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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Together With Japan 日本と共に Home About よくある質問 ← Older posts AKIRA and Buddhist Philosophy Posted on June 3, 2014 by J Sensei It hasn’t been easy finding time to write on a blog because of family medical issues. Fortunately mine have taken a turn for the better. Recently, in the middle of this process, I actually saw the groundbreaking anime film AKIRA for the first time. I’d heard for years it was hard to understand” but found myself understanding it very easily… because my mind had been prepared by seeing material with a similar philosophy in the background. This would be Buddhist philosophy. In brief, The world is really, really messed up. Buddhist thought considers this transient world” to be a pretty nasty place, and it’s not good for the soul to be too attached to it whether out of greed for money, power, lust, violence, and so forth. In short, the future Tokyo of AKIRA takes everything people saw as vulgar worldly affairs” in 1980’s Tokyo, cranked it to an Xtreme level (to use a modern cliche) and used these images to demonstrate why salvation is necessary. We’re not ready to be saved – yet. Our protagonist has the universe hand him incredible psychic powers on a silver platter. Does he stand up for world peace? Eliminate hunger? Save the environment? No, he blows stuff up, kills the people who cross him, kills some of his old friends who annoy him, gets his best friend spending the latter third of the film trying very hard to kill him, and in general demonstrates that handing a little kid a laser cannon is not going to lead to good things. But anyone can be saved who turns towards the Path. Yet by the end of the film, not through being a better human being like the titular Akira, or a lost soul like one of the stunted growth psi-children, our protagonist Tetsuo loses control, leaves the boundaries of the flesh, and, while his former best friend is saved by an act of mercy by the aforementioned psi-child, Tetsuo, by leaving the shackles of the flesh behind, discovers a greater, more enlightened universe awaiting mankind. Even evildoers who spend a great deal of time off the path can still be saved if they get on the path at the end – if not by their own agency, but rather the acts of others and the whims of the universe. Tetsuo, facing agonizing death, was finally ready for the change, and found it. There is thus hope for us all. If that bastard can do it, then as the final words of the film suggest, perhaps not so far in the future, we can, too, in spite of, well… humans sucking in general as they are currently constituted. So that’s it in a nutshell. Humans suck, but there’s still hope for us, we can be saved, we just need shock therapy and to get with the program already. After you’ve watched a few Evangelion movies it’s hard to be shocked by the notion anymore. Besides, this all fits in neatly with left-wing academic thought of long standing, whereby modern progress is destroying Gaea, humanity must radically change to embrace the planet and renounce, if not all modernity, then certainly excessive wealth and production, and just in general, humans need to suck less, cooperate to settle their differences and then… maybe… in spite of our previous unworthiness, we can find Nirvana, perhaps right here on this planet. Or, at least make the vulgar world more livable in the meantime. I don’t necessarily subscribe to all this in a blind smattering of huge, but that’s not the point. The insanity in AKIRA is not a bug; it is a feature of a much older philosophy that shaped Japan through the centuries. If the movie is hard to understand, it’s nothing against the intelligence of the viewer; it’s simply not having been exposed sufficiently to a particular world-view and its accompanying intellectual argument. So yeah, in my case, watching more anime (and reading a little) made me get” it. Posted in Anime , Culture , Japan | Tagged Akira , anime , Buddhism , culture , Evangelion , film , philosophy | 1 Comment Signs of LIfe Posted on March 16, 2014 by J Sensei Hi everyone. I’ve been on an extended hiatus from blogging for quite legitimate reasons, some of which I’ve posted about in the past. To quickly summarize where I am: – My father survived a bone marrow transplant that kept him in the hospital for five months. He is about six weeks or so out of the hospital. – I suffered a setback with my own foot problems, aggravated by the chaos surrounding my father’s return from the hospital, but I am doing VERY well at the moment. I get some antibiotics by IV, give my left foot a ton of rest every day, and I have relatively new, badly needed offloading” footwear to keep the pressure off the parts that need to heal. So, I’m doing a lot less running around” so to speak. I’m fortunate my treatment doesn’t need to be more intensive and that I’m back on track and, thanks to the footwear, making big strides forward so I can put all my recent health problems behind me. I just didn’t want to blog with too much negativity in the air. My father’s tests say he’s cancer-free, but it’s just taking a good long while for him to get his strength back. The rest is… not worth griping about. I’ve annoyed my closer friends with rants about this or that in the world over time, but I want to be more positive for the wider world. Also, I’ve been doing a LOT more video gaming than anime watching of late so I haven’t had as much to say about Japan stuff for a while. Also some subjects are too depressing and controversial to contribute much about… and those are the ones that pop up in the Western media, usually. Mostly it’s just a matter of time and energy. I’ll see what I can do as inspiration strikes. Take care everyone. Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Signs of LIfe Anime Review: Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko Posted on July 1, 2013 by J Sensei English: The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat” Here’s a good example of another light novel adaptation. For the most part, this is a comedy series dominated by the interpersonal relationship between the main character, who is an ah, let us say, enthusiast about the female physique, but not someone who would hurt a single hair on a girl’s head, and a pair of unfairly adorable younger girls who acquire crushes on him. The broader plot is very deeply aboutbe careful what you wish for . Quick note: No porn, nothing hardcore, not even close. Plenty of teases and suggestive situations, but they never cross the line into actual hentai” territory. I thought you’d like to know that early on. Wishing upon statues of the Cat God has both comic and very serious consequences for the characters of this show. The most long-lasting consequence that we see on the surface is the leading heroine, depicted above, who surrenders her on-the-surface emotion and becomes a stony cat” herself in that sense, which lends fuel to the entire show by making her so adorable it hurts . There’s other girls worth noting, though I’m not actually going to note them here; there’s some nice girls involved and that’s sufficient for a quick review. More importantly, I want to note that the plot is zany, a sort of truth and consequences” theme with a lot of very weird situations and people in between, and those expecting a coherent plot expect in vain . This is character exposition, interpersonal conflict, and a lot of eye candy, which makes me rate it a solid 8 out of 10 for keeping me entertained and having cute girls without so much sugar one gags on it, which is actually an impressive feat. Nonetheless, the limitations of a 12-episode anime run are evident in spades here and one has the feeling that the novels might be a tad more fascinating, but obviously well beyond the reach of most anime viewers. There’s also a very strong sense that more could have been done with this material, and could have been, but we’re not going to see it here . That’s a shame in some sense, but that’s the way the cookie...