The mindless self-indulgent otaku

Okay I've taken a while(almost a year)to upload this post.yeah it took me forever to write this,majorly because I've been putting  it off for a while.
 I'm usually into television series of sorts but in the recent years I have taken an interest in animes and mangas(japanese/chinese/korean graphic novels basically) and can now say I am absolutely addicted to them strangely enough.I could go on and on about how Naruto changed my life,rather got me hooked to anime and the amazing lessons i got to learn from it(no,really there are some hidden morals)and let's face it,it brings a lot of positivity. However,if I had to list down ten of my favouriteanime/mangas so far..they would be (not quite in the order of favourites) listed down as follows.Webtoons seems to be a genre that i left out but i will write about that someday.

10.Bleach

For obvious reasons,the ever-so fascinating concept of shinigamis(deathgods),and soul society that protects the people from evil spirits and every other supernatural aspect of it.Infact this was the first time I came across the concept of shinigamis,and realised a lot of the supernatural animes have shinigamis and other death god equivalents

9.Autofocus

Not that i'm a sucker for shoujo(romance)mangas but this one really  caught my attention.The simple undertone of romance and never over the top.The subtlety in a strange infatuation that develops into mutual admiration.Can never really put it in a word but even so worth a read.

8.Vampire Girl

Okay firstly don't go by the name,it has got hardly anything to do with the age old cliched vampire stories,the major plot infact revolves around a certain kind of "romance" and the irony that lies with the idea of karma and re-birth.This manga is really a masterpiece by Fujiwara kaoru.To me ,this manga is an admixture of the chaos theory and the domino effect,once a certain kind of external element is introduced,it sets in effect a series of events that be quite chaotic but eventually when pieced together ,makes sense.
Even the artwork is sketchy and has a gothic style to it which really is apt for the plot







7.Litchi Hikari Club

                                
This has got to be one of the most twisted,messed up,psychological thriller i've ever read (among mangas atleast).It could be ' The Clockwork Orange' of mangas.This transcended any idea i had of morals and principles and doesnt leave anything to your imagination.But even within its grotesque nature,it's quite a masterpiece.Its a comment on society and the perversity that exists within this framework.It questions one's very existence  and the artwork is very,very creepy.But i guess the author Furuya Usamaru has a penchant for creepy things.Which also brings me to my next favourite which also happens to be partly his work (because the original piece of literature is by osamu Dazai) called ningen shikkaku

6.Ningen Shikkaku(Alternative title:no longer human)
                                                       

This is  supposedly a famous piece of post world war japanese literature by an author called Osamu Dazai.The reason i mention this piece is not because the story is extraordinary or anything but its about a man who is completely vanquished by his insecurities that he feels like a failure as a human being,and how he succumbs to his anguishes and wishes to just disappear from the face of the earth.It is as depressing as it sounds but there was so much honesty in what he felt,that it got me curious, to look up osamu dazai just to know what kind of experiences must it take to come up with such a kind of literary work.It was then that i could literally draw parallels ,from the book to the true events that took place in his life.An abusive childhood-alcoholism-string of affairs-multiple attempts at committing suicide-not even alone at that but double ,all of these against the backdrop of the world war.So even if we think that how can a man meagerly be burdened with issues that seem banal to us ,well think about the day and age,the times he was born in.i think this book particularly as mentioned somewhere i read,was written during the last days of his life,so it was a probable result of post traumatic stress disorder.All of his works are truly, projections of his state of mind in those phases but in fragments,i'd say this book could be as close as you can get to understanding osamu dazai as a person,it encompasses the agony of not being acknowledged or as he would put it 'qualified' to be human,in an autobiography of sorts.

5.Dr. Du Ming

                              
I read this a long time ago.It is a Chinese graphic novel.For a fact i'm drawn to dark things,that appeals to me psychologically .As a result I loved the artwork as well the style of the narrative.The story keeps moving forward and in flashbacks,which maybe difficult to follow in the beginning but then it all makes sense.It starts of with a girl(who is the narrator's object of affection) ending her life.So the narrator tries to piece together what she might have gone through to take such a drastic step.Initially you just get a vivid image of her through the letters she writes to him but later as he reminisces about his encounters with her,there is a sense of clarity. The amazing thing is you never really get to know this woman who is shrouded with mystery,but only through the perceptions of the narrator,who obviously paints a very beautiful picture of her.

