Infomational Rant on Anime Cosplay... ...

Some of you people out there are most likely scratching your head and wondering "What the banana are they doing?" or "What is that?" well I'm here to clear thing up. Firstly I'll break down the words anime cosplay. Anime is Japanese cartoons that are made and aired in Japan and it usually has a very stylized look about it. The word cosplay breaks down into two words "cos" with stands for costume and "play" with stands for play. The word play in cosplay could mean two different things, one of them being just playing around and having fun with it, and the other being the drama type of play because when you dress up as your character some people go to the extreme and act like their character as well. Cosplay is when you pick one your favourite character from any anime series and then dress up as that character. Cosplaying is extremely fun and I believe that it is a form of flattery for the author of the anime. It also is a great way to show off you skill with a needle and thread, plastic, nylon, styrofoam, metal, and various other materials that you would never think of using, for example did you know that pop bottles make very nice upper arm bands? Not only is cosplay fun but it's also a type of competition. When you are cosplaying you are trying to make your costume look as close to your character as possible, down to every last detail, and when you arrive at the convention the better the costume the more attention you will receive. This attention includes many photos and lots of hugs to go around. I don't believe that I have mentioned what happens to you when you do cosplay at conventions. One of the main things is that people with ask to take your picture and then you pose in a pose that your character would do, the better the costume the more photos you will get, and if you dress as a character that everyone loves and you are lucky enough that no one else is dressed as that character you are going to get a lot of attention, speaking from experience. Another thing is that you will be asked for is hugs and you may even get the occasional glomp, an unexpected tackle or hug, so don't be afraid if you see this going on at conventions. Cosplay is a lot of work and hundreds of hour go it in some of these costumes and some of them take hours more to put on in the morning of the convention not to mention the gravity defying hair, which I am still working on perfecting, which is a skill by it's self. I have been cosplaying for two years now at Anime Evolution, which is a anime convention held at SFU in Vancouver, and speaking from experience it is all worth while and extremely fun.
Check out the links below for examples of cosplay:
Warning! Some of these costumes aren't exactly business casual.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYfJxezLn1o&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wS0oIITXZFE&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GyAWuqIkyvU&feature=related

Journal Entry 1: Angels and Demons

" ...when Kohler failed to return at the proper time for his daily injections; the director's physical condition required regular treatments, and when he decided to push his luck, the results were never pretty-respiratory shock, coughing fits..."
pg.126


