Life in Quadrant 4

The title is misleading however, as my case in point is actually in manga. So is this picture.

There are a good number of people in the aniblogosphere (god, using that term feels weird) whom I respect quite a bit. One of those people is Owen / Saturnine. Around a year ago, he recommended (placed a link to Amazon) Solanin which I ended up buying on impulse when I saw it on the bookstore’s shelves. It now sits proudly near front-and-center of my bookshelf, and gets a quick read-through whenever I get all sentimental and stuff. Thing is, something’s always on the back of my mind – I cannot for the love of god, figure out the subtext.

This has been a problem of mine; I see myself as a pretty straightforward guy, and when it comes to things like these, I fail horribly at reading in between the lines. Same goes with Darker then BLACK’s first season. But you know what, I enjoyed the hell out of those two media. They’re way up there alongside ARIA and Yotsuba and Mushishi as some of the best stuff I’ve read or watched. However, I can’t help but feel that I’m always going to be missing the better half of the goodness of the media until I piece together all the motifs and symbols and deeper subtext, and that I’m going to be relying on other people to break things down for me.

Though in the end, we’ve all got a myriad ways of appreciating things, and as long as we enjoyed the work, where’s the wrong in that?

PS: Oh, and before I forget, here’s a nice short by the same author.

I don’t remember having read anything about this in recent history, but it feels like a topic that’s been discussed so much before that I feel like I’m beating a dead horse now. Anyway.

There are, I think, two types of shows (and similarly, two ways of watching) – ones that you enjoy, and ones that you appreciate.

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Lately, I’ve been quite into headphones – those lovely halos of sound that wrap around your head. To me, there are few things that could so wonderfully furnish a person than a pair of cans.

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Why do I blog? What keeps me going? I’ve asked myself those questions whenever I went on hiatus (often) and I don’t think I’ve quite yet answered those questions.

Ultimately, I’ve narrowed it down to three main factors: expression, reflection, and interaction.

Expression. This is pretty much what blogs are all about: expressing what’s on your mind, be it about symbolism and shinboism, about how wonderful the world is, or whatever else comes to mind. Because the blog, unlike say, a review site, is a lot more informal in terms of style, yet it maintains some proffesionalism that what you say is clearly distinguishable from oh, a forum post. Furthermore, because of the free nature of the medium, you can post whatever you damn well please, as Sankaku Complex demonstrates quite clearly. The blog is a burgeoning new form of medium that allows anyone to have a say, and now is a great time to be part of it.

Reflection. I like how blogs provide a venue for you to mull over things. In Real Life™, anime has virtually no place in more serious circles of society, leaving few chances for us to be able to think over that last episode in that certain anime, or the lines of our favorite characters. Blogs give us the opportunity to ponder all we like about that, and further encourage us to continue doing it.

Interaction. This is really what makes web 2.0, web 2.0. With the advent of all these social networking sites, user-controlled data, consumer-generated media, and all that jazz, interaction has really become one of the core components of the internet today. To bloggers, this means feeds, aggregators, and basically sharing the love. And let’s face it: there’s a lot of love to share.