Blogpost#4 The Sociology of Attack on Titan

We all have our fair share of favorite T.V shows, ranging from reality shows to T.V series. But my favorite show from last year  is the actually the anime called, Attack on Titan, also known as Shingeki no Kyojin in Japanese. It is an anime set on medieval times in an alternate world, where as humans stay inside three layers of walls, in order to protect them from the giants whose main goal is to eat humans, these giants are called Titans. Our protagonist is Eren Jaeger, his mother eaten by a titan, and now his main goal is to annihilate all the titans.

I found the show very addicting, once you've watched the first episode, I can guarantee you that you will be very hooked up with it. You'll eventually find yourself impatiently waiting for the next episode to come out. But there's something unusual about this anime, it was able to attract many audiences, unlike the mediocre anime, where it could only attract Japanese and other die hard anime fans. This one is different, it was able to make all kinds of audience  be addicted to it, and I'm here to discuss how.

As I was going through some articles that discussed how Attack on Titan was able to attract audiences, I found the article What is Attack on Titan?, by Ryan Lambie from denofgeek.com. The article quickly got my attention because the author's statements were very accurate, it talks about how the main antagonists of the show, the titans, has pretty much no objective and reasoning at all, their main goal is just to eat humans, thus making them irrational. We are captivated by the show because we fear irrationality, and when people experience fear in a show, they will surely be allured by it.

 As he quoted  "What makes the Titans additionally threatening is their lack of reason. Seemingly driven by no other purpose than to hunt and eat, they appear to have no intellect or society at all; in the anime, they're occasionally shown shambling around the countryside, twitching involuntarily. Who are they? Where did they come from? Isayama is in no rush to tell us, and that's what makes the story so unsettling and engrossing."
Every show has a strong point, and Attack on Titan's strongest point is its ability to make audience be engulfed in curiosity and fear. The audience knows so little about the antagonists of show, and besides the Titans, there are still a lot mysteries that needs to be solved. 

I browsed other articles that explained why people want to experience fear when watching T.V shows like Attack on Titan. I found this article entitled Why We Love to be Scared, by Charles Q. Choi on livescience.com. In the article, he discussed that when people experience fear, and there is no really chance of getting harmed, we feel this adrenaline rushing all over our body, but we are not scared, we actually like having this sensation where we feel very pumped and excited. We experience this when watching shows like Attack on Titan, because we are watching this show from a television, we know that there is harm that will come to us, but we still experience little fear  because we are really into the show. 


As he stated "If the brain knows there is no risk of really being harmed, it experiences this adrenaline rush as enjoyable, Rudd explained. The key to enjoying such thrills lies in knowing how to properly gauge the risk of harm". When most of us experience fear in reality, we end up trembling and nervous. But when we experience fear from just watching shows and movies, the feeling of being scared is different. We actually want to be scared when we watch shows like these, because when the credits roll, nothing actually happened to us in real life, but we still get to experience fear by just sitting and staring at a screen.  



Every show has its way with the audiences. Attack on Titan was able to make audiences scared and curious, and be immersed in its fictional world. Only a few anime, heck, only a few T.V shows today can have to ability to do what Attack on Titan can with its audience. This makes Attack on Titan, not just one of the greatest anime of all time, but the one of the greatest creations of mankind.

Blogpost#3 Do You Take This Pillow as Your Wife?

They say love comes in different forms, it can either be to an inanimate object or to a fictional character, or both. I too have my fair share of attractions to fictional characters, especially the anime girls. My fictional crush in this world is a character from the Attack on Titan anime called Mikasa. I'm not really that obsessed with her, I just find it peaceful if she is my wallpaper icon, and sometimes I wish she was real and she became my girlfriend, but I know that I could never live that fantasy. The case however, is different for a random citizen in Japan, as he is a man who lives his fantasy.

According to the article Strange: 28-Year Old Japanese Man Marries Pillow, written by Daniel from informationng.com, " The 28-year old Otaku (a Japanese term that roughly translates to somewhere between ‘obsessive’ and ‘nerd’), took that love a step further  by getting married to his pillow in a special ceremony that was well publicized in the local media after fitting it out with a wedding dress for the service in front of a local priest. The pillow has an image of Fate Testarossa, from the ‘magical girl’ anime series Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha. "

The man is actually a Korean and his name is Lee Jin-gyu, and he fell for the anime character, Fate Testarossa, who is a strong willed person and a very loving and caring person for her friends and family.  Lee also takes the pillow to dinner and the theme park. This being said, the man is very obsessed with his pillow, and he treats it as a normal person. Majority of the population may find this weird, but I don't find this particularly weird, because I heard a case like this before, the difference between this case and the one I heard about is, Lee married a pillow, while the other one I heard about married a video game character. 

Another statement by FLufee from smosh.com, from his article Man Marries Pillow, said that "This man apparently decided to get married to his pillow shortly after another man in Japan got married to his virtual girlfriend. Well, at least if you talk to a virtual girlfriend she will reply -- there's not a lot of pillow talk to be had with a pillow, hah see what I did there?".

We speculate that Lee did this just to get famous, but it is not guaranteed, for all we know, he could just be a man with a brain disorder or something. In my opinion Lee did not do this just to get famous, I believe he has "Toonophilia", a phillia where a real person gets really attracted to a cartoon or anime character.

If you ask me if this is right or wrong, I could only say either. It is good that this man does what he really wants, despite of this world's laws and rules. But it is wrong to take things this far just because of your obsession to an anime character. If there is one thing that this phenomena tells us, it's that anime is very influential to us, our addiction to it could take us to unusual places, these places could either be good or bad, the important thing is that they help us shape our personality.

