but changed it) and I happened upon a DEVIANT Art account that isn't mine WITH my username. NOw I'm not sure who created it is since it isn't me (I use a standard date of birth for this username usually for accounts or my real one May 22). It's quite ironic that it's on Deviant art because I consider the person who is using my username a deviant. It's a name I consider quite precious to me since I CREATED THE NAME and it brings up wonderful memories of relationships I've formed online using this username--the online game RF for example which is what I originally created it for). I of course could be flattered that someone is using the name however it's nothing flattering if the person doesn't ask. Of course it is the internet and the internet is kind of anarchist but come on, why didn't you just ask? I obviously would have said no but I would be flattered of course but now it's kind of irksome especially since it's very sentimental to me. =l As annoying as it is, I used to always say "the internet is anarchy"where even the government can cross lines. Sigh...I'm disappointed.

Quick Post--MF Forums down?

Simple as the title is. I haven't been able to access Mangafox Forums in the last few days so I can't post any commentary on any mangas I have. I use batoto as well but still, Mangafox is my go-to place for manga discussions. Batoto has a comments section so it kind of becomes the unofficial forum for things like "latest chapter discussion thread"s. Anyway, I tried it out on three different browsers, all say "Server Error" and I can't check to see if it's my DNS I'm not tech-savvy enough. I also did one of those internet website status things (the sites where you paste the url of a site to see if it's just you and not anyone else who can't access it), according to that site I checked on, the forums aren't working for everyone. I don't know if that's true though. Well not such a big deal since I should be studying....

Tata...

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UPDATE--Jan 26 (noon-ish)

MF forums are back up. It took like 2 or 3 days just to update the server format I guess. They added an activity log like on facebook which is lame because I don't need to know every single detail of what other people are doing and I don't need some person going to my profile seeing my activity (hence why I'm always in invisible mode on MF). The fact they brought down the server just for that is lame. "Dislike!"


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UPDATE #2--Jan 26 (nearing midnight)

So according to the announcements, the server down for the forums was due to ridding of malware stuff (about time, chrome was high on alert for those) and for changing the forums (again-lame). So earlier this evening, I checked in on MF forums again (my profile) and not so much to my surprise, the activity log was removed. Wonder if that'll be permanent...But now, geez, they're still trying to fix things. If it's for the malware, go ahead but it seems like they're still messing with the formatting because now I'm seeing the customize profile stuff on my profile when I haven't even clicked on customize profile.


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Update #3-Feb 6

It's ridiculous how much they screwed up the forums in the last couple of weeks.