So One Manga is down. The online reader has been disabled. The site’s still there, still has plenty of features, but no one’s going to be reading any manga there for the foreseeable future. Of course, this happened over a week ago, but I didn’t have Internet access for most of the last week, so it was kinda hard to comment.
Honestly, I don’t expect my life to change much. I mean, I didn’t use One Manga. And it’s not like every manga reading site is down; Manga Fox is still functioning, last I checked. But the only thing I read there is Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force, and I’ll be in Japan soon enough buying the actual manga myself. So yeah.
I’ll be honest: it’s hard for me to muster up any regret over this one. Or should I say, it’s a little bit difficult to repress my sense of “had it coming”. Let’s be honest with ourselves: what One Manga was doing was, in all probability, illegal. And the only thing stopping me from saying that’s beyond any doubt is because I am not familiar with the relevant laws in the necessary detail. But I would be very surprised if it was permissible, under either Japanese or American copyright laws, to read things like Naruto and One Piece without legally paying for them.
Really, though, the legalities don’t matter as much as you’d think. Certainly, they didn’t stop uncountable masses of manga fans from using sites like One Manga. And I am perfectly fine with that. I’ve read manga online myself; I did so just before writing this. (Caught up on the aforementioned Nanoha manga.) I do not care what decisions people make in situations where those decisions do not affect me.
What I do have a problem with are people that, willfully or not, delude themselves as to the nature of those decisions. Most people don’t think about it, I’d bet. Certainly I don’t spend every minute of reading Nanoha thinking “wow, this is illegal and I shouldn’t be doing it.” But neither do I tell myself “it would be an injustice if I couldn’t do this.” I have made my decision, and I will not lie to myself about the nature of that decision.
And I think it’s almost more important to recognize that every decision carries its consequences. Even the decisions that can be recognized as “justified”, whatever that means. And sometimes those consequences deserve to be questioned or challenged. But they can never be avoided or tossed aside.
To use a somewhat extreme example, if someone chooses to kill another over a minor disagreement, in some places they can be killed by the government in return. Some people question whether the death penalty is in fact justified or not... but for the moment, it continues to exist. And anyone who chooses to commit the crime of murder, in a place where the death penalty exists, should be prepared for the relevant consequences, including the death penalty.
Of course, I seriously doubt that most criminals actually have considered that factor beforehand. But the point remains. I do not care what decisions people make... but I can have little respect for people that make those decisions without being willing to accept the attendant consequences of their actions.
The people that set up and run One Manga made a conscious choice to do so. They made that choice with full knowledge, or at least full access to knowledge, of the relevant laws and controls governing the use of material like the manga that they posted to the Internet. And now, the consequences of that choice have taken effect. Frankly, if I were one of them, I’d be glad that they were no more severe than “cease and desist.”
So many people aren’t. It’s apparent anywhere on the Internet. Any half-decent comment thread, on any subject at all, descends into ridiculous chaos if it’s not moderated. Which really just goes to show that no one’s reading these posts here on my blog, because no one’s insulting me about them. Either that, or everyone who reads my opinions agrees with them, and I know better than to hope for that.
Why is it that people on the Internet seem to have no self-control in randomly insulting people for their honest opinions? Well, the most obvious answer is that people in general have issues with impulse control. I remember one memorable incident: I was waiting for the next train at a Boston commuter rail station, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the symbol of Brandeis University. Apparently, that T-shirt inspired someone to come up and tell me that they seriously disapproved of the university.
Open such a declaration of affiliation or opinion to the entire world, as one necessarily does when they post something to the Internet by any means, and the entire world full of people gets to find something to disagree with. No surprise, perhaps, that the kind of flaming or trolling behavior that practically characterizes many forums/comment threads is as common as it is.
... I don’t quite know how to respond to that. I first learned about it from this post on the Shakesville blog, a blog I had started reading probably less than 12 hours ago by sheer random chance. Coming from the perspective that it does, the opinion there is openly hostile; by making people use their real names, it opens the door to stalking and similar privacy violations. I have to say, I see the point there. There is a reason why my full name isn’t displayed anywhere on this blog, after all.
Of course, however, there is a “but”. But what about accountability? Couldn’t I say whatever I like in this space, without any fear of retribution? As it stands, someone randomly wandering the Internet that came across this blog wouldn’t have much of an idea who I am. Which may not matter when I’m just randomly yapping about how I like StarCraft II, but if I was encouraging people to actually do something, I think it would matter a little bit more.
As the Internet is now, there is no accountability. And I think there’s something lost as a result. On the 24th of June, the Supreme Court of the U.S. decided the case of Doe v. Reed (link to Supreme Court website), a case in which the Court ruled that the names and addresses of people that sign referendums can be made public. The people that brought the case in the first place argued that they were being harassed as a result of the release of information about themselves, and tried to get the Court to block the public release of the referendum so as to prevent this harassment.
The Court refused. Eight to one, they held that in a broad sense, the disclosure of such information does not violate any First Amendment rights of the plaintiff. (They acknowledged that this specific release may be blocked on narrower grounds; that issue is still pending.) And for me, the most direct and convincing argument came from Justice Scalia. Which was somewhat of a shock for me considering that I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with him in the past.
“There are laws against threats and intimidation; and harsh criticism, short of unlawful action, is a price our people have traditionally been willing to pay for self-governance,” Scalia wrote in a separate concurrence. “Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.”
Now, I admit I’m an idealist. I admit I am from the height of privilege, an upper-middle-class white male. And I admit I’ve never had anyone stalking me before. I can’t change who I am or what I’ve experienced. But I can’t disagree with Scalia here. If you wouldn’t be willing to publicly admit to your beliefs and opinions, why do you even hold them in the first place?
Internet trolling still functions because it’s anonymous. If I post an anonymous comment to a blog saying “you’re an idiot” no one will ever know that I posted it, and so I will never see any consequences for my action. I can hold and express that opinion without any recrimination from society.
Now, with what Blizzard plans to do with their forums, that won’t work anymore. Now, if someone wants to inform someone else on their forums that they think they’re an idiot, the troll will have to stand by that opinion publicly. If someone wants to repeatedly annoy someone else on the Blizzard forums, it’ll be plainly obvious who is doing it. If someone wants to ignore the consequences of those actions, including possible legal recourse... well, that won’t be possible anymore.
She’s one of the main characters in an anime called Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou, and a hacker of nearly matchless ability. You see, the “gendai mahou”, or “modern magic”, of the title is of course computer code-based. How people can “compile” code that manages to do anything from creating swords out of thin air to attracting cats is never explained, unfortunately.
Anyway, near the end of the series Misa either falls into a pathetically obvious trap by the main villain or intentionally triggers it to gain an advantage, I’m still not sure which. In the ensuing confrontation, when Misa reminds the villain that “Stealing is a crime, you know”, he all but laughs in her face, saying “I never thought I’d hear those words coming from you.”
After all, the hackers of fiction are never the “white hat” gainfully employed hackers that are hired by companies to test their computer security. It’s probably overly cruel to tag Misa as a “black hat” style hacker, but considering she did create a botnet out of millions of computers (also, the anime doesn’t exactly realistically depict hacking, either) for her own personal benefit at least once, it just might be justified.
This is when Misa tries to argue that there’s a world of difference between grey and black. To some extent, I suppose she has a point, considering her stated goal is to ensure that malicious computer code doesn’t end up doing damage to society. But I really don’t think that the question here is a difference of kind. Only one of scale.
To be fair, most of Misa’s questionable decisions were made when the other obvious choice can best be summarized as “Tokyo destroyed”. But to the villain, that amount of harm was an acceptable sacrifice to force the world as a whole to recognize the existence of modern magic. Theoretically, that would vastly increase that magic’s prevalence among the people as a whole, giving them the weapons and abilities to vastly improve humankind.
... Personally, I think that justification is utterly ridiculous. But perhaps in the long term, had the villain succeeded, it would have ended up being “worth it” in the end by a purely utilitarian calculus. Certainly, the villain believed that to be the case.
I have very little respect for someone who would so casually write off a city of 35 million people as “acceptable casualties”, but the fact remains that he isn’t doing that for his own personal amusement, or even some clearly defined personal gain. I’m sure Misa felt better about herself to accuse him of “black” morality, but she too was willing to sacrifice lives for what she felt was best, in the end.
So the moral difference isn’t really a major one after all. Both could agree that sometimes, the best result will require the unwilling sacrifice of innocent others. They may disagree on how many lives (one, or millions) can be toyed with, but is that really enough of a difference?
The accusations over such minor differences illustrate just how easy it is to assume superiority. Too easy, in fact, considering people can try to assume superiority (as Misa did) when they might not actually have it. She only missed one thing: you can’t claim the moral high ground unless you actually have it. If you don’t, all you accomplish is making yourself look even worse in the end.