Blogpost #2 The Revolutionary Anime: Dragon Ball Z

We all grew up watching out favorite TV shows in the morning. One of these shows that most us got addicted to is the anime franchise known as Dragon Ball Z. If you ask any person here in the Philippines, or anyone in the worlds perhaps, I doubt that they won't know anything about DBZ.

I first saw DBZ when I was about 7 yrs. old, it was Filipino dubbed on the channel GMA. After watching and getting addicted to it, it became my most favorite anime of all time. Up until know, I don't refuse to watch it over and over again. Now we wonder, why does this show attract so many audiences? Well, that's why I'm here to find out.

The story of DBZ revolves around Goku or Kakarot, a being from the alien race known as the Saiyans, and his battle and hardships as he strives to protect earth and its citizens. According to the article Greatest Shows: Dragon Ball Z, by an author with the username techman11 on retrojunk.com, "Despite Goku's super speed and strength, he is a kind, childlike protagonist with a cheerful personality and an air of innocence that the viewer cannot help but be attracted to. Yet for all his positive traits, Goku is a fierce and nearly unstoppable warrior in battle, never fighting for the wrong reasons, but only to protect his friends and the planet earth from the many baddies who inevitably get in his way. "

This being said, Goku is a very likable and attractive character because deep inside, we want to be like him. Not because of his overwhelming strength, but because for his love and affection for those that he cares about. Deep inside we all want to be a nice person who fights for the ones he loves, that's why so many people from different countries can relate to what Goku does.


But for every positive side, there is always the negative side. An article from Ramsey Isler, at ign.com, What's Wrong With Dragon Ball Z Part One, states that "Even the most die-hard fan of DBZ has probably, at some point, gotten tired of watching a five minute diatribe about some new technique or some past phase of the fight. Sometimes you just want them to shut up and fight already. But no, it would seem that hyper-powered beings love the sound of their own voices."





This tells us that every show has its flaw, and the flaw of DBZ, just like many other anime, is the over explaining of the flows of a fight, it's like thinking about a certain new technique to use in battle for about 10 minutes, while the battle only lasts for about a minute. DBZ seems to give more emphasis to the tactics and techniques used in battle, rather than the battle itself. I think that this structure in a show is the most unique aspect of anime, because they really think about the mechanics between a fight, not just creating a senseless fight scene. 
                                                                             







I learned many values from DBZ, these values are to never give up, we gain more strength if we protect others, not just ourselves, and that change can never be too late in life. It is now to safe to say that Dragon Ball Z is not just revolutionary when it comes to animation and story, but also to its effects in our society today. The success of  Dragon Ball Z is the sole reason why anime are still running strong in the present time.

Blogpost #1 Anime, Good for Society?

When I was in my high school days, I had trouble fitting in with other people. That is until a classmate of mine suggested a show for me to watch. The show he recommended for me to watch is an anime series, called "Sword Art Online". The anime is about players of a virtual role playing game who found themselves stuck inside the game, and if they die in the game, they die in real life, and the only way out is to defeat the final boss and to finish the game. I found the show very addicting, and I finished it for only one day. And after the day I finished it, my classmate and I found ourselves talking and talking about the show, and we ended up best friends.

Let's pass forward from my high school days to my first week in college. We all know that the first days of college are hard, because you barely know your classmates. But that doesn't the case for me, see I already had a lot of friends in my first week, thanks to our similar fixation to the phenomenon called anime.

                                                                                           

Amy McNulty, author of the article The Effects of Anime on Students, stated in her article that a researcher with a Ph.D. in Science and Technology studies, Lawrence Eng, conducted a research where in he will study the effects of anime on IT students.She stated in her article "IT students, Eng says, have generally been victims of a stereotype that casts them as antisocial and unapproachable. When IT students become anime fans, they're immediately accepted by all of the other students who like anime, as well as a community of fans on the Internet. This applies to any student who otherwise has difficulty making friends.".



But her article does not only say the good effects of anime to society. According to her article, back in 2009, two Oklahoma students like the anime "Death Note", which features a protagonist who wields a powerful notebook where he writes the names of the people he wants to die, in addition, he could also write the time and description of the deaths. These two students wrote the name of their most hated people, and the way they desire them to die. Similar incidents also took place in other places in America, such as Virginia, South Carolina, Washington and  Alabama.

Though there were no casualties involved, it was still a problem because it shows that students actually want some of their schoolmates to die. The matter has been resolved by their school principal, as he intends to discipline them him self, by suspending the two students.


Another article by Amy Mcnulty, The Good Effects of Anime on the Viewers, stated that "Anime art in its highest form may inspire filmmakers and animators around the world. Creators of U.S. animated films, such as Pixar/Disney executive John Lasseter, look to anime to find new ways to approach their own work. Director Hayao Miyazaki in particular has been influential; his 2002 film "Spirited Away" won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature." .  This being said, it now to safe to say animes are not just influentional, but can be insipirational as well.


Another statement in her article says that "Anime fans, like many media-specific fans, unite around their common love of a genre. Many gather online and at anime conventions around the world. Friendships, romances and even marriages have grown out of anime fandom.". She also declared that the anime can be used for education too, as some use manga and anime art to inspire students to learn more about the Japanese history and culture.













I think there are always bad sides and good sides when it comes to certain phenomena like anime. But I think that the good side of Japanese animation easily outweighs the bad side. Anime may be a bad influence to some people, but being an anime fan myself, I find that there more good values and virtues taught by just watching anime. One example of this is the anime Naruto, the protagonist is a hardworking ninja who wants to be the "Hokage", meaning the leader of a village. The show teaches us that no matter the obstacles and challenges in life, if we have the resolve and determination, we would eventually overcome it, and become the greatest we could ever be.  I believe anime is not just good for our society, it is also needed, especially in our world today, where morale and character is very important.