GloriousHawk's Blog

Anime Relations: Pokemon

Tired of inconsiderate assholes spoiling things for you? Or are you dumb unlucky enough to run into them yourself? Well, stop whatever your doing and I'll offer you the perfect solution. Don't worry. I'm the king of ruining shit for myself.

1.No image searching.
Let's say you're half way your favourite show. You now love it and want to search for an awesome wallpaper or profile picture of it. Don't do it. For the love of god. This almost made me drop one of my favourite shows. I Google searched for an image of a certain anime and some shitty motivational poster was on the first row; it completely spoiled everything. All I wanted was a damn wallpaper!

2.Avoid search engines at all costs.
Try and avoid typing in the name or a character of your favourite show in a search engine; the suggestions might spoil it. I was looking for a clip of one of my favourite characters on YouTube. I typed it on the search and the list of suggestions dropped down; I ended up ruining it for myself. I'll do a screen shot (I'll blur the name out so I don't spoil it for you)



3.Try not to watch your show on youtube/ Don't read Youtube Comments
If you want to watch a series on the internet, try using Youtube or any other similar site as a last solution. You might be tempted to scroll down to the comment section out of habit. Not every YouTube user is considerate of others and they may spoil things.

The second problem is the image thumbnails and suggestion list at the side. Concerning the former, some dickhead might use the shot of a character's death scene as a thumbnail. Yes, I encountered this stupidity on some website. It wasn't youtube, but it was a similar site. In regards to the latter, you usually have a video suggestion list on the right or left hand side. You have no choice. It might suggest a video of a certain scene. For example, you see a video called "****'s death". Yeah, you'd be pretty mad. You'd be twice as mad if the thumbnail image shows you how the character dies.

4. Avoid the fans for a bit
If you're a MAL user looking for a friend who shares the same taste of you, beware. You might accidently stumble across a spoiler filled conversation between them and their other friend, or they might have some image of a certain scene on their profile. Yes, the latter scenario happened to me. Avoid fan clubs, too.You can join them, but try not to get to nosy and explore the club too much. You never know what you might run into.

5.Avoid forums
Don't go on forums built for fans of your favourite show if you haven't finished. You might, again, run into a spoiler filled discussion or end up reading some troll's comment that will ruin for you. This happened to me.

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You might think this is daft, but we all have our unlucky days, I s'pose.

P.S I put Pokemon as an entry anime relation because I was told to. You can't make a blog entry without one.

It's seldom that I meet anime fans that are very enthusiastic towards western comics, especially if it originates from the US.The US offer a variety of stories and genres other than superheroes, it's just that they are not in the mainstream regardless of how much critical acclaim they receive.

So, if there's something everyone should read it's the graphic novel: Maus. It's a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel created by Art Spiegelman. It's in fact a biography of his father, Vladek, who is a Polish-Jew who managed to survive the holocaust. In my opinion ,the genius in this comic lies not only in the way the story is told, but it's metaphorical character design as well.

The story revolves around Vladek Spiegelman talking to his son Art (or Artie) about his experience to the build up to the holocaust and how he survived it since Art wants to publish it as a comic. Another reason why the way it's told is so great is because characters, depending on which nationality they are, are depicted as animals. The Jews are mice, the Germans are cats and the Poles are pigs. The use of this metaphor is played well for the purpose of telling the story. For example, when Vladek and his wife had to disguise themselves as ordinary Poles they just wore pig masks. I believe that is to save time for too much explanation and gets to the point very well.

It's written so that not only do we get to learn about Vladek's background and story, we also have a chance to gain understanding and witness through his eyes the atrocities he's witnessed during the holocaust. We get to see not only how the Nazi's managed to exterminate them and enslave them, but how they managed to turn them against each other when it came to trading necessities and doing jobs in order to survive in the camps...it was every man for himself. We are told how Poland was divided for the Jews and Germans and the last moments of the holocaust through the eyes of a holocaust survivor.

What really left me an impression is that the writer managed to succeed in telling us all this while at the same time we get to learn about the rocky relationship about Vladek and Artie while in the making of this very comic! The author does this by showing the exchanges he and his dad had during the breaks he had while working on the comic. His father really did end up being the stereotype of an old Jewish man who is very a very possessive miser, he is also very old fashioned. This causes conflict between the two at times. Though if there's one thing we learn is that Art Spiegelman was a tortured soul prior to this work and suffered a mental break down (not explained why). Though I wish not to spoil it for you. But we get to learn as much about them two as well as Vladek's experience.

Vladek is a very smart and flexible character who we witness go through all sorts of trials and obstacles so he and his wife Anja survive the camps. Despite how many of his loved ones were taken away from him he still managed to overcome everything and relied on his wits a lot. He stood out from most of the characters since most were just willing to die, willing to suck up to the guards and gain favour we also witness some jews willing to betray their own. Vladek was a strong character during that time, and was willing to survive knowing his wife was still alive in the other concentration camp.Other than his wit, things came down to pure luck which will amazes me how fate works. It's as if he was destined to stay alive just so this comic can be made, heh.Though you just wonder how he suddenly transformed into an old git.

The art is black and white and very cartoony. It's a very bold and different approach. It works very well in my opinion and you won't have trouble emphasising with the characters. It may look immature in the outside, but when you dig deeper, you'll see something very beautiful yet tragic.

Go check it out, it's very likely to be in your local library since it's considered an essential read and also it made a great success. I hope more manga/anime fans realise there is a wide variety of stories in the US comic book industry and it's not all just tights and capes.

I've developed a habbit of making a blog entry and deleting it. So I'll stop be self-concious and try not to delete it.

I write this entry to express what my top 10 favourite anime series and films are. They'll change every few months or so.



They're deintely Subject to change. TTGL, Kaiji and Nadame Contabile are definately become new favourites but I put them on hold because I wanna finish some manga.I'll start them again in the new year.

Yeah you may disagree with the scores I've given them but don't start shoving things down my throat or I'll stick a spear up your ass.