Conventional wisdom holds that this concept of “reality” is a monolithic, unchanging constant: reality for me is no different than reality for anyone else, and the only time the concept of an overarching reality comes up is when it is differentiated from those things that are clearly not real. Such as, you know, video games. Say what you will about the realistic graphics or the actual scientific concepts shown, but it won’t change the obvious fact that Halo is not “reality”.
I have to wonder if that’s actually the case, though. And no, I don’t mean the bit about Halo. But I do have to think that this concept of reality as presented there may not be the way the world actually works.
I’m not going to go so far as to say there are physical alternate realities... but then, there are people that would. After all, what is the Christian afterlife, but two alternate realities separate from the world most of us are familiar with? Advancements in scientific research and exploration have all but proven that a heaven or a hell do not exist in any place we could physically travel to.
Perhaps I stole that from Dungeons and Dragons. I still remember the many different world systems of the D&D campaign settings. The Prime Material Plane was the “real” world as we would call it, and then there were multitudes of other planes, heaven and hell in all the colors of D&D’s oft-maligned alignment system. There were even rules for finding other Material Planes; that paragraph set me to imagining that maybe we were one of those Material Planes, and that the world of Faerûn could actually be found one day.
... Maybe that doesn’t count though. After all, if they do exist, then they would be part of this thing we call “reality”, wouldn’t they? The fact that someone believes they might exist doesn’t make his/her reality different from mine, it just means we have different sets of beliefs. And if those beliefs conflict in an irreconcilable fashion, then in “reality”, one of us has to be wrong. Right?
Well, for one, seeing the world in that fashion is a good way not to make friends. It really matters very little what you believe exists after death: whether a cycle of reincarnation followed eventually by absolutely nothing, or an eternal reward in a paradisiacal realm of God, we can’t know for sure until we die, and perhaps not even then. Trying to “prove” that one is “right” does nothing beyond annoying people, most of the time.
While the debate wasn’t over something as difficult as life after death, perhaps the recently-aired anime Strike Witches can illustrate what I mean. Near the end of the season, the main character was confronted with an enemy that was acting... strangely. And by that, I mean the enemy flyer wasn’t shooting at Yoshika, which was a change from the norm.
I’ll get into what exactly happened a little later. For the moment, the important detail is this: Yoshika became convinced that the enemy could, perhaps, be reasoned with. And over the next episode, she spent her time trying to convince her fellow Strike Witches that maybe they didn’t have to fight them. Unsurprisingly, her squadron mates... disagreed. Angrily, most of the time. All Yoshika really accomplished by pushing her case was pissing off her friends, to be honest. So perhaps it’s better to let different realities coexist.
There’s only one problem. That is very much a different example than the theological disputes I presented earlier. It absolutely matters whether or not an enemy can be reasoned with, because being able to end a war peacefully means not having more people die. So doesn’t it matter which of those differing realities is an accurate picture of the true “reality”?
Actually... maybe not. What actually happened: Yoshika tried to fire on the enemy, found that her safety was on. While she was turning her safety off, the enemy turned into a replica of a Witch and began flying in circles around Yoshika, who chased the enemy “Witch” without trying to fire on it. The enemy revealed its weak point to Yoshika, and Yoshika was about to touch it before the rest of the squadron arrived.
And that’s it. Yoshika was convinced that the enemy was playing with her, not trying to fight. The rest of the Strike Witches were convinced that it was a trap. How do two wildly different pictures of the same events come about?
To put it simply, we all view reality a little bit differently to begin with. There is no such thing as “reality” that is the same for two people; starting with their observations and carrying on through their analyses of those observations, “reality” is colored by those biases and perceptions that we all inevitably carry.
Yoshika didn’t really want to fight in the first place. Sure, she joined the Strike Witches when she learned of her father’s work and felt she had to help protect people, but her first memories of war was the loss of her dad to that war. Many of the other Strike Witches, on the other hand, have personally observed the devastation wrought by the enemy and aren’t inclined to settle for anything less than the eradication of the enemy.
And this isn’t just limited to anime. In the Washington Post today, June 3, 2010, there are letters responding to the recent events in Israel, off the Gaza Strip. A letter arguing that the people of the flotilla that was attacked knew what they were getting into and were attempting to provoke violence is printed right above a letter presenting the flotilla as a peaceful, multinational aid group.
... Different realities. In the real world, it’s all too easy to see what you want to see, painting a picture of reality that supports your biases. I won’t even argue that we should try to avoid that: it’s impossible. All we can do is acknowledge it: “reality” does not exist. I can present what is to me the clear and unvarnished Truth, and someone else can still logically and in good faith disagree with it. Perhaps, then, we need to do less presenting of Truths and more acknowledgement that different realities can exist, even in our world.
So there's a new anime airing in Japan at the moment, called Angel Beats! (Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title.) It's being produced by Key/Visual Arts, which is a company known for producing some damn good stories in the past. And by that, I mean the computer game Kanon. That game is one of the most well-known visual novels ever, and the story is nothing short of amazing.
With that to recommend it, it didn't take much convincing to get me to watch Angel Beats. (No, I am not going to put in the exclamation point every time.) In keeping with Key's typical mode of operation, the story varies between "depressing" and "really freaking sad" with a few glimpses of hope thrown in occasionally. It's surprisingly effective at getting one to care for the characters of the story, as both Kanon and Angel Beats demonstrate quite readily.
But I'm not really sure who exactly I'm supposed to be finding sympathetic. I guess the two obvious main characters from the beginning have been Yuri and Otonashi... but the third main character (or, possibly, antagonist - certainly she appeared to be that at first) has inevitably drawn a great deal of my attention. That third character? Tachibana Kanade, all too often called Tenshi. Those familiar with Japanese will know that "tenshi" in Japanese (天使, if anyone was curious) means "angel".
I would give a large deal of money to know how and when she got that nickname. To be fair, the anime is set in the afterlife. More likely some section of it, for the people that have had really, really crappy lives. And I mean that. Every backstory we've heard (Yuri, Otonashi, Ayato Naoi, Iwasawa, Hinata) has been damn near hellish. This is the driving force behind Yuri and her Battlefront: her goal is to go find God and have a word with Him. And somehow, I doubt that word will be "thanks"; considering that Yuri owns a number of weapons, it may not even be a word at all.
And that brings us to Tachibana Kanade, aka Tenshi. At first, she was the student council president of this fine part of the afterlife. (Did I mention that this section of the afterlife was a Japanese high school? No? Well, now I have.) Tenshi was thus charged with keeping order in the school. And she could: she's a short little white-haired emotionless girl that doesn't look like she could be a physical threat to anyone, until she says "Guard Skill: Hand Sonic" and summons a freaking armblade from thin air. And uses it to deflect bullets.
So that's why she's an angel! Except... no, actually. She developed those abilities herself, in what was implied to be a similar manner to the way that Yuri, Otonashi, and the rest of the Battlefront get their weapons. Oops. She's just Tachibana Kanade, another of the girls at this school in the afterlife, trying to maintain order as best she can, not because she has to, but because she wants to.
Not that Yuri cares. This "Tenshi", a nickname that the Battlefront themselves tagged her with, has been the target of their operations merely because she could be the link to God that Yuri's searching for. She's going after Kanade because Kanade is one of God's angels... except she started calling her that in the first place. Who's supposed to be the villain here?
What I'm trying to say here is this: when one is deciding on a course of actions, isn’t it a good idea to actually think about it a little first? Tachibana Kanade shouldn’t have had to develop an ability that gave her armblades to keep order in a school. She shouldn’t have ever had to use something like that to keep students under control. And yet, the Battlefront goes even more heavily armed as a matter of habit. Their target was a lone girl who was just trying to do what she felt was right.
Maybe I’m just biased. I’ve been teased before. I spent a large part of my middle school years as a target, or so I imagined. Never quite to the “friendless” extreme that anime characters like Kanade end up representing, but it felt that way sometimes. My personal experience aside, it just seems wrong to intentionally go after someone, either with words or weapons, unless one is damn sure of what they’re doing.
You don’t have to have a reason for everything you do. I blog because I like to express myself, or try to. (My update schedule does suggest that I don’t worry about expressing myself that often.) And for all that I argue that video games or anime can be educational, I enjoy them because they’re fun. I’ve never tried to claim that the benefits are anything more than side effects of what is primarily supposed to be entertainment. But if you’re going to do something more, something that affects other people... for anything from making jokes at their expense to shooting at them, don’t you need a better reason than just “it’s fun”?
