Fall TV Shows I’m Excited For

So… yeah, even though I haven’t got my TV set up in my dorm room yet (it’s 2 damn cords… it’s not that difficult!), I’m looking forward to the fall lineup.

As a geek, I feel obligated to point out that “Heroes” on NBC is going to be back on next week, and although I absolutely detested the ending last season (it was so illogical), I’m anxious to see if it’s going to be better this time around. The show usually starts out pretty well at the beginning of the season, but it always, always, ALWAYS seems to peter out around the middle, get a bit better, and then craps out again. Last year, they did fire Jeph Loeb, one of the producers, who was making “Heroes” shittier and shittier, so I’m a bit more hopeful now than I was before.

Another show I’m looking forward to is “Chuck”, which started airing during the WGA strike two years ago. It’s also on NBC right before “Heroes” (at least on the East Coast) and I watch it because… it’s… funny. Yep. It’s very funny. It’s about a Buy More (parody of “Best Buy”) employee named Chuck Bartowski who somehow got a government mindfuck in his head that lets him “flash” (basically, learn everything about something instantaneously) on people/things in the government database if he sees it in real life. He’s being guarded by a hot, hot CIA agent (played by Yvonne Strahovski) and a whacko NSA agent (played by Adam Baldwin) and they have crazy-fun adventures together! The story and plot is mildly preposterous, but… I dunno. The characters are endearing and the dialogue is very, very good. So… yeah, I like “Chuck”.

I’m also looking forward to “House” on FOX. I hate FOX News, and I hate how the company markets some of their less mainstream TV shows (“Firefly”… grr…), but I still love “House”. I also appreciate how they’re trying to change some things this season by having House start in the nuthouse… YAY!

So… yeah. That’s basically it. Oh yeah, “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” are pretty cool too, but they’re on all year round, so I dunno if you can really say that they have seasons…

Oh, one more thing. The anime club at my university is meeting again… so I’ll probably end up going there too. To watch Japanese stuff. It’s always good at the beginning of the year because they’re new people… and new people are good. Inevitably though, most of them wander off, but a couple of them stick. So… yeah. I hope it’s better this year. I hope their are more girls… because geek girls are AWESOME. Fan girls less so… but whatever.

My Objection to Dramatic Irony… and a bit more about teen pregancy

Funny bit of the day:

“I feel like I’ve leveled up in life…”
*perks up* “In sexual ways?”
*resignedly* “Sadly, I’m still at Level 1 in that regard…”

HA! I liked that bit.

Anyway, I read some manga today and for the first time, I realized what I hated most about some manga: Dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is when something happens and the audience knows it, but some of the characters don’t. An example of this would be when a modern audience reads “Oedipus Rex”. The modern audience already knows that Oedipus is sleeping with his mom (which, by the way, is incredibly fucked up), so they’re basically just waiting for the “big reveal”. The only problem is… THERE IS NO REVEAL. Dramatic irony kills any sort of surprise because in essence, there is no surprise. Not for the audience/reader, anyway. In “Kimi no Iru Machi”, which is one of the manga series I’m currently reading, you already know that this girl is going to fall for this guy, not because there’s any sort of foreshadowing, but because the perspective suddenly shifts from the male protagonist to one of the other female characters. It’s total crap! And I hate it and wish it would go away…

*I DON’T KNOW IF ANYONE IS READING “SUZUKA” BY SEO KOUJI, BUT IF YOU ARE, THERE ARE SPOILERS*

And a separate note, I very much liked Seo Kouji’s previous work, “Suzuka”. I found the teen pregnancy ending to be much… better than that in Juno. It was… I dunno. Both more happy, and less happy. Because… Akitsuki (the male protagonist) and Asahina (female protagonist) do end up married and they have a happy life with each other, but I feel like they gave up on their own potential for the sake of happiness. For example, they both lost their chances of going to university and neither of them ever pursued sports, even though they were clearly very talented in their respective sports.

I feel like… we give up a part of our happiness in order to attain our full human potential, and by potential I suppose I mean societal recognition. Generally, most people are destined to be… little more than cogs in the wheels of civilization. It’s either that or being a huge fucking wrench in the plans. But sometimes, there are innovators. There are geniuses who revolutionize thinking, like Descartes, Edison, Einstein, Newton, and a bunch of other really smart people. A recent Nobel Prize winner (I forgot his name) for some kind of science (I forgot the field too) said something about having to sacrifice having a family and children for the sake of the Project to benefit mankind. When I talked to my Dad about wanting a head a major research project after college, he objected and said that I wouldn’t have any time for myself.

I suppose, to a certain extent, there’s only so much time we can dedicate. We can choose to dedicate time for work, school, careers, and saving the world or we can choose to dedicate time for family, friends, children, and personal happiness. But, we can’t be in two places at once and as such, we can’t do both things at once. Some could argue that saving the world IS satisfying. I would argue that they’re a lying pile of shit. Saving the world and other such altruism is admirable, but you can’t be a full-time hero and have a good family life. Spider-Man taught me that. So, my question is, if you were given the choice between being a great benefactor to the faceless masses of mankind or leading a very happy, fulfilling life with a loving family, which one would you choose if you had to sacrifice the other?

