Why Do I watch Anime?

Okay this might be a little different from what my blog name suggests or what I've been writing but I've been thinking about this topic for some time, especially after some people asked me "Why do you still watch anime, you are a grown up now aren't you?". I heard this and I thought 'is anime(or any kind of drawn entertainment) just meant for kids'.

Is Anime Just for Kids

Personally I don't think so, well that is kind of the whole point why I am writing this whole thing. Actually hand drawn animations were initially meant to entertain kids but slowly as the animation techniques evolved they were used to convey stories, then over time the nature of the stories got complex. Japanese anime is one good example of that. Anime is nothing but the animated version of traditional story-boarding style called manga.

Japanese manga conveyed complex story-lines and so did anime. A part of these manga comes under the classification of shonen jump. Well it's not actually a category but a Japanese manga anthology which is targeted at young readers, and comprises of high amount of action and a soft pinch of comedy. Even so some anime's made from these manga also are very intense emotionally as I've realized in the case of the famous Naruto.

Yeah even though many people rate Naruto and it's likes as meant for young audience some themes like Naruto being alone and being hated by his own village for something that he didn't do or didn't even know about, is sometimes so deeply visualized that it actually brings tears in your eyes. Or the fact that 'shinobi are treated as mere tools', the tragic death of Jiraya sensei or the tragic sacrifice of 'Itachi Uchiha' are so deep concepts, that I have rarely seen in live action soaps and movies. Well if I keep talking about Naruto I'll go off topic, because as it is obvious by now I'm a huge Naruto fan. There are some other remarkable anime inspired from Jump, like Bleach, One Piece, Fairy Tale etc.

The Actual Adult side of Things

While I consider the emotional concepts taken up in anime like Naruto as adult, a section of anime and manga are specifically made keeping in mind the interest of adult audiences and no I'm NOT talking about HENTAI(you little perverts).I'm talking about anime that have taken up more serious, darker subjects. Right now a good example of such an anime that comes into my mind would be 'Death Note'. For those who haven't watched or read it- It's about a boy who finds a death note of a Shinigami(Japanese for Soul-reaper

Death Note

or God of death) and he realizes that, if you write a person's name on the note that person dies either within 40 seconds due to a heart attack or due to the reason the writer specifies at specified time. Now this guy decides to eradicate all the criminals from the world using the note. He now wishes to change the world and become the GOD of this new world. But not long after he starts an excellent secret detective 'L' catches on to him. Now the anime gives the viewer choice to choose sides, either support the main character who is going around killing people to fulfill his ambition, or to support 'L' who opposes the main character and believes that nobody has the right to take lives of other people no matter what. And yes the lead does kill some innocent people for his interest through the series. What I'm trying to say is that it gives you a hard choice, a dark theme and something to think about. And yes the anime is filled with some awesome action sequence and a lot of gore. Well this is just one example there are some others too like 'Darker than Black', 'Ghost in the Shell' and 'Hell Girl' etc.
And then there are some semi-realistic thrillers like Detective Conan, Black Jack etc. But some people like to say, just for the heck of it, that anime is in fact just some set of moving lines and cannot be compared live action film making. For them I would like to say that it takes a lot of people and a lot of hard-work to draw each frame of action and then put it together to produce realistic animation and it also requires a great deal of knowledge about camerawork editing and vfx just like the real life movies or serials, and as a little artist myself I'm bound to respect a form of art that can so successfully convey stories in a way that actually these live action movies and actors fail to do.

Verdict

So as I said cartoons and anime are not just some kind of tricks to keep the children busy, they are a lot more than that. They are a strong medium for conveying a message and or expressing a mentality, or just simply making people realize about some things they generally seem to ignore. 

They ask me "Haven't you a grown up now, you should stop watching this kiddish stuff!?"

I tell them "It's okay that you grew up and stopped watching anime, but to actually understand what it really means one has to grow even further beyond that limit" and actually comprehend that anime is a way of artistic expression just like live action movies and serials so instead of telling me to grow up, you try to grow up a little more..... :-)

I just realised, Nintendo DS series is quite cool.

Lately I've been doing a little research on the Nintendo DS family of handheld consoles in connection with one of my Edexcel assignment, and interestingly enough I've learned quite a few surprising facts about Nintendo's DS & 3DS  series.

Honesty: best policy

DS, 3DS and PSvita

Well honestly the assignment kind off requires one to write a blog post in relation with one's findings, hence this post. So please expect it to be very formal (well I've never been very 'informal' out here per say, anyways).

