Blind Blog #1

 Usually I write these posts with a degree of forethought, planning and structure in order to create an architecturally interesting as well as generally health and safety law abiding literary construction. However today I don't have the energy nor the motivation to attempt this degree of creative pondering hence I shall write everything as it occurs to me though in reality, I suppose that very few people will ever see this post and of those few people, only about a cubed root of them will actually be interested enough to attempt to comprehend the chunk of text. Hence what I write here is pretty irrelevant all things considered and for all anyone cares I could write my deepest darkest secrets but remain comfortable in the knowledge that it will probably remain a complete secret to the world.

 Much as many philosophers have pondered over the question, "when a tree falls in the woods but nobody hears it, does it actually make a sound?" I often ponder, "If a blog writer writes a blog but nobody reads it, has he actually wrote the blog." The answer to which is yes but for a completely depressingly futile cause. Though when all things are considered life its self is generally futile since the main aim of any organism is to leave off springs upon the planet in order to ensure the continued existence of the species and human beings are overpopulated as it is, meaning nothing that I might choose to do with my life matters in the slightest when thought of in a longer time frame.

 The only thing that could make life meaningful would be a situation when the survival of humanity is genuinely at stake such as an apocalypse. Though if such an instance were to occur, I doubt I will survive since I have very few survival skills and am not very high in terms of physical fitness. My only possible advantage would be my incessant paranoia concerning a potentially immanent zombie apocalypse. Which, I occasionally consider, might be a manifestation of my lack of trust in those around me since it is that sort of fundamental fear of familiar people ebing turned into enemies that fuels the concept of the undead.

 Now, that sounded quite deep. About 2000 leagues deeper than the sort of thing I usually write on this blog which is a little problematic since when somebody who is usually callous and shallow suddenly makes deep statements it tends to give the impression that they are somehow depressed. I assure you, if you are considering my mental well being at the moment (not in the sense that I might be a psychopath on the verge of going on a killing spree but in the sense that I might be suicidal) that I not in the slightest bit depressed. Though if I do become suicidal, I shall blame it on genetics, though that may be quite pseudo-scientific, since my country of origin, Japan, has one of the highest suicide rates in the developed world. So much so that, when people jump in front of trains in Japan, there is barely any delay, only a polite mildly regretful announcement alerting people to a "human accident", sounding like it is more concerned with the delay caused than the loss of life, and an assurance normal services will be resumed in a short while.

 Which, in one sense, is quite enviable efficiency since here in Britain, the unfortunate demise of a leaf on the rail tracks can shock Transport For London on such a deep emotional scale that they halt the entire network for a day or so, presumably in mourning. The same comparison of humanity versus efficiency can be made in other aspects as well when comparing the two countries, Britain and Japan. For example Japanese shops are staffed by extremely well mannered staff who will all greet the customer in synchronization upon entry and work at a fast near automatic mechanical pace whereas British institutions tend to employ individuals who prioritize the social relations with their fellow employee than the many customers waiting irritatedly in an ever accumulating queue.

 In the end however, I would take the humanity over efficiency since it does give a sensation of actual person to person interaction. The feeling that you are living in a world composed of individual people all leading their own individual lives towards an ultimate demise but are nonetheless giving it their best shot. The feeling that there are a multitude of potentially interesting stories and melodramas mingling, bumping into each other, walking past each other throughout the packed human test tube we refer to as a city.

 Although presently even this happiness is slowly being eroded by machinery. For example the automatic self checkout machines which have replaced person manned counters in some shops. They are, though they originally broke down more frequently than a depressed pubescent teenage girl with attention issues,  now quite efficient and not only they prevent the human interaction that used to take place in shops but they also make the buyers into nothing more than mere mindless machines. Mechanically moving arms full of desired purchases in time to the monotonous music of the electronic beeps.

 Furthermore the mass creation and release of high quality headphones and portable music players, allowing, as the adverts often quip, the user to immerse themselves in their own bubble like world, cuts off individual people. Where everyone used to travel in the bus, hearing the conversation of others, listening to snippets of other people's lives; they now have their own little musical worlds in which they hear nothing but the music they've chosen. Maybe the two people next to you are discussing methods to counter the immanently approaching zombie revolution because they are secretly a member of an underground mystical organization of zombie fighters. The story should start with you, the protagonist, hearing their conversation and being sucked into their world to be thrust into a hugely exciting adventure of epic world saving zombie decapitating proportions. But instead you're listening to Lady Gaga or One Direction or whatever is popular so you don't hear the conversation and the gates to the potentially interesting future of fiction is forever closed, the opportunity missed.

 In the end this became just a strange slightly deep rant with the atmosphere of an old person ranting about the good old days. Or in a word, conservative. So to wrap it all up, I might as well end on a highly snobbish posh note by saying the moral of the story is the well worn phrase of Carpe Diem.

