The decay of MMORPGs: MapleStory's story

     MapleStory is a free to play 2D MMORPG developed by Wizet and published by Nexon. It was created in South Korea, released there on April 29th, 2003, still has one of the largest fan bases in all of MMORGPs, and it got majorly fucked.

Background

     A little background: back when I was a wee lad, I would hop on the internet whenever possible. Back in 7th grade was when the majority of my gaming was done on MapleStory. This game was basically my life. I would finish up school, come home, play MapleStory until dinner time, finish homework, watch TV, and sometimes when my parents went to bed, I would hop on for a bit and play (hhhehehhehheh, so sneaky). From what I remember of back then, that's how it was. I didn't feel guilty for spending that much time on the computer, I didn't feel like I was wasting my time. This is also where I met my good friend (whom I'm still friends with): Mark.

What a cutie

     Me and Mark hung out a lot during our game time. We formed parties, chatted, met new people, went to places wayyy too far above our level and got pummeled by enemies. It was pretty fun.

     Anyway, enough background. Let's take a look at the changes that I think hurt the game the most.

Changes in MapleStory

The World Maps

The only map available in early versions of the game (when I played)

     This was great back in the day. There was only 1 map which was for Victoria island where only noobies hung out (for the most part). On the other islands (Ossyria, aka Orbis/El Nath, and Ludibrium) there were no such maps available for navigation. Not only did this incline people to explore for themselves, it helped people talk to others to figure out where things are. Isn't that what MMORPGs are about? Talking and getting help from people?

Nexon whyyyyyy..

     Now there are maps for everything. Sigh. No more asking people where things are, no exploration needed.  I would even be okay with a bulletin board in-game that has the world map, but having it on you at all times just seems..counterproductive? I think that's the right word. It's just outright counterproductive; it creates less incentive to talk to other players.

The Cash Shop

     Oh boy..where do I even start. Most people know about cash shops in free-to-play games. Basically they run on a "you can play the game for free, and if you want, you can buy items in-game to improve your character or experience in some way". It's a pretty interesting business model, the only problem being the majority of businesses do it completely fucking wrong. There are so many ways you can completely screw over any and all players who don't buy from the cash shop, and it seems like most businesses couldn't care less about this. There's a term for these kinds of games, they're called "free to play, pay to win". MapleStory being one of them. Luckily, I had started losing interest in the game when this started to happen. When I first began playing, however, they used the Cash Shop effectively and extremely smart. The Cash Shop used to be only used for aesthetic items like clothes to make your character look cooler, or pets that you could train and would pick up items quickly for you. 

Wow. Such cool, much aesthetics.

     But as time went on, Nexon apparently needed more money, so they began implementing items that would make your character much stronger than others. This especially created a problem at high levels, because in order to be viable in fighting bosses, you needed to buy these items to upgrade your equipment effectively.

Creates "untapped potential" on items
(Basically created random additional stats on items)
I'm actually okay with this item by itself,
it's in conjunction with the others that it becomes bullshit.

Allows user to reset  potential stats

     So there you go, that's how MapleStory got completely screwed over, and why it's now "free to play, pay to win". I had fun with it while it lasted, but it's become so much about damage-whoring that there isn't much reason to even try anymore unless you want to spend $50 or more on upgrading your items. The business idea is solid, but actually doing it takes away immensely from the overall enjoyment of the game. Hopefully they realized that and won't do it for any more games, that's a big "hopefully" though. I don't expect them to do anything of the sort. After all, why stop making as much money as you can?

Why you should watch Gurren Lagann

Gurren Lagann

     Gurren Lagann can be described in one word: Fun. This show is damn fun. It's a non-stop action show with an alluring plot, a beautiful, gritty art style, music that gets your blood pumping, and characters who have the fighting spirit (or should I say spiral?) of champions.

