Sci-Fi Satire

We started off the class with Idiocracy, I've heard of it before but never seen it.  It was funny but a bit scary at the same time; sometimes I think our society is headed in that direction...which is terrifying.  I just think our generation doesn't care about the important things in life and their morals are very skewed.  Some people can't even cook packaged Ramen...HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO COOK RAMEN???  The people of Idiocracy probably wouldn't know how to cook it either...

I really loved The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.  We have all these "How To" books out there, but it's funny when the subject is something we've never experience/will never experience.  I've always loved outer-space; I use to want to become an astronomer, and I still haven't given up on my dream of traveling to outer-space.  The idea of exploring galaxies, encountering different creatures, and not having earth to return to is both an exciting and terrifying concept.  I told myself I wouldn't bring up anime this time, but I can't not bring up Space Dandy!  The anime studio was definitely inspired by Hitchhiker's Guide.  The anime is about Dandy, an alien hunter, and his space travels.  He has two comrades, Nya (a cat-like alien), and his personal cleaning robot, QT.  They spend their days attempting to catch rare aliens to make ends meet, usually failing, and going to the space bar called Boobies...a bar filled with cute waitresses who are quite dumb and have nice "boobies".  They show is really funny- watch it!

In Class Assignment

What do you think the world would be like in five years?

Lots of debt...I'll be in debt.  Too many kids will be glued to their electronics. 

What do you think the world would be like in ten years?

Dirty, out of resources, hot, seriously screwed...and still in debt
 
What do you think the world would be like in twenty years?


  Debt...lots of extinct animals and no more ice...lots of war...we are screwed

What do you think the world would be like in fifty years?

I really don't want to imagine that far ahead...hopefully I will have payed off my dead at least...?

Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake was perphaps one of the most confusing stories ever.  Sometimes I thought, is this real life?  Is this our time?  Is this the future? Is this another universe?  Certain demeanors were familiar and certain things seemed barbaric and alien to me.  Jimmy seemed pretty human...at least he had a human boys name...and he was interested in born and girls (specifically Oryx).  Crake is in a relationship with Oryx before Jimmy though...love triangles man.  

Anyways, a disease breaks out after Jimmy began working for Crake.  Crake doesn't like the Crakers, and he becomes enraged when he sees Jimmy locked up with them and Oryx.  He slits Oryx's throat, thus causing Jimmy to shoot Crake.  Jimmy then becomes responsible for taking care of the Crakers.

It was the weirdest story ever.  And I pictured the Crakers as little moon people sheep made out of cheese.

...I can't think of any anime that this is similar to this story for once. 

The Aquatic Uncle was probably even more weird though.  Long story short, lil' dino-kun fell in love with furry-chan and then he introduced furry-chan to his uncle, aquatic-ojiisan.  Furry-chan falls in loe with aqautic-ojiisan and leaves dino-kun.  The end. 

Both stories were so anime in terms of the love triangles and yandere feelings...but the subjects were so different from the norm that it was hard to truly envision the story in my head.

SciFi and Diverse Positions

This weeks reading gave me the heebie jeebies.  Dawn was about a woman who essentially becomes an experiment for these people.  Constantly being woken up, being experimented on, and then being put to sleep for a while again...the cycle constantly continued.  They treated her like a slave- refusing to even give her clothing.  She would wake up and scars on her, not knowing where or how she got them...or what they did.  It was awful...and it reminded me of society's terrible past.

In class, we read Blood Child which was a super weird story and the end was borderline bestiality to me...I mean, I know she could talk and was kinda like a "human"...but he body sounded like a tentacle insect and their morals were so skewed and barbaric that it just seemed wrong.  HE DID IT WITH A WEIRD INSECT THING! Grossness aside though, I thought I was going to read a "normal" story until they were talking about how they were drinking eggs and getting drunk off of them.  I was fine with the idea of men giving birth, but I didn't like the idea of it being larva...and it kinda exploding men almost.  It was gross...so gross man.

P.S. I brought this anime up in class, but this weeks theme reminded me of Suisei no Gargantia!  You find out in the end that the aliens humanity had been fighting for hundreds of years was actually humans who chose to evolve so that they could survive the end of the world and relocate to outer-space.

Mythic Fiction

Neil Gaiman has always been one of my favorite authors...I have most of his books, my favorite being Neverwhere!  A lot of his books have some symbol of innocence in it, and an event that causes its corruption.  All of us had some of our innocence corrupted one way or another while we were growing up.  I know I lost some of mine when the Twin Towers were brought down.  I saw people jumping from the building, choosing that death over burning inside the towers.  I knew that I knew some of those people; they were neighbors, parents of my classmates, family friends...it was horrifying.  I was only in 3rd grade, but I knew what was going on.

The main narrator loses his innocence starting with the death of his cat, and then when he sees the corpse of the man in his dad's car.

The ending gave me a huge shock- he realized he had done this many times before, and had in fact, "died" of sorts before.  It's almost like he is in this constantly repeating world loop. The Higurashi no Naku koro Ni series has a similar theme; the characters all die, and then in the next episode they are alive again.  You soon learn that this has been happening for years and years, and the only way to escape this loop is by remembering that these events have happened before, realizing you are stuck in a loop, and avoiding death...it was a really gory, scary anime. 

Cyber Punk and Steam Punk

Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of cyber/steam punk anymore because it's so overused in the game industry.  However, the one thing I do like about it is that this genre generally has strong, independent women (instead of a damsel in distress).  What I wanted to highlight was two titles that fell under the cyber/steam punk category, but didn't have strong female protagonists.  Chobits was an anime about personal computers that had the form of a human, essentially a robot.  Chii is childlike, weak, clingy, frilly, and can't say more than chiiii~....It was a terrible anime.  They wanted to incorporate a cyber punk idea, but made it lame cyber frill.  The next title I want to talk about it Bioshock Infinite.  It's one of my favorite video games ever, but I don't like the female protagonist very much.  Elizabeth is does have her strong moments, but quite often she would have her "no~ I'm running away! Come find me and save me!" moments, which did not aid to the character at all.  Considering how steam punk inspired the environment was, it would have been nice if they kept the strong heroin theme.

Multi-Verse

While this came off as similar to Space Opera (due to the content) I feel it can apply even to stories that take place on earth.  In Steins;Gate, Okabe and Daru create a cell-phone, microwave time machine.  At first no one believes him, and he doesn't believe it himself.  But then when he sees his phone has texts messages from the future, warning him of Kurisu's death...and he sees the death himself, he realizes that he time traveled.  The story continues, the experiments increase, and they get noticed by the government.  Time and time again he travels between different "world lines", searching for a universe where no one dies. 

The idea that there are other world lines is both interesting and terrifying to me.