4.Elfen lied

                                
So Elfen lied ,like death note is unavoidable,when you are sucked into the realm of psychological thrillers and 'yandere' stuff as some may call it,you are bound to watch elfen lied at some point and like it.It quite reminded me of ghost in the shell trilogy and the entire cyberpunk oriented plots.But this anime is pretty gory,violent,definitely not for the weak hearted.Even though there isnt much to say about the plot as such,there is just a lot of destruction happening everywhere.But there are some animes in which you can just appreciate certain aspects of it,so well in this case i'd say i like the recurrence of the lilium music box theme .It essentially plays a major role so as to remind the main charactar who she really is/or who she once was.So everytime she went 'carrie' on people, terminating anyone(who gets in her way when she is enraged)this musicbox ,a token of the past that kept her cool.

3.Mirai nikki

                                  
This manga/anime is the epitome of yandere.Every character in this manga has his/or her own eccentricities.The plot has everything i dig,from the idea of time travel and parallel universes to a simple game of survival of the fittest.It is very crude and 'some'characters more than the others are plain sociopaths.There is absolutely no idea of normalcy in this psychotic plot whatsoever.Each and every character is gray and shrouded with a dark past ,each of them learn to manipulate and exploit the other in order to emerge victorious,losing their supposed innate sense of humanity.

2.So there was this phase when i liked animes/mangas with ninjas and assassins .I pretty much ended up watching every action related anime i could find,and ended up watching quite a few good ones actually-i like each of them for different reasons.One that id particularly mention is darker than black.Not only because i liked the action sequences but also the undefined/unspoken bond between the two main characters hei and yin.In the OVAs there were little instances you feel they were much more than partners that just assassinated people mindlessly but had a human side to them.
  

1.Death Note 

The character development,the background score,the pace of the plot everything was just about perfect.Although i cried and had withdrawal symptoms after the death of one of my favourite characters,after which honestly i thought it was a drag.The anime could've  just ended in 17 episodes but i kept watching anyway.There are particularly two things i liked about the plot,one being the twisted but brilliantly laid out mindplay between two people with their own sense of justice,which brings me to the next thing that i really loved,you never end up rooting for either of them until ofcourse one of them doesn't know where to draw the line between doing it for the general good and playing god which leads to a series of bad decision making on his part and by the end of it completely loses himself.So it really makes you think,when you have the power to do anything,what do you do with this insane amount of power,can it change you?a code that you live by and then one day you make principles that would be convenient to you,to justify your actions even when you have lost the basic sense of whats wrong and whats right,would that still make you righteous?

Darko'ed!