Anime Review #1 Puella Magi Madoka Magica

 Since its already fast approaching midnight and I don't have the energy or temporal leeway to write another long article, I shall post an anime review I have just finished writing thus revealing to the world that I am in fact a geek (by the world, I mean my extremely small impermanent readership but hey, they mean the world to me).

Puella Magi Madoka Magica Review

 Studio Shaft can probably be classed as one of the great trolls of the current anime industry (though in my opinion the glorious spot of number one anime troll must be given to Gintama for all its fake film trailers, deceptive series finales and general attitude) and one of its crowning achievements, the ever gleaming polished trophy taking the pride of place within their large cabinet of trolling accomplishments, has to be Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

 The story that the original trailer would have you believe goes a little something like this: One day, a young innocent inexplicably pink haired high school student called Kaname Madoka saves an adorable fantastical animal called Kyubei who offers her the chance to become a magical girl and fight the evil witches who terrorize the human realm. Joined by loving trusting friends, Madoka ventures on a journey of personal growth and discovery to fight unhappiness in the world.

 The studio originally publicized the anime as a heart warming cute affair, the sort of series with an ever-present gentle fluffy pink atmosphere, that would provoke tears and smiles. In this respect they did half deliver, except the tears were that of sadness and the smiles upside down. The entire series is a brilliantly orchestrated crescendo of misery, starting off on a more or less positive mood it quickly begins its light jog down the steep hill of dark tragedy and by the latter parts of the show the jog is a blurring sprint that would blow Usain Bolt out of the metaphorical water.

 By the second half of the series I no longer had any faith in my increasingly unstable emotional relativism because every time I thought I was the most depressed I could ever be, the next episode would come along and prove me totally utterly wrong. This is definitely a show to watch with a phone that has the Samaritans on speed dial in one hand and a box of tissues (To be used for wiping away tears, just to point out in case of any misunderstanding. Yes, there are a lot of supposedly teenage girls who like they’ve only just been weaned off breast milk, running around in cute little frilly dresses and yes the opening does involve the naked title character going through some strange process of reverse cytokinesis. Nonetheless the tissues are for crying into and nothing else) in the other.

 To accurately gauge the levels of sheer animated depression induced by the series, imagine the latter episodes of “Steins; gate” thrown in a blender with the final few episodes of “Mirai Nikki” and Mufasa’s death scene from Lion King. Leave mixture to settle for three minutes then add four table spoons of “Welcome to the NHK” episode twenty-three. Stir thoroughly then pass through a filter to remove any remaining rogue fragments of happiness and the result will be something approaching the levels of bleak sadness in “Madoka Magica” in the same way that beer has alcohol content approaching that of vodka (which, incidentally, you will need to consume a lot of to get over the heart wrenching emotionally scarring scenes within the series).

 The animation is, as expected of Studio Shaft, so high above the top notch that there’s no more ruler to measure by. The art style is that of the standard cute type anime, with physics defying big bouncy beautiful attractive sensual… hair and biologically impossibly large shiny eyes. The true artistic power of the studio manifests its self when the characters enter the magical realm of the witches that is often composed entirely of Shaft’s trademark combination of colouring pencil and animated collage (as seen frequently in “Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei”). This chaotically artistic scenery combined with the cute style characters creates a strange interesting effect that is probably enjoyable even for those who find highly physically disproportionate character designs irritating. There are other demonstrations of Shaft’s cheeky nonchalant surrealism (as seen often in “Bakemonogatari” and “Nisemonogatari” the sort of scenes which seem to say, “yes, this bedroom has no walls, what of it?”) that also help to make the series visually stunning. This combined with a beautiful, addictive and suitably mystical sound track, mostly classical though some not, makes the show worth watching just from a sensory perspective.

 The plot is also far more complicated, both narratively and thematically, than it first appears (Though really viewers should have braced themselves for heavy philosophical content when they first saw Latin in the title). It is often observed that while at first glance they may seem like polar opposites, the genres of science fiction and fantasy are in fact neighbouring countries on the large map of fiction who share a very loosely controlled boarder (no passport checks or anything, let alone barbed wire or armed security measures). Madoka Magica hops easily across this line as the series matures, with rather surprisingly enjoyable twists here and there, the story works as an intelligent deconstruction of magical girls although the ending (of the television anime series, there is a film finale on the way) is a little lackluster. The story and atmosphere is, in short, what you might get if you combined a less pretentious “Evangelion” with a less battle-centered “Mirai Nikki”, that is to say, excellent.

 Taking all this into account, a more accurate summary would go a little something like this: Kaname Madoka, troubled by a nightmare of an approaching apocalypse, one day encounters a strange fantastical creature with blood red eyes and bone white fur. The being offers to grant one wish in return for a life of servitude to several millennia old war between magical girls and witches. Stepping into the dark shadows hidden behind the ordinary life she took for granted, will Madoka be able to resist temptation and see friend from foe? Can she unravel the truth of the centuries old conspiracy and protect those she cares for before the monster of her premonition arrives?

 Sounds good doesn’t it? It is.