Anime... Why haven't I grown out of it?

For a large amount of my childhood, I was very into anime. Not just anime, but the whole anime/manga/popular Japanese culture thing. I was into colourful characters with huge eyes, loved Japanese music, and became an all-around fangirl of the stuff. And I was often told by those older than me that anime was a phase, and I would grow out of it. And for a couple of years, I thought they had been right.

Look him in the eye and tell him he's not sexy... for a drawing. 

Work happened, harder school, a lot more duties fell onto my plate and I was forced to give up a lot of the spare time I was so used to having when I was younger. Things like anime, scifi shows and comics wound up getting put on the back burner while I worked to be able to afford the things I loved. I had less time to devote to hobbies, so a lot of things sat forgotten in the bottom desk drawer. I had limited time, so I wound up only following one or two comic series at a time and maybe watching one or two shows I was really into. That didn't leave much time for anime or manga. I was a grown-up and I had grown-up problems to deal with; a job, tax forms, trying to look put-together at family gatherings... I suppose anime wound up being forgotten for a while.

Part of the problem might have been pure tiredness. When I got home from a day at school or at work, I really didn't want to go rooting through different animes to find something new to watch, nor did I really want to go rooting through my old stuff to figure out what I wanted to re-watch. Basically, I didn't want to work for my entertainment.

To be honest, Netflix spoiled me.
"Instant queue." Can't get any easier.

I'm not sure what it was that brought me back to anime, but it started with Gundam SEED. It must have been something my ancient history prof had said, because one evening after that class, I went rooting around the anime drawer for it.

It was as if I'd never stopped watching. SEED led to SEED Destiny, the led to a re-watch of Death Note, which led to my friend forcing me to sit through an episode of Le Chevalier D'Eon which led me to where I am now, determinedly searching through new series that don't bore the crap out of me.

Does this ever get interesting?

But honestly, I couldn't explain it. Even cartoons I love as a child have lost some of their colour to me (the Transformers seemed more interesting when I was seven). But somehow, SEED was still as awesome to me as it was when it aired in 2002. (Honestly, has it been that long? Damn.) Sure, I laughed a little more at some cheesy dialogue, maybe made a few jokes at characters' expense, but who doesn't do that about their favourite things? The thing is, anime hasn't lost its appeal, even though I could now be technically classified as an adult.

Maybe it's my desire to never grow up. My bed is still covered in Transformers or Spider-Man sheets, there are still cartoons on almost 24/7, I still act like a five-year-old if I go out shopping with my mother. Maybe this could be the appeal, but I have a different theory.

I've met people of all age groups who enjoy anime and manga. There are titles out there to appeal to each and every one of them. You've got titles like Junjou Romantica or Gravitation for your teenaged girls, you've got titles like Naruto for younger boys. Then there are titles like Death Note and the various Gundam series that seem to hold universal appeal. Anime is not just another cartoon for children, it's a whole new art form that can take many forms. Certainly there are anime titles for younger audiences, but there are also those for older ones as well. It's like any other genre of entertainment. Why should it just be disregarded because people don't understand its appeal? I'm not saying everyone needs to like anime, it's a matter of taste, of course. All I'm saying as that anime fans seem to be getting a bad reputation, even with the more mainstream "nerd culture" that's growing. I think it's time or that to change.

Cheers.

There is nothing in this world better than fighting robots.

I miss tactical, turn-based gaming.

Call me old-school, call me a clumsy, all-around terrible gamer if you want, I just miss turn-based fighting in old-school video games. Looking back to 1986, when one of my favourite gaming series was released, you find games with covers like this:

Note: not as many dragons as you'd think.

But with graphics like this:

Half the size of the castle? That's me.

But here's the thing. I didn't care about the graphics. The graphics were, and still are when I break these games out, the last thing on my mind. First and foremost, I care about the story and their playability. Now, I'm not saying the original Dragon Warrior was an amazing fantastical masterpiece, but it did spawn my second favourite game of all time, Dragon Warrior IV.

Blow in me. Do it.

This game had it all, great characters, compelling story, long enough play time. The only thing it didn't have was fantastic graphics.

Although that's up for debate.
I almost believe those are real mountains.

But at the time this game was released, these graphics were state-of-the-art. And that was great. The limited technology available to game designers also affected how fighting could happen in games.

Hot damn I almost believe I'm there fighting.

But here's what I love about that style of fighting. It isn't that it's easy, although it's nice to just sit back and press a button to fight sometimes. I just enjoy the way it plays without detracting from the story. It also lets all the hard work done by artists who create monsters to not go to waste; it's a lot more difficult to see a monster when you're all over the place trying to kill it, rather than calmly fighting based on turns, which gives you a really good look at whatever it is you're fighting.

I've also come to see that a lot of these first-person games that have been coming out recently all look the same, play the same, and have similar stories (or lack of, in the case of all those shooting games). Now, there are, of course some exceptions to this, games that have done really well, or should be doing really well, such as Skyrim and Dishonored. These are games with fantastic stories and immersive worlds. The first-person view adds to the immersion without taking away from gameplay. But games like Final Fantasy, or Dragon Quest, or any other games that began as turn-based should remain that way. It's a formula that's worked well for them over these years.

Black Ops.

Modern Warfare. A different game, apparently.

I don't know, maybe I'm old. Maybe I just can't see the allure of the live-action, first-person games like the rest of the world can. If that's the case, I hope someone can explain it to me so I can understand it too.

Or maybe it's that game designers, particularly those tasked with story are simply getting lazy, or reusing the same old formula again and again because it worked. All I know is, we're seeing a degradation of fantastic story, or great games are being overshadowed by the same game being released over and over again (what are we at now, Call of Duty 54?). I understand that games like Call of Duty can appeal to more people than say, an epic about slaying dragons using magic. But does that really mean one has to be taken more seriously than the other? Yes, I understand that money is on the line and the Call of Duty franchise generates A LOT. And I'm not saying that enjoying war games like it makes you any less of a gamer than someone who's logged 40+ hours into a, RPG. That certainly isn't true, both people enjoy playing games and most likely do so frequently. They are just different types of gamers. But why, are we ignoring a whole slew of types of gamers to favour just one? Why can't I just sit back after a long day and press A, or X, or Circle, or whatever to fight? And if I'm up for a more challenging or immersive game, I'll grab something different like Dishonored or Dark Souls, or whatever's on hand.

The world of gaming has indeed changed. There are times when I'm very happy about it. Like when Dragon Warrior IV was remade for the DS with slightly better graphics.

Thank you, Nintendo, for bringing my childhood back to me.

But then I question, when a game that is strikingly similar to to its predecessor(s) is released, why we even bothered to make the leap into the future in the first place. Have we really come to value graphics over the game itself?

Now, I'm not claiming to be an expert, or even a hardcore gamer. I honestly haven't touched many games since I did my research paper on them and wound up ripping most of my favourite titles apart. All I'm saying is I long for the good old days, where we had no graphics to rely on to make sales, so we had to rely on a good story with solid characters instead of using the same game over and over again and just dressing it differently.

Well, that's my angry rant for the day.

Cheers.