     Commend #1: The music. I can't begin to number off each time I caught myself singing the first song to myself when walking to class or bumming around my apartment. The music is unquestionably fantastic. Each and every battle scene's anticipation and excitement were increased tenfold, further strengthening the deliverance of each episode. However, there were a couple tracks that detracted from the show's value, one being an oddly placed opera piece. Thankfully, it wasn't used much.

Row, row, fight the power!

Viral's theme song (Turntables steal my heart <3)

     Commend #2: The characters. Each character is their own person, Kamina especially. His confidence is contagious and his stupidity unmatched. He is an incredibly ambitious individual, one who has his eyes set on the stars and will stop at nothing to attain his goals.

"Your drill is the drill that will pierce the Heavens!"

     He's a go-getter, the inspiration, and "bro" of our main character: Simon.

"If you're gonna dig, dig to pierce the heavens, even if it's my grave I'm digging,
I'll keep going! When I break through, it means I've WON!
Who the hell do you think I am? I'm Simon.
I'm not my Bro, Kamina. I'm ME! Simon the Digger!"

     A disease that has plagued many shows recently is lack of serious character development. Thankfully Gurren Lagann does a wonderful job implementing this; the producers develop Simon through his experiences, interactions with others, and all of the struggle he has to go through to merely stay alive. "I'm ME!". That one line states exactly how confident Simon is in himself. He's not trying to be anybody else anymore. He's not his brother. Only through his multitude of experiences does he finally come to terms with this. Character evolution is also benefited by a time-lapse, allowing them to show growth, not only in age, but also in personality and wisdom.

     Commend #3: The art style

     The art style is just flat-out cool. Whilst watching the fight scenes, you're able to see exactly how the art adds impact to each fist thrown and each kick blocked. The style, especially in Simon's picture (with the quote under it) is reminiscent of this season's show: Space Dandy mixed with a more modern/vibrant Fooly Cooly, both of which are action-packed anime. I'll definitely have to look out for more of this artist's work. For those of you wondering, the illustrator for the manga is Kotaro Mori.

     Complaint #1: The lack of downtime. This fact about Gurren Lagann bothered me the most, mostly because I enjoy a good break from plot and seriousness. In fact, most shows have at least one or two episodes where breaks from the plot are taken in order to give the viewer a little breathing room. Knowing what the day-to-day life is like and how they interact with one another is important. Unfortunately, Gurren Lagann doesn't do this. But, by not doing this it further reinforces what the show's message is: nothing can stop you, keep going until you make it, be yourself, and never give up.

     Gurren Lagann is an unbelievably great show because of its music, characters, message, and art style. Because of these aspects, I'm going to go ahead and give it the rating of 9/10. Unfortunately, the lack of downtime leads to a rushed feeling, which makes me think that this show should have been given 37 or 50 episodes rather than the 27 it has. Some bad musical tracks along with the rushed feeling steer me away from giving it a perfect score, but don't let that stop you from watching it. This show is definitely a must-watch for every anime lover.

Golden Time Review (Contains some spoilers)

     Golden Time is an anime aired from October 3rd, 2013, to March 27th, 2014. It was written by Yuyuko Takemiya (writer of the hit series: Toradora!) and directed by Chiaki Kon, one of the very few successful female anime directors. Predominately being Romance and School Life-themed doesn't stop it from containing other interesting elements peppered throughout, making this otherwise humdrum university romance story unique.

The "oh-so-great" Kaga Koko

     Complaint #1: The characters. The main character: Tada Banri is one of the least impressive characters in the entire show. As a viewer, it's frustrating how someone like Banri becomes infatuated with a woman who is easily one of the most invasive, clingy, and annoying characters I've ever encountered. This woman is Kaga Koko. Her personality along with the romance that surrounds her keeps each and every viewer's frustration to a maximum. To add to the frustration, the ending was extremely underwhelming.When watching the final episode occur, I became immensely irritated how the creator of this story could make it end the way it did. Is it to make a statement? That not all love stories end with the viewer pleased in the character's decision? Perhaps it's because the writer is showing that the character has control over their story, not the writer like most people think. Whatever the case, the characters and ending thoroughly disappointed me.