Perhaps "damn, I've let this sit for nearly a year with no posts."
Perhaps "damn, my writing sucked back then."
Perhaps... oh, screw it.
It has now been two years since I started this blog. This blog has sat unused, dormant, for most of that second year.
Was that a mistake? Perhaps not. I did say that I would post when I was inspired to do so. That is as true now as it was a year ago. And it's only recently that I've been inspired again, only recently that I've had ridiculous thoughts running through my head with no outlet for them.
Until I realized that I do have an outlet. One that I've let languish, yes, but it still exists. So perhaps, in a week or two when finals period is over, I'll go back to that wonderful habit of expressing myself on the Internet for all to see.
I make absolutely no promises. My update schedule doesn't exist, clearly. I'm worse than Megatokyo, because at least Piro updates his website occasionally. I, apparently, don't update at all.
That will change. I've changed in the year I've let pass. Perhaps, even, a title change is in order: I've played a lot less video games lately, and spent a lot more time with anime. My enjoyment of the Japanese language has become an absolute obsession, and I'm studying abroad in Kyoto, Japan next academic year, from September to April. ("An Otaku's Perspective"?)
None of that changes what I'm trying to do here, and what I really should be trying to do more often. I wax poetic about what I've gained from my leisure time. Every time I hesitate before telling someone that I play video games for fun, every time I hear someone lump them, and anime, and any other kind of game into some lower category (like my ethics professor, and discussing the details of utilitarianism, and the distinction between "higher" and "lower" pleasures)... It is, quite simply, not where they deserve to be.
So let me try this activity one more time. I've got webcomics (the aforementioned Megatokyo), games of all kinds (including some truly unusual kinds, for Americans at least), and a host of new anime series to think about. I've been ranting on AIM occasionally with my close friends about some of these things. Perhaps I should share those rants with the world.
Once more, then, perhaps I can try to blog. I would say "hopefully I'll do better this time", but I lost that right the last time I wrote a "Sorry I haven't been posting" post. So, here and now, the only thing I have the right to say is what I said a little earlier: I can make no promises.
So here's hoping you have the chance to read a new post from me sometime in the near future.
So I finished watching the Negima anime yesterday. Hopefully it goes without saying that this upcoming blog post, like the last one, has spoilers for the anime (and probably the manga as well) in it. And if it doesn’t, well, I just said something about it, so you’ve been warned.
That said, though, I didn’t go into the ending without expectations. While it’s hardly on the same level as the details I’m about to reveal, in a conversation with some of my friends, I was informed that the ending wasn’t great. And the setup for that ending in the two episodes prior to the finale did nothing to dispel that belief. I was expecting to dislike the ending of the series when episode 26 began.
Then I actually watched the final episode and promptly forgot about that. There were one or two scenes that set off my inner nit-picking nature, and five or six more where I just sat spellbound watching Negi and Class 2-A beating the crap out of demons. The break point, though, the part that I would bet determines whether a person likes the ending or not, is what happened to practically the second lead character of the series (after Negi), Asuna Kagurazaka.
...This is the last spoiler warning you get, and this is one hell of a plot twist to reveal. Warning has been duly given. Of course, if you’ve seen Negima and/or don’t care to see it, feel free to read on.
You see, in episode 23, Asuna dies. This is kind of a big deal, pretty much shattering class 2-A to pieces as far as their emotional stability is concerned. The rest of the series, however, is not just moping around and getting past her death. As it happens, the time machine comes out in episode 25.
And this is where I can see why some people might not like the ending. I think it depends on how cynical one likes the plot lines. If one would prefer the message in the story to be about how death is inevitable and would have preferred to see Negi deal with Asuna’s demise rather than try to bring her back to life, the ending will look like a cheap dodge that avoids that truth. Star Trek fans tired of the endless time-travel plots will likely have an issue with this one, especially since this time travel appears to be run at the demands of the plot more than most. And those who have an issue with the primal forces of evil and the making of contracts with those forces will likely have a word about this whole thing as well.
Then again, if one wants gritty realism and cynical plot lines, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m surprised you endured 22 episodes of a ten-year-old boy in charge of a class of thirty girls that all seem to be crazy in some way or another to make it to these last four. Realism (or more precisely, “verisimilitude”, since magic is not exactly realistic to begin with) is not exactly high on the list of goals for this story, and it doesn’t try too hard to be cynical.
The message of the Negima anime isn’t one about death, or betrayal, or any kind of cynical theme. As far as I’m concerned, Negima concerns itself with courage. Which at first glance may seem kind of odd. After all, this isn’t a series about war or fighting, that much. Most of the season is taken up with the tensions inherent in placing a ten-year-old girl magnet in charge of a class of thirty girls.
As far as courage goes, there isn’t much courageous posturing or determined last stands in this one. Negi does get one of those last stands (and is dragged away from it by Asuna), and the entire class practically jumps to fight for Asuna’s sake in the final episode. But that isn’t the courage that I’m looking at. In fact, it really wouldn’t have helped for there to be more of that display.
No, the courage of Class 2-A isn’t the will to march into battle or the determination to stand up for a friend, important as those are. The courage of Class 2-A is the courage of Nodoka Miyazaki in episode 17 or the courage of Asuna herself in the final episode. It’s the mental fortitude to express yourself and your feelings to others.
It may not seem like much. As I touched on with my last post, some people don’t seem to have a problem with that at all. But who among us would willingly express all of their secrets to even their closest friends? At the fear of being branded insane, silly, over-emotional, who would try to tell someone that they know they’ll die in two hours?
Perhaps I over-value this kind of emotional courage simply because it is something that I know I lack. When it comes to my college life, I’m confident in my ability to handle my classes, and face down tests and the like with something that could be called courage. But when it comes to expressing myself? When it comes to saying those three little words that Nodoka managed in episode 17?
Regardless. In the end, the only conclusion I can come to is that the ending only reinforces what I’ve already said about Negima. This isn’t an anime about death or even about the magic that Negi wields. It’s an anime about relationships. As far as I’m concerned, Negi and Class 2-A are an inspiration - a reminder to have courage. And not the courage of fighting or of risking oneself physically. Whether a plea for help or a declaration of love, the courage of Class 2-A is the courage to speak a word (or three) that can change the course of a life.
So lately I’ve been watching an anime series called Negima. The premise can probably best be called “insane”, but hardly in a bad way. Ten-year-old Negi Springfield, the main character, is an aspiring wizard (or “Magister Magi”, if you prefer the anime’s title for them) and is in training to achieve that end. But this latest phase of his training involves the young English boy becoming a teacher at an all-girls school in Japan, and as far as I’m concerned, the challenges to Negi’s magical skills are nothing compared to the task of keeping the girls of class 2-A under control, especially when it seems like half of them are in love with Negi.
One of those girls that can’t seem to take her eyes off of Negi is possibly one of the most unlikely candidates ever: Nodoka Miyazaki. I call her an unlikely candidate because at the beginning of the series, she’s all but terrified of men, period. When Negi saves her from a hard fall off a stairway, her reflections later on center around being touched by a boy (Negi, obviously), and she seems to be confused as to why she doesn’t hate or fear the idea.
Nodoka proceeds to spend a good portion of the series trying to work up the courage to even admit to what she’s feeling, much less tell Negi about it. (Well, as far as I’ve seen, anyway; I’ve seen 18 out of the 26 episodes.) Since, after all, Nodoka seems to be just cripplingly shy with everyone, this ends up taking quite a while, even when they do end up on a date in episode 17 by the machinations of Nodoka’s friends.
And yet, out of all the characters in the anime, I find myself rooting for Nodoka and sympathizing with her more than anyone. Even over Negi himself or Asuna Kagurazaka, who practically seems like the second main character of the show sometimes, I want to see Nodoka be successful.
…I guess that makes me one of those crazy fans that goes on and on about the relationships he wants to see in the different shows that he watches. At least I haven’t created any little combinations of their names, like… wait, never mind, where was I?
Anyway, I can see why Nodoka might take some criticism for her general attitude. I know people who would likely tell her to stop cringing and speak her mind clearly. (They’d probably also tell her to cut her hair, especially since she practically hides behind her bangs when talking to someone directly, but that isn’t as important.) And I think that’s emblematic of society as a whole. As a general rule from my own experience, people don’t really sympathize with the shy introverts; they simply tell them not to be shy.
See, part of the reason why I sympathize with Nodoka over the rest of the cast is because I think I’m the same kind of person. As far as I’m concerned, the hardest thing I did this afternoon was to call someone that I didn’t know, looking for a job. It shouldn’t be a difficult thing to do by any measure, and yet I was agonizing over it for a good ten minutes before I actually made the call.
For people like Nodoka and myself, even reaching out is hard to do. Nodoka seemed to be practically terrified of talking to Negi even after she finally told him about her feelings at the end of her little date in episode 17, avoiding Negi for much of episode 18. And I? I didn’t want to feel like an idiot, which as far as that little voice in my head is concerned happens every time I try to do something I’m unsure about.
As a side note, that same little voice is stridently protesting what I’m about to write... it can be quite insistent sometimes. And yet, my more logical side can’t find a hole in it.
Simply put, though, sometimes it has to be done. Nodoka had to get around to the admission of her love for Negi eventually, and I had to make the attempt to find a job. Practically the hardest thing either of us does on a day to day basis is to actually break away from the books (Nodoka) or anime/games (myself) and interact with other people. (I am assuming on Nodoka’s part, but I don’t think I’m far wrong.)
There are miscues, sure. Sadly, my call was one of them. Not that it went badly, simply that I did indeed feel like I should have expected the negative result that I got. Logically, nothing really happened, but I still spent a minute or two after the call feeling like I was an idiot. (I finally decided to write something about to take my mind off it. This is the end result.)
Thankfully, Nodoka had it better off. A side effect of having your entire fate decided by writers that like happy endings, I suppose. While Negi didn’t exactly leap into her arms, they’re now much better friends than they were before, and Nodoka seems to have fully taken in the lesson here about courage when it comes to reaching out. If nothing else, she got her symbolic “I’m not hiding anymore” moment when she brushed her bangs away from her face and looked Negi straight in the eye, something she had had severe difficulty with before.
When all is said and done, reaching out is rarely something that you regret after the fact. And maybe if I’m lucky, I’ll actually learn that one of these days.
A year ago to the day, I posted the second part of a two-part post about high technology. About the promises made regarding the development of scientific knowledge, and the validity of technology’s constant promise to make the world a better place. It’s one of the opinions that I still hold strongly: that the pursuit of the answers to life’s mysteries should not be undertaken simply because questions still exist.
And now, having seen the movie Angels and Demons just recently, it seems like a good time to revisit the subject. Because one of the subjects that I didn’t touch on in any great detail is also a subject that is at issue for the characters of that movie: what role does society or religion play in the growth of technology? Who governs what questions we pursue? And how is one of the most age-old conflicts in history, religious tradition versus scientific progress, to be resolved in today’s world?
On both sides of the divide, arguments can be made against any interaction between the two. In Angels and Demons, one of the priests in the movie gives a speech to the College of Cardinals about the war that they are in, the war between the traditionalist Catholic Church and the science-based Illuminati. While that speech isn’t openly militant, that same priest reveals his true colors later in the movie, considering the development of antimatter and its characterization to be sacrilegious.
Likewise, although it isn’t as present in the movie, from the days of Galileo and his persecution by the religions of the time, science has had little reason to like religion. The attitude expressed by the priest in Angels and Demons may lead some with those views to openly attack the development of technology, but the responses are far too often as intolerant and hostile as their provocation was. For the movie, the chosen response of the “Illuminati” (complicated story there…) was probably ever so slightly over the top.
The fault lies in considering it a war at all. The fault lies in thinking that religious beliefs are incompatible with scientific study. Certainly, it’s not regarded as unusual for even devout followers of a religion to turn to scientific study, and no small number of books professing to link religion and science have been written. We’ve come a long way from the days where scientists had to recant their studies or be branded as heretics.
The question, then, turns to the role that religion will play. Or should there even be one? With its ever-increasing separation from the levers of power, organized religion has (in the Western world, at least) lost much of its power to control scientific progress, it would seem. Not only is religion no longer inclined to continually decry scientific progress; even if they did, progress would likely continue unchecked, since heresy is no longer a crime as it was in older times.
And while I certainly don’t think that a return to that level of religious power would be a good thing, I do think I will mourn the loss of influence there. Because with its passing, yet another check on humanity’s completely unrestrained growth is gone. In his speech before the cardinals of the Catholic Church, in the movie, the priest in question advocated the Vatican’s striking back, firmly, at the never-ending progress of science. He suggested that they act as a restraint on the continued development of science, as a moderating voice.
And maybe that is a good thing. Maybe the world needs a God… not necessarily as an arbiter of our morality or as the final judge of our actions, but as a reminder that some mysteries will remain mysteries. No level of scientific effort will conclusively prove or disprove the existence of a deity. To living members of the human race, the question of a higher power will remain just that: a question, an unknown.
That, I feel, is what the human race needs right now. I feel like we stopped needing to answer questions about the world around us five or six major answers ago. I will not deny that our technological growth has brought with it major advances in the human condition, but I feel like the benefits we gain from continually pursuing mysteries have ceased to be the point.
Today, we don’t unravel the mysteries of the universe to better our condition. Either we’re simply questing after greater power (at a cheaper price) for ourselves, or we’re simply answering questions because they exist. And I think it’s about time that halted. I think it’s time that we started looking at why we seek for all the answers to the mysteries around us, and more importantly, came to grips with the idea that some of those mysteries will never have answers.
So theoretically I’ll be writing about relatively new things. For example, I’ll probably post something about the new Star Trek movie soon enough, since I saw that recently. (It was awesome, of course.) Realistically, though, I’ll be writing about whatever inspires me to write, as long as I haven’t done so before. And since I’m still sorting through my thoughts on the Star Trek movie, I’ll have to resort to the movie Wanted, which I also saw for the first time last weekend despite it not being new.
For those who haven’t seen the movie, the basic idea is that there’s the secret society of assassins that preserve the balance of history and are directed by fate. Or something like that, I don’t think the plot was the strong point of the movie. Especially not after blatantly ripping off one of the oldest plot twists in history: “No, I didn’t kill your father, I am your father” and so on.
… Oh yeah. There may be spoilers for the plot of the movie in here. Should I have gotten to that warning earlier?
At any rate. Despite the plot not really being the movie’s strong point (I would have to give that role to the crazy things they were doing with the large amounts of weaponry they all possessed, or to Angelina Jolie), I’m going to tear apart the motivations of the heroes and villains anyway, for two reasons. One is because it’s kind of the point, that I can find lessons related to the real world even in a movie that maybe isn’t the most plot-heavy one out there. And two is because there’s nothing I love more than mercilessly mocking the rampant stupidity of your standard movie heroes and villains. (Well, okay, maybe video games or anime or… never mind.)
You see, the main character of the movie is your standard office drone who feels like his life is worth nothing and that he has no control over it, pointless as it is. About the only thing special about him, from his perspective, is that he’s got this weird anxiety condition that requires medication to control. And, of course, that’s not a good special condition that helps his self-esteem any.
The impetus that drags him out of that state is the aforementioned secret society of assassins. The leader of whom explains to him a few things, namely that his little anxiety issue isn’t a bad thing at all; rather, it allows him to do insane things (like, oh, shoot the wings off of a fly). Also that this could be controlled and directed to his benefit, and that his father was killed by a former member of this society that went rogue. He’s also the guy who controls the society and is the only one who interprets the fabric produced by this “Loom of Fate” that directs who the society is going to kill.
Putting aside the insanity of allowing imperfections in the fabric that a loom produces to direct assassinations for a moment, it would appear that all the power so far is with the society. That the leader of this society, to throw in the obligatory reference to the title of this post, has the power to command destiny. He reads the prophecies and the commands from fate (from a loom… urge to mock the ridiculous nature of this plot rising) and directs his subordinates to carry them out.
However, this gives one person all of the power. And in the most original plot twist ever, it turns out that that old adage about power corrupting was right all along. The leader of the assassins wasn’t acting on the orders of fate (from a loom… no, I’m not letting that rest) after all, but faking the orders to carry out assassinations for money or, as far as I can tell, for his own personal enjoyment.
That wasn’t the entire story though; he made a lot of noise near the end of the movie about being able to direct the course of history. And you know, he has a point. Barring the United States with its effective system of succession of leadership, assassinations have usually caused no small amount of a stir when they’ve been carried out, potentially altering the course of history. We can’t be sure, of course, since we have no idea what would have happened otherwise.
Besides, assassination isn’t really a tool of fate, and being a “thug that can bend bullets” (the hero’s characterization of the villain) doesn’t make you destiny’s commander. The destiny of a person will always remain in the hands of that person. People have the ultimate command over their own actions, and short of physical force, that command cannot be taken away. Sure, a person can be killed, but that amounts to little more than a reset button, a removal of the influence over destiny that a person had created.
The hero could have remained an office drone for his entire life, and never taken control of that life. But as he expressed at the end of the movie, he wasn’t going to do that. He took control as any person can. As anyone can choose to change what they do. Destiny and fate are not powerful or unknowable forces outside our ability to understand. Because we all have command over our own destinies.
… Alright, I guess the first and most important thing I should do here and now is apologize to any of the people that have been checking this site at all in the two months now that I’ve been not posting. While I’m not going to get my hopes up regarding how many people have actually done so, I know for a solid fact that at least one person has. So for those of you that have been checking, I do sincerely apologize for not offering so much as even a quick note saying that posts weren’t coming anytime soon.
I could point to a number of different reasons why this has happened, but since I’m not really in the habit of making excuses, I’ll refrain from that and simply state the obvious: I haven’t been posting. Trying to say “well this is why” feels too much like making pointless excuses to me, so instead I’ll just vow to change my behavior. And that means posting again on this blog. (Although if you want the reasons, I’d be happy to give them; just ask and I’ll explain myself.)
And one of the things I really want to hit on in this return to blogging is my eternal nemesis: scheduling. As you all may have noticed, I’m really bad at planning these things. I would just write posts and put them up when I’d done, but since I tend to do my writing in spurts, I’d end up posting three articles in the space of five hours and then have nothing here for the next two weeks.
That said, though, I believe I will try to just put stuff up here when I finish it and to hell with a regular schedule. I’ll take advantage of the scheduling tools to space posts out if necessary. I’ll probably have no fewer than two or three days in between posts, and no more than two weeks at the absolute maximum, but other than that I’ll post things when I finish them from now on.
I’d also like to take this chance to redefine what I’m doing here with this blog, or at least re-state it. This blog is titled “A Video Gamer’s Perspective” for a reason, namely that I really feel that video games have been a major part of my life. I think that one of my defining labels is that title of “video gamer”, whatever that means, and thus feel it’s perfectly justified to label this blog as the perspective of such a person.
This holds true regardless of what’s caught my attention in any particular post. Sure, I’ll usually try to relate things to video games in some way. But in the end, there are almost as many of my posts with the “anime” label as the “video games” label, and that’s unlikely to change. I’m writing in the end about what I do for fun, which isn’t limited to video games.
And that leads me back around to what I do with this stuff in the first place. I’m not here to break new philosophical ground or come up with life lessons that have never been heard before. What I’m doing with the anime or the games that catch my eye is see what value they have beyond simple entertainment.
I’m not trying to be new and revolutionary with the lessons themselves, but rather where I find them and what reinforces them. I can’t even claim to be revolutionary in claiming that video games have worth; after all, that idea too has been discussed in scholarly articles and books written by those far smarter than myself. All I’m trying to do is explore individual games and see just how much of a waste of time they are.
This blog is on some level a challenge. It’s a challenge to the moral guardians and the religious fundamentalists of the world that refuse to view video games as anything other than a source of moral degradation. It’s a challenge to every parent that’s ever said, “That thing will rot your brain, you know,” to their kid sitting in front of the TV.
So let’s all see just what I get out of video games, or anime, or anything else I do for fun. Let’s see if video games are a moral sinkhole, or a waste of time. That’s what I’m here to do: to show through anecdotes and through my own example how these games are about the farthest thing from a waste of time that I can imagine. I’ve got a good thirty or so posts on the topic already, and now that it’s summer, I’m in the mood to make that number grow.
Oh, and five days ago, my blog hit it’s one-year anniversary; my first post was on May 2nd, 2008. Since I kinda didn’t post then, we’ll just mark the occasion now. Let’s get back into exploring the world of an anime-obsessed video game fanatic. Hope you all enjoy the ride.
Issues regarding commands and who has the authority to give them are part of everyone’s life. We are all subject to the commands of one person or another, with a tiny minority of possible exceptions at the highest levels of authority. For that reason, everyone’s going to encounter questions of authority and the right to issue commands.
One wouldn’t think these would be difficult questions to answer… and one would be surprised. In the anime series .hack//Sign, for much of the series, there existed a player organization called the Crimson Knights. Throughout the first parts of the series, the goals of the Crimson Knights are obvious: they work to help keep control of the game world. They try to bring players that are violating the rules to “justice”.
All well and good, right? It can’t hurt to have people working to help keep the game under control. Game masters of MMOs across the world are overworked trying to do that job; surely some help is a good thing. There doesn’t appear to be much of a problem at first; the knights are loyal to their leader Subaru and follow her orders.
The problem develops over the series. A conflict slowly develops between Subaru and the second in command of the Knights, appropriately named Silver Knight. The problem is of course a question of authority. Silver Knight wants to take as much control as possible, and be as active as possible in hunting down and punishing anyone who breaks the rules.
This forces Subaru to constantly remind him as the series progresses that they are merely players. She never says any more than that, but the implications are obvious: the Crimson Knights are not the game’s police force. Nor are the Crimson Knights the administrators themselves, as the Cobalt Knight Brigade was in .hack//Legend of the Twilight. The Crimson Knights do not have the authority to command other players to do anything, nor do they have the authority to sanction other players for breaking the rules.
It can’t hurt, though, to have additional people keeping an eye out for rules violations, right? Keeping an eye out is not a problem, but what Silver Knight wanted was to have the authority to punish players for their actions. And that most assuredly is a problem.
Any kind of authority carries with it a responsibility. The two cannot be separated; if one has the authority to punish those who violate the rules, one has the responsibility to the players to fairly and evenly mete out punishment. Any authority carries the responsibility that that authority be used appropriately.
This holds true with all kinds of authority, as well. A commanding officer of a military unit has a great deal of authority with regards to that unit. He issues all of the orders to that unit, whether it be a platoon of soldiers all the way up to a carrier battle group, and directs its actions. With that authority comes the responsibility to ensure that unit’s well-being and direct it wisely.
The President of the United States is one of the few people in the world to whom my earlier exception about taking orders may apply, and has a wide range of power inside and outside that nation’s borders. But with the massive amount of power that comes with the position is a very heavy responsibility to use it wisely to the benefit of the American people and society at large; this is why the election of a new President is such a big deal both inside and outside the United States.
As with the President, because of the responsibility that comes with authority, people are only given authority if they can be shown to be able to handle the responsibilities of that authority. Which brings us back to Silver Knight. The problem was not that he wanted to keep the game under control (although last week’s post has more to say about the desirability of that). The problem was that he and the Crimson Knights were trying to take on authority without recognizing or appreciating the responsibility it carried with it.
One of the many dilemmas of command is the heavy responsibility that comes with it. One of the problems of carrying authority is having to be aware of that responsibility. Silver Knight and the Crimson Knights behind him cared for none of that. They tried to take on the authority of the police without being recognized by anyone as able to handle that responsibility. And partway through the series, they were disbanded by Subaru when she realized these exact problems.
The authority to command is not merely power. It is also the responsibility to those that one commands. One who merely gives orders for the sake of feeling strong or authoritative is not a commander, and can truly only be called a bully or a thug. To truly command, one must recognize that one’s duty to the people or rules above you must be balanced by the responsibility to those one commands.
Control. There are those people that like to have it, over themselves and the environment around them. There are others who could care less. This is one of the ways to look at the old Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 alignments of Lawful and Chaotic. One values order and control, the other sees them as unnecessary or even a hindrance.
And, in the story of .hack//Legend of the Twilight, it’s pretty obvious where the system administrators of the biggest MMO ever created fall. To quote, “What cannot be controlled must be deleted.” To be fair, it’s on some level an opinion shared by every single game designer and developer ever to make or run a game. Even the most basic games in real life have rules. Have a winner and a loser, and a set of regulations governing what can and cannot be done in the game.
Order and control are thus very important to games of any kind. It is the knowledge that the rules will be enforced that prevents a game from disintegrating. Who would play World of Warcraft if a high-level monster could just teleport into the low-level zones and wreak havoc, killing off all the low-level players that can’t fight back? It is the order present in the game world that allows it to function. That reassures players that low-level monsters are here, and higher-level ones won’t be found there.
And when that order, when that control, breaks down, it must be dealt with. If a player starts cheating to gain an advantage, they need to be removed; if a bug comes into the system, it needs to be fixed. This is a philosophy shared by both the administrators of “The World” in .hack// and the admins of World of Warcraft or any other MMO.
So then, it is clear that a Lawful alignment preserves the game and allows it to function freely and evenly for all players. But then, aren’t there some things that can’t or even shouldn’t be controlled? Surely it’s ridiculous to assume that everything can be brought under strict order, and even more so to think that that’s a good thing. Such is the Chaotic argument.
In today’s games, the systems and worlds are tightly controlled. There’s really not much chance of anything too odd happening. But in .hack//Legend of the Twilight, “The World” is a massive MMO, with far too many details to easily monitor… far too many details to keep control of. And maybe in a world like that one, it’s better to leave some things be.
An element that cannot be controlled is not automatically evil or unbalancing. It can be, but the default position need not be the above quote. Maybe it’s better to let the world change. If something isn’t harmful or dangerous, then why does a lack of control need to mean destruction?
It’s not just the massive world of .hack// that can’t be entirely controlled. In fact, there are elements of chaos in any game, even in our own tightly regulated games. There will be a lack of balance in any system we create. We aren’t good enough to create a perfectly balanced, perfectly fair game world; what’s more, we never will be. So we might as well recognize that some things need not be controlled.
The dichotomy, the divisions between Lawful and Chaotic opinions, can be seen in modern games. In the MMO EVE Online, there are rules to protect the newer players. Certain systems are under the protection of the law, and any act of aggression in those systems will merit a response from the police forces of the world. What’s more, surviving their attack is considered an exploit by the game’s designers. Again, we see that tight control over what can and cannot be done.
But. Unlike in some games, there are no restrictions on who can be attacked; many games with a Player vs. Player element give new players immunity to this warfare as protection. Nothing of the sort exists in EVE, only the police forces that, like in the real world, can’t respond immediately to a threat. And so, chaos works its way back in. EVE players can always be attacked, anywhere and at any time. There will be consequences for the attacker, but that may not save the victim any grief.
And in the systems where the law has no authority? That’s where the players come in. There are several major player-created alliances in EVE, and they’ve managed to fill in the hole that the designers left behind. The systems that the designers left chaotic and uncontrolled? The players have sovereignty over them now, and they can do whatever they like there.
The designers of EVE could have created a police state. They could have created a sprawling empire of powerful police forces that control every known system, lockouts on targeting systems that prevent the targeting of newer or weaker players, and a regimented system of growth and development that would have guided a player up the ranks. They could have controlled everything in sight, and removed any trace of chaos from the game.
But they would have destroyed the fun of the game in the process. By backing off, by creating a system that combines law and chaos, they created an incredibly compelling system. They control what needs to be controlled, to allow players some sense of security, and they leave the rest chaotic.
There’s a message in there somewhere. Control and order are important, to be sure. Without them, no one could live without being hindered by the random whims of others. And order is far more often than not designed for a good purpose. But also, not everything can be controlled. And sometimes, one needs to just let things run unchecked. At times, life needs to be kept on track through order and control. And at other times, life needs to be allowed to run free in a celebration of chaos.
So, who else doesn’t really like all of the generic evil villains out there these days? For a lot of games, it’s enough just to have a villain that is simply evil. Not morally gray, not well intentioned, just evil. Same goes for movies… as far as one can tell, Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars is evil for the hell of it. Really, what does he want? Because “power for its own sake” is about the only answer visible.
Building a massive planet-crushing Death Star and destroying a civilian pacifist planet is another excellent example of what I’m talking about. What point was there to that, beyond just being evil for the hell of it? Try this plotline: Empire captures princess, puts her in Star Destroyer prison cells. Rescue team saves princess, but Empire plants tracking device on their ship.
About the only differences are: the Empire has a lot less ill will (you know, that whole not-blowing-up-a-planet deal) and a lot more Star Destroyers, since they have a lot more resources to spare. The other problem, though, is that it’s less dramatic, which is why in Star Wars the villains needed to be over-the-top; why they needed to be purely evil for its own sake.
It gets old after a while, though. Why doesn’t Team Rocket from Pokémon go into the mechanized construction business? With the number of robots they’ve built for the sake of screwing with Ash and friends, they clearly have the aptitude for it. And they wouldn’t have to go blasting off all the time. I guess it’s just not evil enough (or funny enough) for them to make an honest living and send money and Pokémon to Giovanni that way.
It certainly seems in a few different cases that there’s no internally consistent reason for the villains to act the way they do. The demands of producing an interesting movie or TV show, the demands of drama or comic relief, are the reasons for creating villains that act in these ways. But treating those stories as worlds in their own respect forces the view that they’re acting evil for the hell of it. That the villains have no goals beyond being the antagonists; that the dreams of the enemy are non-existent. And people don’t usually act that way.
So it’s awfully refreshing once in a while to get a series like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s. As the series opens, the antagonists seem pretty clearly marked. You know, those guys over there that are the guardians of the Book of Darkness. That cursed book that has never been used for anything other than destruction. That tome that will gain limitless power once all 666 pages have been completed. Frankly, at first, it’s a little bit of a cliché storm. (link to TVTropes)
But, much like the first season does, it doesn’t remain clichéd for long. The motivations of the “villains” are laid bare before the season is half over; the dreams of the enemy are apparent to at least the viewer, if not the protagonists. And the master of the Book of Darkness isn’t the textbook villain lusting after power; likewise, the guardians aren’t just the textbook mini-boss squad that seems to gain nothing from being evil. Oh no.
In fact, they’re about as far from that as it’s possible to be. In a refreshing turn from the standard “bwa ha ha I’m evil and I like it” villain, the master of the Book Of Darkness specifically ordered the guardians not to go out and complete the book. She hardly qualifies as an antagonist, and even if one did try to fit her into that category, she’s definitely not seeking “power after power, ceasing only in death,” as Hobbes put it. (Yeah, I can reference political theory too.)
But then, why are the guardians completing the Book? Clearly they must be more typical villains, right? Well, actually… no. Actually, their leader accepted that order fully and completely. Until they learned that the Book of Darkness was killing its master through a curse, one that would lose effect if the Book was completed. Yes, that’s right: they’re acting as they are to save their master’s life.
What does this mean? People aren’t usually mindless drones that are only supposed to act as the antagonist for some greater story, and it’s nice to see a story that reflects that fact. Although they do exist, it’s the rare person that really does act evil for the hell of it. In the world that we live in, everyone has some kind of dream or goal. Even one’s enemy or opponent has their own wishes and desires. Sometimes, those are even noble ones.
It’s all too easy to look at an opponent and dismiss them as nothing more than an object. Nothing more than an enemy to defeat, even to kill. But that’s not what people are like. When war breaks out, the dead are reduced to numbers and the enemy is reduced to just some monolithic force that must be defeated in battle. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the people behind all of those numbers and uniforms.
Note, I’m not saying that war as a whole is wrong because of this. Unfortunately, sometimes force is the only solution to an opponent who carries a destructive dream. But there must be that awareness of the opponent’s status as a human being. And that awareness is one of the things that will help to ensure that we go no farther than we must.
The line between the two is incredibly thin. All too often, the effort to protect something requires that something else be destroyed. This is most obviously seen in war, when armies do battle. Usually with both sides claiming justice; all claiming that their goal is to protect. And all the while, more destruction rains down. Sometimes, it reaches even what’s being protected; the old joke “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” is a classic for a reason.
But then, where can the line be drawn? Just yesterday, I watched the eleventh Pokémon movie, Giratina and the Sky Warrior. (It’s on again tomorrow, February 15th, at 1900 hours. Although I will spoil a good deal of the plot, so if you want to watch it, I’d read this after you do so.) And interestingly enough, the story of a reversed world and its role had plenty to say about the line between destruction and protection.
The villain of this tale was a man named Zero. Who knows why someone would actually be called by that name, but whatever. And his goal was to take control of the Reverse World by basically taking power from the Reverse World’s sole inhabitant, Giratina. Sacrificing that legendary Pokémon in the process, of course.
But he of course had his noble motives. You see, the fight between Dialga and Palkia from the tenth movie (I didn’t know the Pokémon movies had this much continuity…) had put strain on space-time, and the Reverse World was relieving this strain. The results of this process were fairly severely polluting the Reverse World. And Zero billed himself as its defender, working to prevent the real world from polluting the Reverse World any further.
The strain is visible. Protection, or destruction? Or both? For Zero’s plan, a fairly major amount of destruction was called for. To protect the Reverse World, the real world would have to be destroyed. To even get there with the power to do anything, Giratina would have to be destroyed. In this specific case, it’s fairly obvious where Zero falls. In actually watching the movie, the sheer madness is obvious more than any desire to protect.
Likewise, the heroes are also fairly apparent. But still, the line between protection and destruction exists. By trying to stop Zero’s efforts, Ash and his friends (along with the titular Sky Warrior, Shaymin) were basically saying that the pollution of the Reverse World was acceptable. Along with, of course, doing indescribable amounts of damage to Zero’s Pokémon and assorted gadgetry.
So why is it that the destruction endorsed by the heroes is acceptable while the destruction of the villain isn’t? What is it about their actions that makes them better than Zero? There are a number of answers to that question.
Some philosophies dictate that the massive amount of destruction that Zero would have caused versus the smaller amounts that the heroes caused in the end justify their actions. That purely weighing the different sides of the balance show how Zero’s actions were worth stopping. Likewise, Zero was protecting an abandoned world in which only he would live while the heroes protected the real world and all of its people. That’s a perfectly valid answer to that question.
Personally, though, I prefer the one rooted in intent. Zero’s intent wasn’t really to protect. Sure, he tried to claim that he was protecting the Reverse World. And it’s certainly even true that his actions would have stopped the pollution of the Reverse World. But that’s not what he wanted. He wanted to forcibly take power from Giratina, killing it in the process. He wanted to rule over the Reverse World and destroy the real one. He wanted to destroy.
While the heroes? The heroes at all points were protecting something. Ash and his friends spent much of the movie trying to protect Shaymin, or at least accompanying it when it didn’t really need protection. They put no small amount of effort into protecting the real world, of course. Even more, they knew that it was sadly the natural order of things for the Reverse World to react as it did to the strain on space-time. It can even be said that they were trying to protect the natural order of things. They wanted to protect.
And when Giratina was at Zero’s mercy, Ash, Dawn, Brock, and Shaymin put no small amount of effort into protecting it: a legendary Pokémon that they had actually fought earlier in the movie; one that certainly had no real desire to help them at the time. Shaymin had been terrified of Giratina earlier in the movie; now, Shaymin nearly exhausted itself helping Giratina.
Intent and the will to carry it out can change the future. As such, intent must be where morality is rooted. There are those with the desire to destroy. They can claim that they’re protecting something: Hitler can say that he was protecting the German people; Zero can argue that he was protecting the Reverse World. But intent is what matters: Hitler wanted to rule the European world, Zero wanted to rule the Reverse World.
And if the heroes have to engage in destruction to stop them, then so be it. If the Allied Nations have to engage in World War II to protect the free world; if Ash and Shaymin have to accept the pollution of the Reverse World, then so be it. The line is indeed thin between destruction and protection. And in so many cases, both will be seen at once.
But it can be determined who is in the right. Destruction may be all too common, on all sides of a conflict. And in many of those conflicts, the intent of each side is paramount. Whether to claim protection in order to destroy, or carry out destruction in order to protect… I know which side I fall on. I will make no excuses. I will destroy if I must. But I will do no more than I must, and I will remember why I act in that way.
In some cases, I know that I’m going to make a two-part post before I even start writing. Not so this time; I realized about two minutes ago that I could extend what I said last week. (Well, two minutes before I started writing, anyway.) And really, it’s more that I realized I could use similar titles than a realization that I had more to say.
Regardless. Last week I discussed some of the rewards that I found in the effort I put into Pokémon. But there’s more than that in what video games have to say about effort and hard work, at least for me. You see, like many activities, video games offer rewards to dedicated players.
It’s visible all over: the amount of effort required to even clear a lot of games is almost enough right there. The idea of an “achievement”, first seen in Xbox titles, has spread all over the community of Internet flash games, even spawning a parody game (Achievement Unlocked, produced by Armor Games, link to OneMoreLevel.com) that has nothing but such achievements. Even after clearing a game, usually there’s even more to do for 100% completion (link to TVTropes). And unsurprisingly, these kinds of rewards for reaching goals, even if those rewards are nothing but the satisfaction of success, do encourage the kind of motivation and effort that can translate into all areas of life.
And an excellent example of one game in which this applies more than any other is Dance Dance Revolution. Dance Dance Revolution (or just DDR) is a kind of rhythm game where the challenge is to respond to a song being played. Predictably, having a good sense of rhythm is unendingly helpful when playing these games. DDR in particular is a dancing game, in which the player has to step on arrows on the ground in response to the arrows on the screen. The game, like most rhythm games, thus requires a special controller to play. In this case, a pad with four arrows on it.
The difficulty ranges from really easy to insanely hard. The songs with difficulty levels around one or two are usually easy enough for anyone to handle, while songs up at eight or nine usually cause people unfamiliar with DDR to stop and stare. The legendary level ten songs are usually impossible for just about anyone, even experienced players. The odd thing about all of that, though, is that surprisingly enough, it requires no small amount of practice and effort to become any better at the game.
I can barely even remember when I first tried DDR. I know it was in an arcade somewhere, and I seem to recall being immensely proud of myself after doing a really easy song. That lasted about until I finished, and the person waiting for the arcade machine got up and played a song that was much, much harder than anything I had attempted. Better yet, it seemed like every time I went to the arcade, there was a large crowd of skilled players around the machine, and I didn’t dare interrupt them.
Because of this, I wasn’t really getting any practice. I wasn’t improving significantly at all. Now, I certainly could have just written it off as unimportant and done something else. Certainly, there are plenty of people in the world who write off video games in general as unimportant. But that’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to get better at DDR; I harbored my dream of being able to one day walk up to such a crowd and force my way in on the basis of my skill. And I knew that if I wanted that, I had to practice.
I could have backed down overall. I certainly could have just thought about that dream and satisfy myself with those thoughts. But that wouldn’t have gotten me anywhere. Setting a goal or having a dream is only the first step. It’s a first step that’s meaningless without the willpower and effort to make it happen. I could have saved my money and my time for other pursuits. But all of life is making choices and allocating resources to the goals and dreams that we possess. And in this case, I chose to put my effort into realizing this dream.
In addition to the arcade versions, there are DDR games sold for home consoles as well. So I went out and got the only available DDR game for the only major console I had at the time: DDR Mario Mix for the Nintendo Gamecube. And I practiced and (slowly) improved. Unknowingly, I had bought a DDR game that was easier than most other available games; I can’t say whether or not this affected my development.
I eventually got to the point where I wasn’t being challenged anymore by any of the songs on that game. By this time, we had an Xbox as well (still in the previous generation), so the obvious solution was to pick up one of the DDR games for that system. After getting DDR Ultramix 3 as a gift, my improvement continued.
Two more recent events have shown the culmination of all of this effort. My old high school held a talent show every year, and by the time that my senior year rolled around, I was confident enough in my ability (and encouraged by all of my friends) to play DDR for the crowd. I chose what is known as a “boss song”, one of the insanely difficult songs that on the hardest difficulties are almost always difficulty level ten. I did not play at that level, instead going for the level nine difficulty just below that.
It went about as well as could be expected. I missed all of three steps in a lightning fast song that demands quite a lot in terms of physical ability. And I led off the talent show in style as the first act; according to some of my friends in the audience, I drew at least a partial standing ovation. I had gained the respect and admiration of a crowd far larger than I had ever dreamed of performing for.
Much later, at a club meeting for video game players at Brandeis (yeah, CGX shout out!), two highly skilled club members had brought a DDR game on the computer (not technically called such, but it might as well have been the same thing) that several members were enjoying immensely, including myself. And with a massive selection of songs from any number of different DDR games, I had a lot to choose from.
Near the end of the meeting, I found the song that I had played for the talent show in the list, a song called The Legend of MAX. And I decided that, since I had improved in the intervening months, it couldn’t hurt to try it on its highest difficulty. Yet again, I stood in front of a crowd of people and demonstrated my skill. One cleared level ten song later, I had finally reached that goal that I had set so long ago.
And now? Now I can do things like, well, the video below.
That’s a level ten song on DDR SuperNova for the PS2, called Xepher. (Obviously, I was the one dancing in that video.) I’ve cleared six level ten songs since then, and I’m still practicing. The nature of songs of this difficulty means that really, one has to individually break down each one. Unlike at the lower difficulties, where the ability to clear one level nine or level eight song usually translates into the ability to clear most of them, level ten songs usually require a lot of individual practice before they become possible.
It took me about a year to get from being a complete novice to being able to handle level eight or nine songs. And it took me about another year of practice after that to finally clear a level ten song. For the truly motivated, video games like Dance Dance Revolution aren’t just a waste of time; they’re a skill in their own right, one that like any other requires time and effort (that is to say, practice) to master.
And over the years that I improved, there were so many chances for me to turn back. Either before I got any DDR game, or before I got Ultramix 3, or just at any time to get tired and quit. But nothing in life works that way. Not Dance Dance Revolution, not my classes, not my extracurricular activities, nor anything else. If one has a dream, one has to put in the effort and the will to make that happen. And that’s a lesson that if nothing else is reinforced by the challenges presented by the video games that I play.
In today’s world, Internet connectivity for video games has progressed past a novelty into a requirement. Almost all decent multiplayer games have a system in place to connect with other human players anywhere in the world these days. But that isn’t always enough. In most cases, these systems will have limitations, especially Nintendo’s systems. Without having other ways of communication, without knowing a person in some other manner, it is usually impossible to connect with that person over a Nintendo game on the Internet.
Thus, the need for other means of game play. There are programs that can be downloaded that replicate certain functions of games and allow these competitions to be held online with less restriction. Not just video games, either; there are systems that emulate things like trading card games as well, to allow their play over the Internet.
I’ve tried some of these emulators. As a Pokémon trainer, when I learned about the world of competitive battling for that game, I wanted to try my hand at it. So I got a simulator called Shoddy Battle (their website is here, for the curious) which has as its stated goal “to create and maintain… a computer program that offers an online RPG battle experience similar to one found in the Pokemon games.”
And honestly enough? I don’t really like using it all that much. Now, before I continue, I want to make it abundantly clear that this dislike has nothing to do with the program itself or with any of the people involved. The program works beautifully; the people I’ve battled have (usually) been fine people and a fine challenge for my skills. No, after some personal examination, I’ve come to realize that my dislike has to do with the idea of using a simulator in the first place.
When it comes to Pokémon battle, there are two major parts to the planning. In the real world, strategy is generally long-term planning for a wider situation, while tactics are more immediate methods in a single battle. Pokémon is divided much the same, with the art of team building alongside the actual use of that team in battle. Both are highly complicated affairs for which experience is a major asset.
And when actually playing the game, both require a lot of effort and skill to properly manage. As I write this, I’m laying initial plans for a new competitive team. Even after I finally decide on what Pokémon I’m actually going to use, which is a challenge all to itself, I’ll still have to get those Pokémon with the right natures (natures affect their statistics) and train them properly to optimize those statistics for each Pokémon’s given role. This is a process that will likely take up several hours of game play, spread over days or even weeks, in its completion.
Once all of that is done, I’ll start battling with them and figure out what works and what doesn’t, along with having to deal with the fallout from any mistakes that I make. Each battle will be a challenge all its own, as I’ll have to figure out how to deal with anything that comes my way. And more often than not, I’ll probably fail and end up losing, as competition between human players is something for which experience is important… and I don’t have much of that yet.
But after all of that effort, I get its due reward. I do have a team designed for competitive battling already, after all. And yes, it did take a lot of effort to set up on my game card. It isn’t the greatest team in the world, but it is mine. After all of that effort, there is nothing I enjoy more in the Pokémon games than bringing it out (usually on Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Wii, since I can battle random people over the Internet with that) and trying my level best to take down the opposing team.
I have also constructed a competitive team on Shoddy Battle for use on that program. And after battling with it several times, I started to notice that I didn’t really enjoy those battles as much as the ones I did with the actual game. It eventually got to the point where I all but ceased using the simulator entirely; I haven’t really logged on to that for a while. And I think it has to do with the effort involved in using the simulator.
There’s a reason why I emphasized that the team I built on my Pokémon Diamond game card was mine. After I spent the amount of time that I did, and invested the effort that I did in creating it, I feel like that team has become more than just a few Pokémon that I trained. There’s more than just that time and effort in them now. I feel like I’ve invested a part of myself in that team.
And when I battle with that team that I built, I feel like I’m displaying that; I feel like I’m putting my effort forward for the world to see. The people that I have challenged probably aren’t too impressed with my effort, but that was never the point. I enjoy battling with my Pokémon; I enjoy challenging myself in attempting to lead them to victory.
The problem is… I don’t get that feeling from dueling on the simulator. I haven’t put much effort into creating that team. I still had to decide what Pokémon to use and what roles they would play, yes, but once those decisions were made the rest was nothing more than clicking buttons to do what took me hours in the actual game. The feeling that that team is a result of my effort just isn’t there.
I have no doubt that there are people who would dismiss much of that as irrelevant; this isn’t the Pokémon anime show, in which the relationship between a trainer and his or her Pokémon is of paramount importance. But until computers can simulate the kind of interaction between trainer and Pokémon that is seen on the show, I think that what I feel playing with the team that I built is as close as I can possibly come to that same camaraderie.
And maybe it is irrelevant. It certainly doesn’t affect game statistics; in fact, the Pokémon team I constructed on the simulator is superior in that respect, because I have more power to alter certain aspects of the Pokémon on that than I do in the game. But there are still rewards for that effort that I put in. There is a sense of joy that I haven’t found elsewhere, in taking the results of my work and pitting it against the work of other trainers.
Finally, I turned on Pokémon Battle Revolution and played a few battles against people that I’ll likely never see again just a few days ago. It was as enjoyable as it always is, despite the loss that I took. In contrast, I haven’t activated Shoddy Battle for several months now. That, more than anything else in my opinion, shows what my rewards are for the effort I put in. Maybe it’s only me, but I take pride in that effort, and that gives both the results and the process of that effort a joy that I haven’t found without it.
Going back to Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, another thing that only really becomes apparent late in the series is how annoying linear time is, at least for the villain. We all know how that works: the past has already happened and cannot be changed; the future is unknown and affected by the events that come before it. And it was both of those facts that created a problem for Precia, the primary villain of the series.
Decades before the events of the actual series itself, Precia had an important research position and a daughter named Alicia. That said, though, she was conducting illegal experiments, and in true mad scientist illegal experiment fashion, those experiments ended in a catastrophe. When the dust settled, she was exiled from the city and her daughter was dead. That was her past, the events that came before.
But then, what future became of that chaos? With Alicia gone, Precia descended into madness. She chased after myths and legends in an effort to change what had come before, in a manner that promised yet more harm and suffering to anyone nearby. Essentially, Precia chose to ignore the future, to change her future by reclaiming her past rather than by moving forward. And it was that desire that created all of the problems in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
There are people much like her in the world today. There are those who look at their past and see nothing but regret, nothing but events that need to be changed. Unlike Precia, they usually aren’t villains that end up causing more harm, but they share her anguished lament of “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!” For better or for worse, it is a reaction to loss and sorrow.
But it can be carried too far. The past will not change, no matter how much one laments on what could have been different. As Crono Harlaown, one of Nanoha’s allies in that final battle, put it, nothing’s ever the way it’s supposed to be. Nothing is ever perfect, and anyone who wants to find only what could have been done differently will be paralyzed for months, doing nothing but regretting the mistakes they’ve made.
What, then, can we do? How can we balance learning from the past with having a positive effect on the future? No one should become completely consumed by taking back their mistakes. We will all make them, and we can’t demand of anyone that they put things back to the way they were. Sometimes, such a restoration back to the original order will be impossible, as it was for Precia.
We cannot change the past, and we cannot always reclaim it. Because of that, we need to focus on what we can change. When mistakes are made, we can’t look to the past and try to reclaim the world before those errors. We need to look ahead. Move ahead, to the future that is shaped by the events that come before. The events of the past will remain in place, so all we can do is look to the future and create those events that will bring about a better one.
Precia had her attention fixed on the past. She stated, “I’m going to change what was, and create a brand new future for me and Alicia!” I find that statement more than any other to be a contradiction. She may have wanted a different future, but she didn’t pay it any mind. She was devoted to changing the past, not the future. The problem was not in the events of her past but rather in herself.
Statements like that have no place in the creation of the future. A fixation on the regrets of the past is no help in forging a better future. We may not be able to change the events of the past, but we can change and shape the events of the future. And thus, it is on that future that our attention must fall.
The choice is one presented to anyone who has ever lost something, whether it be a few hours of play time from forgetting to save before quitting all the way up to the people that are important to us. We can fixate on that loss, and pine for what was. With some lesser events, we can try to exactly recreate what we lose, as one could with a video game. We can allow our own lives, and reality as a whole, to lapse in our grief over what is no longer there.
Or we can take that loss and build a new future even with it. We can play the game again, not caring for what exactly happened the first time but enjoying the second no less. We can fondly remember our losses yet move forward with our lives anyway, learning and changing from the events around us and doing what we think is important. Those losses and that past will always be with us, and shouldn’t be ignored. But they do not deserve our entire focus.
I know what I would prefer when I leave this world, as I no doubt will one day. That could happen tomorrow; it could be a hundred years in the future. But when I do, I would not want to see the people around me overly devastated by grief. I would not want to be completely forgotten. If I could, I would want to see those around me remembering yet moving on. Looking to the future even with the losses of the past.
Again in the words of Crono, we can choose to run away from reality, or we can face it head on. We can take our losses and mistakes of the past and make them part of our future. We can choose to not let our grief and regret rule our future, but rather make them a part of our future. We can carry the past, which will remain unchanged, and look to the future, which can be changed.
To create a better future, to truly do what Precia was trying to do in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, both the past and the future will be important. The past will inevitably be part of our future, but so too will our decisions and our outlook be important. And as long as only one of those can be changed, then I know what I’ll focus on. Not the past, as Precia chose, but the future.