Donnie Darko-A Personal Apocalypse
This movie is Richard Kelley’s debut film as a writer-director.Before the making of this film,Kelly had directed a couple of short films.Donnie Darko can be easily termed as a surrealist/sci –fi/psychological thriller.
This movie is based on a book called’The philosophy of time travel” written by Roberta Sparrow(portrayed as ‘grandma Death’in the movie).If I were to explain the movie in two lines,I’d say it is about a highly intelligent teenager diagnosed with borderline schizophrenia who seemingly survives a tragic accident,who is in the quest for ending the temporal paradox cycle.
But there is much more to itthan that, which would on one level suggest that all the events that occur are psychological,but in a deeper sense it also talks about the possibility of time-travel .Donnie Darko (played by Jake Gyllenhal) is the protagonist who is experiencing several strange and surreal events, not the least of which is a jet engine crashing through the roof of his house,the jet engine which has not been reported missing from any plane.The strange events began to occur from October 1st,1988. The jet-engine is actually from October 30th(the future), disappearing through a time corruption 28 days into the past. This catastrophic event distorts spacetime ,creating a Tangential universe (TU).The movie as well as the book describes the concept of the Primary Universe(PU), which we inhabit, the Fourth Dimension of Time, and the highly unstable Tangent Universe. The formation of a Tangent Universe is an extremely dangerous event, which can cause the collapse and destruction of the Primary Universe.The two essential elements for time travel being water and metal.The metal being the Artifact, The Artifact is a metallic object which signals the formation of a Tangential Universe, and appear under mysterious and inexplicable circumstances.Hence the jet engine was the Artifact which the Living Receiver(Donnie, as the artifact falls in his room) had to bring back into the Primary Universe, thus closing the Tangent Universe before it can fatally collapse.The Living Receiver is often blessed with Fourth Dimensional Powers. These include increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water. And so in the movie, Donnie floods the school and burns down a house,.conjuring fire and water.According to the book,the Living Receiver is often tormented with terrifying dreams,visions and auditory hallucinations which are linked with the tangential universe. but one ,would be prone to confusing his psychological ability as a disability as one would perceive him to be delusional and schizophrenic.Two important characters which had the ability to completely turn the plot around were the ‘Manipulated dead’(Frank,theBunny/the person Donnie had previously shot in the eye,before the time-loop began, for running the car over his girlfriend Gretchen and ‘Manipulated Living’(Gretchen ,who’s death provokes Donnie to put an end to the time-loop).
The whole concept of time travel and the various portals that help in manipulating the past and future were quite intriguing.Since the movie was timed in the 1980’s period,the play of light and shadow came across very well even though the film was shot in the year 2001.Jake Gyllenhal’s performance was exceptional since throughout he appeared to be mentally ill but ironically he was the one who ultimately saves the world. Another interesting observation I made was that each of the characters were like the pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. Each of them played an important role in helping Donnie in returning the artefact.We witness this in various instances like Donnie’s science teacher who introduces him to the book called ‘philosophy of time travel’,then the English teacher(played by Drew Barrymore) talks about a literary work called ‘The Cellar Door’ literally guiding Donnie, since each of these characters(including Grandma Death) seem to have some kind of inside knowledge and a sense of what's going on as though they are all merely acting their lives as in a well rehearsed play, especially Grandma Death and her endless trips back and forth to the mailbox looking for Donnie's letter.To a certain extent,the movie also plays with the subconscious mind since Frank, whom Donnie had already shot in the eye in the primary universe was perceived by Donnie as theBunny with a bleeding eye(since Frank dressed as the Bunny for Halloween)when the Bunny from the tangential universe haunted him.The camera shots were also well taken as in many instances,the camera zoomed in to capture Donnie’s expressions which kept changing whenever he had epiphanies of the repetition of events.The background scores were also very interesting.The movie includes songs like "The Killing Moon" by Echo & the Bunnymen,Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Proud to Be Loud" by the Pantera,creating a whole atmosphere of the 80’s rebelious,teenage angst.The most interesting number,was at the song at the end of the movie”Mad World’ which is originally by the band Tears For Fears but the one included in the movie was covered by Gary Jules on the piano.I found this track particularly fascinating since the lyrics with the piano backdrop creates the feeling of surrealism.While the song is played in the background,the shot reveals the changes that overcome each person,the never ending time-loop had affected.Each of them have a certain memory of what had happened time and again.I think overall Donnie Darko,the movie has maintained the essence of the book without directly revealing the subject.Even though the concept appears to be convuluted,the series of events take place in a very logical way and are all connected,though one has to look out for the minor details which help in understanding the plot better with ofcourse the help of the guide’philosophy of time-travel’.
Donnie Darko got pretty extreme reviews.Though some believe the movie to be a cult film which many could not decipher and hence liked,others suggest that it is a coming of age,romantic black comedy about time travel,teen angst,dysfunctional suburban family (which is very evident from the kind of house they lived in).
Another movie that caught my attention ,as it deals with the similar subject of time travel and alternate endings is “The Butterfly Effect”.It deals with the idea of ‘what if’ scenarios which,in a way compels the main character(played by Ashton Kutcher) to remain in a time loop of sorts.Though in the movie,the tools used for time travel does not involve portals like water or metal,instead it was vaguely based on the butterfly effect which in turn is based on the scientific theory called the Chaos theory.Even though I enjoyed this movie as much as I enjoyed Donnie Darko,I think the concept of time travel was dealt more strongly in Donnie Darko than in The Butterfly Effect.Actingwise,both the movies had actors who performed exceptionally well.The Butterfly Effect stressed more on the alternate endings(what if scenarios) rather than the process while in Donnie Darko the alternate ending appears only at the climax of the movie.If I were to compare the special effectsin both the movies,The Butterfly effect being a more recent movie(2004)had better effects.Also,as a sci/fi,psychological thriller,Donnie Darko has a stronger concept.In the Butterfly Effect,the element of thrill lies more in the alternate endings rather than a problem the main character is dealing with,while in Donnie Darko the element of suspense remains till the end as the audience is perplexed whether the apocalypse is for real or in his head.

---- Sreya