     Complaint #2: The flow. The flow of the story is profoundly important. It impacts my decision as to whether I continue with the show or not, whether I enjoy the show or merely tolerate it. For this show, it was tolerance. It's hard to place my finger on, but something about this show's flow seemed off; each episode felt different from the last, almost like a discontinuation. The story should be just that: a story. Not a sequence of episodes, especially in a romance anime, creating a difficult situation for viewers to see the progression in the relationship between Koko and Banri. When the flow of a show isn't good, the viewer becomes distracted from the plot and/or the message, hurting the overall reception of the story.

     Commend #1: Interesting plot. Golden Time isn't your average amnesia story; Banri is constantly battling with his past self for possession over his current body and memories. The viewer's experience that comes from this is insurmountable. One finds him or herself worrying about when all hell will break loose, when Banri will repossess his memories of old and lose his current memories; it becomes a tale of Banri's struggle back into regular society with the help of new found friends and girlfriend: the wonderful Kaga Koko.

Rating and Ending Thoughts

     My disapproval of the ending, general flow of the story, Koko, Banri, as well as the interesting plot, incline me to give this the poor rating of 5/10. The plot completely carries the entire show because, obviously, the characters can't do it worth anything. This plot kept me on the edge of my seat and powered me through to the end, simply to see how the writers decided to finish this dull, romantic story.

Making College Mandatory - Comments on an Article

     I recently ran across a very interesting article on the finance section of yahoo. It peaked my interest because just recently, I had written a research paper in my composition 2 class about a different perspective of not attending college.

My research paper (if interested)

     So with my former experience with studying, talking with, and researching college graduates test scores as opposed to incoming freshman, and average annual income, I decided to offer my opinions on the article.

The Article

     “We need to make post-secondary education the norm for everyone, not just the advantaged,” they wrote. “In today’s economy, a high school diploma is not enough; now, more than ever, college is the gateway to the American Dream.” - Richard Reeves and Quentin Karpilow
     There is nothing more I love in the world than a guy in a suit talking about "The American Dream". Like it's one thing that people strive for, not subjective, but objective; that somehow this doesn't intrinsically go against the nature of the United States. How doesn't it? A nation of freedom, where people should be free to do what they want, to live for what they want, to be who they want to be, without fear of the government trying to stop them, that's what I think of when I think of the United States. If you become an adult at 18, why should anything become mandatory, especially education? Indeed, we need intellectual individuals in our country, that's a given. However, what these men are suggesting is assimilation, for every person to be learning the same things, to further progress our businesses, corporations, to keep everything running smoothly. Is this really necessary though? What happened to individualism? To artistic self expression? To doing what you want to do?

     Referencing the last quote of the article, “We may think college isn’t for everyone, but 50 years ago a lot of people were saying high school isn’t for everyone,”. Personally, and I'm probably pretty alone on this one, I don't believe High School should be mandatory either. If somebody knows exactly what they want to do when they're that young, and it doesn't require high school education, I'd say let them go for it. Don't attend high school, and do what you love. But also be aware of the consequences if you don't get that diploma, don't just rush into it. For example: you probably don't need a high school diploma, if you've been working on cars your whole life, to be a mechanic. Or to be a fireman. Or secretary. If a person is even the least bit competent, they can easily find the materials they need to learn what they need to learn without attending high school or college.

     There's also the issue with an over-educated society. Sounds like a good problem to have, right? Wrong-o. With an overly educated society, we run into problems with manual labor. Nobody with a college degree in Biomedical Engineering is going to want to work in a field, getting paid maybe $10/hour. Then those farms and companies start depending on illegal immigrants and high school students, leading to perhaps worse grades for those students, and no tax revenue on those illegal immigrants. No taxes on increased illegal work = decreased economy. Not that I'm an economic expert or anything, but that's my understanding of it.

