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