Sixth Post
In school recently I’ve been learning about Japanese history (1990s). I’m doing an essay about the events that happened during that period, and how they might have affected futuristic media. A lot of early cyberpunk media was very bleak, dystopian, or otherwise pessimistic for the future. After talking about the events that have transpired from the time period with a friend of mine, I am far more interested in it than I may have once been. After a discussion about GANTZ, I learned that Hiroya Oku created it during the worst time period of his life. He had basically lost everything in his life, and was now trying to cope within storytelling. It’s a very powerful story; it made me want to look into more cyberpunk media and see what the authors had going on in their lives during the creation process. A friend of mine believes that the Knights in SEL are inspired by the doomsday cult that caused a biological attack on the Tokyo Subway, however I had not seen this mentioned anywhere when looking through wikis. It is still a very powerful thought to me, because the resemblences are a bit uncanny… However, I am outside looking in. I can create whatever ideas I want, and they may or may not be close to the truth. If, by chance, the author has some information he has never said to the public, and I managed to think of it by choice, then sure, that’s just fine.
Japanese
I failed my last Japanese test, but I was able to make small discussion with some friends of mine for once, which felt really nice. It helps a bit that one of them knew a bit of English, I’m always so shy talking to people in Japanese, because my pronounciation is horrible & so is my grammar. I often times forget which particle to use, or what certain words are. I wish I could remember information better.