     Not to mention there is hardly any correlation of attending college improving critical thinking skills. "Forty-five percent of students made no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during the first two years of college, according to the study. After four years, 36 percent showed no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills.". Thirty-six percent of people who have attended 4 years of college showed "no significant gains in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills". Just think about that for a moment, more than a third of the entire group of people who have gone to college for 4 years or more, showed no significant improvements in these skills. Do these people really need to be going to college? Do more people need to be going to college if a third of people who are finishing up their degree show no significant gains in critical thinking skills?

     College is definitely not needed for all people, and pondering the thought that it should be mandatory is outright insanity. One should be looking at the facts of college graduates before spewing out ideas like this.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/18/106949/study-many-college-students-not.html#storylink=cpy"

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Review

     Hello blog readers. Hope you're doing well. I'm doing pretty good, am just coming off of spring break. It was pretty busy..had a job where I had to stand 8 hours a day. I would not advise getting a job where you have to stand 8 hours a day. It's really damn brutal.
     Anyway, after trying to decide for ages what to write about, I finally gave in to binge watching a show strictly for writing about it, for 6 straight hours. So here we go, a short anime review of "My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU" (NOTE: SNAFU apparently means "Situation Normal, All Fucked Up" for those of you who aren't initialism savvy, myself included).

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU

     If you're like me, just from the cover art up there ^^^^ you're probably thinking "Oh great, another love triangle with characters who have recycled personalities..", which honestly is kind of true. Although to be honest, all characters have recycled personalities to some extent, that's just a fact of art and life nowadays. Nothing is really original anymore, unless you're talking about an objective subject like science or math, but that's beside the point. However, this is not your average show, not in the least. The title itself should give it away. What kind of show calls itself a romantic comedy in the title and proceeds to be average?

Complaints

     The one and only complaint: The lack of romance. As a fellow romantic, school-themed, and slice-of-life enthusiast, there was a major part missing in this show. This component being the romance. Honestly! You'd think having the word "romance" in the title would help the production crew actually create a romantic story. Yeah, there are parts when it's obvious who has a crush on who (aka blushing), but there isn't any build off of it. They merely leave the viewer hanging on by a thread, not knowing if there'll be any extrapolation off of it. While watching, my inner romantic cringed as I watched all the romantic moments fleet away. It's painful. But now that I've thought it over, it could be due to not wanting to rush a romance into only 13 episodes which could possibly leave it open for a 2nd season. I know I've definitely seen shows try to rush a good romance story into 13 episodes and it doesn't work well at all. If you know of a good romance anime that was 12 or 13 episodes long, please let me know, I'd be glad to watch it. Hopefully, and, I have my fingers crossed, hopefully they do have plans to extend the show to a 2nd season which would primarily be the romance aspect. Creating that would undoubtedly do the title and show a little more justice.

Commends

     Commend #1: The humor

The reply when asked if she has any friends

This is Totsuka, he's a guy

This is Hachiman, he's not gay

     I'm sure you all know how tough it is to explain why something is funny..this is no exception. With some background and knowledge on how characters interact, I promise it's a lot funnier. Along with this phenomenal humor, the writing is excellent. You know those terrible anime where half of the dialogue is the characters calling out each other's names? I'm looking at you "Inuyasha" and "Eureka 7" (despite my love for this show, a lot of the dialogue between Eureka and Renton is just them saying each other's names...). This show isn't like those. It has quality substance to its writing; they delve into the psyche of the main character: Hachiman, whom does not seem to enjoy socializing. Despite that he does tend to bring up things about his past to his club colleagues that are often put into a comedic light, but also hold a powerful message.

Young Hachiman

Rejection in the past leads to rejecting others in the future?