… I think I’ve kinda strayed away from the original topic at hand… again…

Suzuka

So, recently I’ve been reading a manga called “Suzuka”. It’s basically about a high school track student named Akitsuki Yamato (first name: Yamato, last name: Akitsuki) and his high school trials and tribulations, most of which revolves around the significant female characters in his life, his interaction with them, and how track and field affects him and those around him. For the most part, it’s about Akitsuki’s relationship with one girl in particular named Asahina Suzuka (first name: Suzuka, last name: Asahina), who is a national-level high jump athelete.

So, basically how I go about reading manga is that I find a series that’s already finished, find out if I can download all the volumes, and if so, I download all of them. In this way, I can read all of them quickly and I won’t be salivating for weeks over the next volume. I think doing this increases my excitement and connection with the characters… until I forgot some of them names (-_-;)… in which case Wikipedia becomes incredibly helpful! (^_^)

In any case, the story kind of reminded me of a situation high school. Basically, Akitsuki became infatuated with Asahina at the very first moment that he met her. The first time he confessed to her, he got rejected… HARDCORE! Like, the girl (Asahina) was nice about it… but their previously friendly relationship totally fell apart. Which is exactly how it went the first time I got confessed (;_;)… Anyway, so now that I’ve shared that little snippet… LET’S MOVE ON! 速くして。。。

The funny thing is… Akitsuki ends up going out with another girl (Hanako) right afterwards, and they broke up in dramatic fashion since the girl figured out that he was still in love with Asahina (the first girl). This served to illustrate that despite his efforts to be a good boyfriend, Akitsuki was only trying to be a good boyfriend to not hurt Hanako, not because he actually liked her. Anyway. That’s not related to me though.

These last few blog posts have been a bit rambling. Oh well.

shoujo to shounen manga

少女と少年

実わ。。。読む漫画をする。

I don’t know if I did that right or not. *shrugs*

Anyway, I’ve been reading a lot more manga recently now that classes are over. I find most of the stuff I read after I find a reference to some particular manga related to whatever Wikipedia article I was reading. I’d then read the Wikipedia article about that manga and then I’d go to Mangatraders to download all the available volumes. That’s how I started reading Yotsuba&, Azumanga Daioh, Ichigo 100%, DearS, and Suzuka.

In my literary/digital adventures into the manga-ized life of a Japanese teenager, I’ve begun to wonder how much manga has influenced Japanese teenage life. That is, I wonder if manga is influenced by Japanese teenagers or if Japanese teenagers are influenced by manga. Undoubtedly, many Japanese teenagers stop reading some types of manga after a certain age, considering them to be childish. Instead, they pick up manga from different, more mature, genres. Of the genres I read intended for a teenage audience, one I I find highly entertaining is the “high school drama”. Conventional American TV high school dramas are more sexually mature than Japanese high school dramas, most likely due to the (supposedly… I can’t say if it’s true or not) repressed sexuality that is… prized? I dunno… I don’t want to say something particularly stupid… OH WELL.

Anyway, there are different high school dramas directed to either male or female teenage demographics. Initially, I found little difference between them, but after reading them, I think I’ve found the single defining feature: Manga directed to males have RIDICULOUSLY more fan service. Too bad real life isn’t like this… wahhhh….. 書がない。。。

Besides this, though, I find that there is little difference. The characters are as varied as the genre allows them to be and they’re always sprinkled with a bit more of the “pretty” powder than the average cupcake. The main characters can be either male or female. So far, most of the manga I’ve read dealt with male main characters, but that’s probably because of my method of finding manga often leads me to manga similar to whatever I’m reading at the moment, leading to a perpetual cycle of finding more and more similar manga. I find that if the author is male, the main character tends to be male, but if the author is female, then the main character’s gender seems less important. Some of CLAMP’s work, for example, deal with male main characters even though all the manga-ka in the group are female. Ichigo 100% is another example of a female manga-ka writing with a male main character. I think this is probably because females have more… unique problems than males, at least in the high school drama genre.

I find that the endings are also quite interesting. In most of the American high school dramas that I’ve watched on TV (okay, HEARD about from other people), the guy and girl usually end up together… all happy and everything. This contrasts with the manga I’ve read so far, where oftentimes the guy and the girl DON’T end up together. Prime example: Ichigo 100%. Manaka, the main character, has his choice of 3 (or more? I can’t remember… and technically it was never really a choice for him) girls, and he didn’t end up with any of them. He actually just failed his college entrance exams and ended up travelling the world to make indie films for a living… which actually isn’t that bad, I guess. BUT STILL. He didn’t get the girl. This genre of manga also tends not to have much sex either. I find that the Japanese are more open with their sexuality than Americans EXCEPT when it comes to the actual ACT of sex, in which case the Japanese are about the same, if not a little more… Victorian. Nudity, near nudity, sexualized content, and “suggestive themes” (fuck you, MPAA and ESRB, fuck you…) is not nearly as taboo in Japanese media than in American. No, more emphasis is placed on a single kiss, a hug, or something like that. Simple physical contact. Not like PHYSICAL contact, but just like… a touch on the arm or something.

Yep. That’s it. I didn’t really have a point in this.

OH YEAH. And one of my blog posts is getting a ridiculously higher level of activity than all the others. And I got 10+ hits today before I even posted a blog. Ordinarily, I’d only get 10+ if I specifically stated that I had a new blog post up. So. That was weird.

Ridiculously Cute Youtube Video

This is ridiculously cute: