Problems with the New York Times 2-D Love Article

So... I'm sure many of you heard about the story in the New York Times entitled "Love in 2-D" already (I don't follow the New York Times, but I first heard about it from DarkMirage's site).

(Nemutan the described 2-D girl in the article)

To give it some context (courtesy of some wikipedia searches :P), the New York Times is "the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States", has been around for over 100 years, and the online site received 18 million visitors in only one month (stats as of December 2008). It appalls me that they would publish such biased literary dribble. It seems that objectivity in news is a thing long dead... The link to the full article is here.

Summarizing the article, they basically talk about this guy (Nisan) who carries around a 2-D pillow case with him and treats her/it as if they were going out. He brings the pillowcase to restaurants and pretends as if they were two real people eating (he orders food for her/it as well). They drive together and he tries to be respectful of her (ensuring he does not touch any of her/it's private areas). Throughout the article, she keeps using keywords that signal pedophilia to the reader.

However, my issue is not with the fact that the article was written, the guy actually exists and the 2-D love phenomenon does exist. It's the fact that the writer took a small extremist subsect of otaku culture and wrote as if all of otaku culture matched this man.

As a fan of anime myself, I do not go around eating and driving with a pillow case whom I believe to be my wife. In fact, of all my friends who do watch anime, none would match the description that the article gives. I am sure that even if you have ever been to any cities with a significant asian population (ie. Vancouver, Toronto, Tokyo, Hong Kong), you would have never seen a man like Nisan. That is because, they aren't the normal otaku. Many of us aren't even into the 2-D girls and focus more on the mecha side of anime. Even those who are into 2-D girls are not as extreme as the guy described. Lots of western society isn't very knowledgeable about Otaku culture and anime in general.

In conclusion, I am just disappointed with such a large newspaper writing with a total lack of objectivity. The only thing the article achieves is to spread fear to its readers of Japanese subculture and create inaccurate stereotypes of otakus.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

So... everybody's who's anybody has probably at least heard of the 6th installment of the Harry Potter series coming to the big screen. I've read all the books in the series and consider myself a fan of the series, but not a serious enough fan to go and see it during the first week of it's release. I waited till a few days ago in order to avoid the massive 2 hour line ups.

**Warning Spoilers Ahead**

To be fully honest, I had forgotten a lot of the details of the book by now, so at least some elements of the movie were a surprise (of course, I still remember big plot lines such as the death of dumbledore "in snape's hands".

I sort of liked the introduction with showing us Harry and his interaction in the muggle world (in the cafe with the waitress)- not sure anymore if this was in the book?. My summer has been pretty boring so far, university summers tend to drag on forever!! (4 months). With medical school starting in fall, I cannot wait for the summer to end and for me to start up school again (this is the first time i've ever looked forward to school :P) and I could kind of relate to Harry. According to wizard rules, Harry wasn't able to use any of his magical abilities till school and spending his entire summer isolated from his friends in the muggle world must have been intensely frustrating! I've also wondered what his life in the muggle world during the summer was like, but we were never given much information about it (only the first chapter or so in the novels). If he perhaps lived a normal human life and did most of the things we do...

On a side note, I thought the cafe as the subway station was a kind of cool idea (although I'm not sure how safe it would be to work a midnight shift at a cafe like that...) Tons of times I am taking the subway late at night, when there are like 15-30 minute gaps between the trains and I would love to just sit down and maybe grab a cup of coffee while I wait.

There was very little filler content in this installment and we began to jump right into the action. The story kind of picks up and becomes a lot darker than the previous series, befitting the events unfolding in the story. Our characters begin to experience love and we see a lot more relationships in the movie as well. (Think back to Harry/Ron in the Goblet of Fire and the epic facepalm romantic moments). I don't know how many people would agree with me, but I also found it infinitely satisfying when Lavender finally got pwnt by Ron, after seeing her on screen for 10 or 20 minutes, I began to become really annoyed with her character.

Ginny and Harry finally hook up near the end of the movie and so do Hermoine and Ron. I think the first two were a good match in terms of personality but I am a little more skeptical of the last two. Hermoine and Ron seem on opposite ends of the world and I have no idea how they would interact with each other for a lifetime.

The one big surprise I did have was who the half-blood prince was. I didn't quite remember the identity of the prince (I read the novel way back when it first came out) and although I remembered it wasn't Voldemort/Tom Riddle, I couldn't quite nail down who it was.

**Warning 7th novel spoilers ahead**

Overall, I thought the movie was done fairly well, well spaced and done action scenes as well as a fairly good cast. However, I thought that the way Snape chatted with Dumbledore made it pretty obvious that there was a prior agreement for his killing Dumbledore, but that could just be because I knew that already.

I do genuinely enjoy the plot twist though. Throughout the first 5 novels, you would always be led to believe that Snape was the one responsible for the events of the novel and the reader always questioned Snape's true intentions. The sixth book almost satisfies all of them and I remember going "I knew it", but I ended up being blown out of the water in the seventh when Snape's entire character is revealed.

However, the last comment I wanted to leave was about the disappointment with the series as a whole. I felt the first few books were really genuine and were truly amazing but as time went along, it seemed the novels began to become loaded with fanfare. Additionally, the series had so much potential to become a work of literature and for JK Rowling to really say something about the human condition. I really thought that the series could have become something that people decades in the future could look back to and read in english class, something that may not have been Shakespeare level but at least on par with Mark Twain or Jane Austen. Instead she loaded the end of the series with a happily ever after ending that even the dimmest of readers could have easily predicted from book 5.

First Post

So, after a long while of intending to start a blog, I finally have. I decided not to get on the wordpress/blogger trains and use joomla (sadly, I can't do anything more basic than that... html, etc are way out of my scope) to make it. Bear with me while I begin to learn all the intracacies involved in joomla management :). Been trying to tweak around with the CSS, got some of the things done or figured out, but haven't been able to change everything yet! Namely, I can't seem to get rid of the little box ontop of all my posts. Will try and fix things up further in the future!