Nintendo DS family

The Nintendo DS is a series of handheld consoles developed by Nintendo (duh!). That was obvious wasn't it. Well here's something you probably didn't expect the DS series (excluding 3DS line) is the second best selling consoles as on 31st Dec, 2013 with a total sale of 153 million units right after the mighty PS2 (*_*). I know right, I mean everyone knew these tiny boxes were popular (mostly for Pokemon :-P) but did you expect it to be the second bestselling consoles (this is the stage where people who already knew make fun of the writer :-P). Well Nintendo was quite innovative with the DS series you've got to give them that. Here some game changing features that made the DS famous:-

      1. Dual co-op screens

      2. Bottom touch screen.

      3. Backward compatibility to the people's favorite GBA games.

I could get down to explaining each DS there is, but I don't want this post to be as boring as I think my presentation would be (which by the way is on 4th, Tomorrow >_<).

3DS layout

The Main.....

Well the main focus of mys assignment was on the Nintendo's latest DS cousin the 3DS and it's relatives(3DSXL & 2DS). 

So I mainly learned all this stuff:-

  1. 3DS has sterioscopic 3D ability:- that means you can view 3D without those annoying glasses.

  2. It also has a circle pad which is supposedly an analogue of the analogue stick (giggle).

  3. It has way better Hardware than any of the DS devices and it rivals the PS vita.

  4. It has pretty good graphics for a handheld console.

Asphalt 3D on 3DS

  5. It is basically an awesome portable gaming experience.

  6. But certainly no match for the giant rivals.

Well that should be all. Heh! it didn't turn out to be all that formal after all { B-) }.

Our own Board Game

The beginning of the second sem

The second semester at the college technically started a few months ago, but well due to a lot of reasons was not able to post anything about any of the stuff that has been happening since.

the first prototype

Anyways, at the start of the semester we attended a workshop for making board game or let's just say a game design workshop in general. skipping the details of the workshop here, we all were divided into three groups and at the end of the workshop each group had a basic board of their own. Now each group was given a task to work upon their respective games and make it into something meaningful that could be taken into further stages.

I landed up in a group of three, Udayan and Gaurav(don't worry you don't know them since I have'nt mentioned them anywhere else. To tell the truth initially both of them were zero help, since the initial idea was heavily biased to my thoughts they seemed least interested. The latter in this case was over exited and hence irritating. well due to some reason after the said 15 no group managed to come up with a proper prototype, but two of the boards were given a second chance, ours was one of them. The annoying one from my group was somehow removed an instead we got ourselves a new teammate Anand. Well this guy was no big help because he had no history with the game but it was certainly a relief as compared to that other guy.

the second prototype

By this time Udayan finally found interest in the game and came up with an interesting suggestion, now if I explain that here nobody would get a word. Let's just call it the interesting idea that brought the board to second stage, then with a whole lot of discussion among-st me him and Anand we came up with the new board. Well the board design was completely my thing. this new board kindoff picked up.

Long time no posts

Well it's been a long time since I've posted something, but a lot of things have been happening in the meantime. Some personal problems and some shit like that, but their's been a lot of progress in the professional side. I also kinda have a job now, I'll be talking about it later. Will soon be posting about all of this.

Seamedu Game Development: The One Game per Week Project

Seamedu Game Development: The One Game per Week Project: Making games : How to get started?! There are many people who aspire to make games, but a very few who actually know how to go about the...

Staring to do Serious stuff now

Stuff Getting Interesting { B-) }

It has almost been six months in Seamedu, my first sem is about end. It's about time we would start doing something that should make us feel like we're doing something significant. These six months we've been given the basics and I think now starts the serious stuff.

Two significant things have started off to mark my progress, one is official and the other something that I,m planning to do. Let's talk about the official thing first, well I've been made a part of  a small team that has to work on a game that was made by a previous batch of game programmers. I'm not allowed to talk much about the game itself but I can say that it gives you a taste of what one might face while working with some real developers. So far we've been playing other published games similar to the one we're supposed to work so as to collect ideas that can be used to make the game better.

The second thing that I initiated is a "manga". This kinda sounds totally out of topic doesn't it, I know but I think it can also be a step to know closely how does stuff work here in the industry of animation and gaming. I think this will help because we all know how the Japanese counterpart of this industry works. They are famous for there awesome story boarding technique the "manga", then they make it into anime and then games and their stuff becomes very popular. So, that's why I decided to try my hand at story boarding the Japanese style.

Right now I don't have a clue what type of plot or scenario I'm going to make in the manga, but then I thought what the heck - if I keep thinking about stuff I would never get started so I decided to start anyways with just the protagonist's name and his background. I'm kinda planning on making up the plot and characters as I move further with this thing. Right now I'm just working on the intro of my protagonists. Well for rest of the details.... I don't plan on putting up much stuff out here since I recently learned about the copyright laws and right to intellectual property and all that stuff.. :-P.... yeah seriously, I don't want my idea replicated elsewhere. Well the basic idea is of a world where two different human forms dwell together, both have special powers which originated fro different sources and the protagonist happens to be a hybrid of the two.

