Saturday, September 23, 2006

I am a nerd

A couple years ago, I took a class on Chinese vernacular stories. It was a pretty interesting class, and in it we studied a bunch of different theories about the characterization of different characters in these stories. Although sometimes these stories were thousands of pages long, they didn't really fall into the Western definitions of what a novel should be. What struck me particularly was talking about the characters, since a lot of the characters are pretty one dimensional, or sometimes morally confusing. Another thing that I remembered was the theory that sometimes two characters compliment each other by being completely opposite.

So recently I got addicted to manga and a lot of these sort of characterizations started to come to mind as I read it. Yes, I know manga comes from a different country with its own distinctive literary traditions, but still. There's always the dark haired, calm, often cool analytical character vs. the light haired, angry, passionate, not particularly rational character. Furthermore, there are often lots of characters that seem like they contrast with each other. And often in fight scenes it becomes the battle of the two opposites. Although most main characters have many opposites. As well as fighting characters that are in some ways, similar to, or parallel to themselves.

Monday, September 18, 2006

It's been a long time

I've been lazy, and not really very busy. However, the main reason I haven't posted in 3 weeks is because during these three weeks, I finally discovered youtube. Yes, I know, I'm lame. I had always heard of youtube before. But I hadn't ever really seen any way that it benefitted me. Usually it seems like people post "funny" or obscene videos on it. However, three weeks ago, I discovered that this was a way to watch anime for free. And thus I became addicted.

I finished watching Bleach, the anime based on a manga that I like. It's about a 15 year old boy who becomes a death god and has various adventures. There's some humor and a lot of fighting, some emoting.

And also recently Monster, which is about a brilliant Japanese expatriate surgeon in Germany trying to hunt down a serial killer boy whose life he once saved.

Yes, this is how I spend my life these days. Well that and attempting to write my personal statement for my grad school applications. My secret fear is that I'll flake out and I won't hand anything in in time.