I can relate to this quote since I also have had to take medicine daily when I was younger. When I was young I was diagnosed with asthma and had to use a puffer once a day. It usually acts up in the summer and as a result I sometimes end up having severe coughing fits, like Kohler, that cause me to cough so much I am unable to breath(to a small extent) and it also causes me to throw up. Not the most pleasant thing to wake-up to at 1:00 in the morning. But the good news is that my asthma is now practically gone and I have not had an attack for over 2yrs.

~~~~~~

"A Pope usually worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, and died of exhaustion in an average of 6.3 years." pg.202

This fact really caught me off guard. It made me think about what the Pope actually does that would be so exhausting that it would cause your life span to be compromised. I know that the Pope travels around blessing people, praying, and conducting sermons, but how stressful would that be? And if the job is really that stressful why do they only chose men between 65 and 80 years old? It really is puzzling? By reading this part it to an extent makes me want to look up what the job of the Pope really is.

Movie Review

Thud, a young girl touches down on the ground in the middle of a gun fight. "Returner" is an Japanese Sci-Fi film ,subtitled, that is full action and humour that I enjoyed immensely. The movie is set in both the future, 2084,
and the present, 2002, of Japan, but it starts off in the future. The movie is about a girl from the future, named Milly (or Mili depending on who you talk to), who was sent back in time to stop the alien invasion that has almost killed everyone in her time by killing the first alien that came to Earth so that the invasion would never have happened. I know it sounds cliche but the way they executed the idea was amazing.When she reaches the future she ends up meeting Miyamoto, a skilled Tokyo gunman, and she ropes him into helping her with her mission, using a very interesting technique. These two make a very comical pair. Milly being a cocky yet tough and smart Japanese girl . Where on the other hand Miyamoto is a hitman with morals who is also cocky. On the opposing side of our duo is Mizuguchi. He is a ruthless killer who is part of the Japanese mafia but he is under the order of the Chinese mafia. He is a very evil character who likes to use his underlings to do his bidding. The actor who plays him did an exceptional job bringing his character to life because by the end on the movie you really do hate the guy. All of the actors did an awesome job bringing their characters to life and really making you believe them and you really get attached to their characters. Before Milly and Miyamoto can reach the alien Mizuguchi had already found it and is going to try to use the aliens advanced technology for evil purposes.The race against the clock had begun and they only have three days till the aliens invade and the clock is ticking.
If explosions, dodging bullets, alien invasions, the japanese mafia (aka the yakuza) and shopping trips in the middle of trying to save the world are your thing then this is the movie for you!

Ignorance

Ignorance. This is an extremely interesting subject to write on but I shall give it a go.

There are many things going on in the world constantly and no human could know about them all. But, there are certain thing that we do know about and either, one proceed to do something about or two choose to remain ignorant about it. A personal example for me of finding out about something and proceeding to do something about it is MacDonald's. I never liked the place to begin with ,even since I was a small child, but me and my sister used to go and get fries together once in a while. This all change when I seen 'Super Size Me'. I was utterly repulsed by the fact that their flies didn't ever seem to rot or even get slightly discoloured. Lets just say I never, ever, go to MacDonald's at all now, not that I realy did in the first place, and the very smell of it makes me want to toss my cookies. Ever Since Searcy gave us the story about the slaughter house and I found out that MacDonald's is one of the places that buys that meat I am even more repulsed than I already was with them.

Afghanistan

I am sorry to say that I do not know anything about the war that is currently going on in Afghanistan. I know that I really should considering that we currently have troops over there, but I don't. I would tell you that "we shouldn't be there" but I don't even really no the true reason that we are there in the first place. So thus, even if I told you "we shouldn't be there" I wouldn't be able to back it up since I don't know anything about it. Although, after reading the letters and just having to think about how little I know about the war makes me want to go do some research on it.

My own view of me as a character......

A young girl skipped joyfully into a well lit room smiling brightly. The room was painted a bright white colour which made the sun that was streaming through the open window seem even brighter. Her shinny and short chopped dark brown hair, that had lovingly been flipped up at the ends, bounced and simmered as she skipped further into the room. She wore a bright outfit that consisted of a bright pastel coloured skirt that moved with her every step and a light pink shirt that had iridescent gems on the front that caught the rays of the sun and cast rainbows upon the walls and ceiling. She seemed to light up a room as soon as she entered it. This matches her name Megami ,which means goddess, very well. She had stunning hazel eyes that turn a startling dark green colour when she got extremely excited or when she got in a mischievous mood. However, the room also held a dark place within it which was located in the far corner. You could say this represents the evil streak that this cheery and hyper girl has hiden in the far recesses of her mind. Though, this evil streak only seems to comes out when you get her extremely angry or if she hasn't gotten enough sleep and is very hungry. She skipped joyfully over to the closed window and proceeded to open it. Then pivoting around fast on one foot, her skirt spinning out around her, skipped her way happily out of the room shutting the door, with a gentle push, behind her.

Blogging Ideas

The types of blogs I believe we should write on should be very open ended and creative topics. It should be a topic that everyone will be able to brainstorm ideas for and not get stuck there trying their hardest to come up with an idea and then getting extremely frustrated. On the other hand specific topics may not be as interesting and I have noticed if you are forced to write on such topics you just don't want to write on them because again it ,usually, doesn't interest you. Topics I believe we should write on are, writing about your favourite sport and or bashing a sport, writing a Christmas or birthday wish list, or making up your own mystical creature and then creating an environment for it. I think it would be benificial for all of us if the blogs were to be marked for completion only. This would be a good way of doing the marking because firstly sometimes you just have an off day and just can't write, secondly if you get a topic you just can't write on, but you tried anyway, you shouldn't get penalized for it. Finally it would be way easier for Searcy to mark them all.