I had recently watched(re-watched) the anime "Naruto" and discovered many interesting things that I didnt notice when I was a kid and was superbly influenced by it. I also am now reading the manga.... so this was kind of the inspiration behind the whole my manga thing, so it's pretty obvious that my work is going to have traces of inspiration drawn from Naruto. But even so I would never be able to match the kind of quality Masashi Kishimoto has produced, I'll try though....... Well that's that, I wanted to talk about my idea of manga... and yeah don't confuse it with the one I've posted there on the other tab it's just a really old attempt at story-boarding using existing characters of Pokemon.. :-P

Experience of Testing a Board Game

As our 'Sensei' says, "To become a game designer one has to have the experience of testing games made by others. So that one knows what are the things one would want to avoid while designing one's own game."

And so our batch was given an opportunity to test a couple of board games made by the BAJM batch of our institute a few weeks earlier. Well to be frank nobody had any idea what we were supposed to do, besides of course playing the game. Made into a group of 4 we started with the game based on the book 'Who moved my Cheese?' known as the self motivational guide. Well talking about the game, it was a multi-board game, one meant for the main game and two others for the maze race part. To enter the maze race you have to land on a specific spot on the main board after with you get to draw a card from the action deck and if luckily it has 'Maze Race' written on it then everyone has to jump into the maze race temporarily. This aspect kinda reminded me of another game we had played a week before, 'The Lord of the Rings'. Don't get me wrong, the two games are way apart but the multi-board mechanism made me do the connect. Other than the card drawing spots the rest of the board seemed empty and so failed to deliver any kind of action itself. While playing the first time we barely landed on any of the card drawing spots which further brought down the fun quotient. In the second game a player manged to land on card space and also drew out the maze race card. So now both of us were on the maze board. Since this mini game was supposed to have all the action of the game packed in it, we had high expectations, well what can I say we were disappointed again. The solution of the maze was so obvious that it was now all the matter of who gets higher numbers on the dice, And thus the only fun part of the game was ruined as it failed to challenge the player. By now we were starting to get the big difference between testing a prototype and playing a full fledged completed game. We now realized how each finished game  must have been put through a lot of rounds of testing before finally publishing it. After the maze race which wrapped up quickly we returned to the main  board. The rest of the game went almost event-less.

Well now came the hard part that we hadn't done before. We were supposed to talk with the designer in the presence of our HOD. We started off the with the most common problem, the lack of action in the main board of the game. We also pointed out how the probability of landing in a maze race was reduced by the fact that two events had to occur mutually in order to trigger the race, and how the maze itself was a drag and too obvious for a challenge. Now we were feeling like professional critiques and so we started suggesting additions and modifications, like including more mini-games or altering the main board  to make it more action pact. Now the HOD moved into the discussion. He told us that despite being interesting and tempting to follow our suggestions were useless as they were solely based on our player instinct. He said that we were taking the game away from the book on which it was supposed to be based on. Though in its current state the game was far away from the book, our additions also were no better. He asked us to read the book first and make suggestion later and till then we were only supposed to point out the weakness of the game. He then turned to the designer and told him to start work on the next prototype and  to try to bring it closer to the soul of the book or else he might end up making another maze game. Now we realized what we were doing wrong, for most of the time we were looking at the game with a player's perspective while we were supposed to look with a designer's perspective. Not that we have understood that perspective now but at least we're starting to. I failed to take notes of the comments made by our HOD otherwise you also could've had a piece of the guy's wisdom. Well thus we concluded the testing  of the first game.

The second game was much more fun than the maze thing. Well it was based on a particular event from Hindu mythology, a gambling game that was played between Yudhishtir and Duryodhan, the one which started the epic war of Mahabharata. The designer took the board layout and added his own rules to make a new gambling game. In this version of the game all players play the part of Yudhishtir so everyone is already destined to lose, the only way to win the game is to be the last an to lose. The Game works on complex reverse psychological mechanics. When a player advances on the board he wins all the coins placed as a bet by the other player but he keeps loosing the game itself as the goal of the game is not to reach the finish first but to be the last man standing on the board. The game already felt great as it is and the gambling part raised noise in the hall and we had a lot of fun and I think we may have gotten carried away as nobody was testing the game anymore we were rather just playing it now. When we finished we realized of s**t we forgot to write anything down to talk about. So this time when the designer came in all we could tell him was that the board could be visually more interesting. But then suddenly something hit my mind and I said "The game was fun with the gambling and all but I doubt the same level of success if the game was meant for four players instead of two". The HOD seemed to agree and I was going "hurray" in my head, it was like u hit a bulls eye in the dark. Apparently I  was right coz when the guy returned after two weaks with a prototype for 4 players we didn't find it that appealing since it ultiplied the game time by 4. Well after two rounds of testing each of these games we felt like some elite testers, but our faces were soon rubbed in the fact that it's a lie by our HOD. He told us that we were still not thinking like game designers.

 At the end of all this nobody has any idea what a game designer's perspective is, but I guess it will reveal itself soon or at least I hope it does.