     Commend #2: The nature of the setting allows there to be a large variety of episode locations. The 3 main characters's situation provides opportunity for them to assist people and bring them to many other places throughout Japan. These places are a nice break from the constant school setting that constrains many school-themed shows and lets them meet many new people that can provide the viewer with more insight into what the main characters are thinking/feeling. Of course you've got your obligatory swim suit episode, although it's not as extensive as most other shows, for which I'm pretty glad.

Obligatory swimsuit picture

     I can tell you firsthand it gets very tiring seeing the same old episodes over and over and luckily, this show changes the pace.

Rating and Ending Thoughts

     Overall, I'd give "My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU" an 8.5/10. Taking into consideration the phenomenal character interaction, an array of insightful discussions, great humor, and lack of romance; to make all of these factors work together with very commonly used personalities is a great feat, one which should be praised.

     Hope you guys enjoyed the review, be back next week with something else! Oh, also check out my good friend Phoenix's blog. He's an aspiring author and will be publishing some short stories in his blog posts in the future. Phoenix's Blog. Anyway, thanks for reading. Peace out.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - A Psychoanalytical Trip (Final thoughts)

      This is the first time I've thought about one of these shows so deeply, it's quite a different feeling. I'm not entirely sure when the next time I'll do this will be, but it'll probably be a month or so down the road. Maybe..it's hard to tell. There are some shows I'm enjoying currently that are coming to an end soon like "Kill la Kill", "Space Dandy", "Nagi No Asukara", "Golden Time", and "Chuunibyou Demo Koi Ga Shitai! Ren". These shows are probably the only ones worth talking about, maybe not in such great detail as this, simply because they're not as deep of shows. Would just kinda be reviews or short summaries with my thoughts added in. They're still good, yeah, but there's something in shows like Evangelion that make you search inward and want to talk in great detail about them. "Steins;Gate", "Fooly Cooly", "NHK Ni Youkoso!" (Welcome to the NHK!) would, like Evangelion, be fantastic shows to talk deeply about in the future. But enough about the future! Let's finish up this analysis of Evangelion.

     We've talked about the setting, the theme, the 3 children whom the plot revolves around, and about the production and history. There are actually a ton of other characters we didn't talk about in this show who are actually pretty relevant to the plot, but it'd take far too long to talk about them all, so I decided to choose the 3 main ones, all of whom I could talk loads about. All the characters include, starting at the back, left to right:

     Ritsuko Akagi, Gendo Ikari, Yui Ikari, Kozo Fuyutsuki, Shigeru Aoba, Maya Ibuki, Makoto Hyuga, Ryoji Kaji, Misato Katsuragi, Kaworu Nagisa, Kensuke Aida, Asuka Langley Soryu, Rei Ayanami, Hikari Horaki, Toji Suzuhara, and finally: Shinji Ikari. Phew..really long cast of characters. Personally, I think the coolest part is that all the characters get a bit of air time and play, at least, a small chunk in the plot. Not many shows could do that and have it work as well as the Gainax team did. In fact, it works so well that even though all these characters are important to the show, it doesn't take away from the message or the main characters' developments. I'm not sure I've seen any show quite like this one.

     On my list containing the topics for this blog post, the next thing on here is "Places of great impact." Meaning places in the show that delivered "the chills" to me. I'm sure you guys have all had them, those chills that you get during a good scene in a show, listening to a good song, or something like that. One such "chill", and I've used these a lot during my posts, is the text-only frames mostly used during the final episodes.

Example of a text-only frame (ooo, dramatic!)

     These frames would often repeat over and over with a character responding. I'm not sure the exact term that would be used here, but it seems like a very unique way to conduct a monologue.

Shinji's response

     It forces the character to search within their self and give out answers that they may not have truly wanted to share yet. This type of monologue is gives a very powerful effect on the viewer especially, a feeling that is difficult to describe.

     Another type of frame shots were used in...2? I think 2 episodes. One in episode 4 and one in the late teens or early 20s. These are still frame shots where two characters are relatively near each other for a prolonged period of time (upwards of a minute or a minute and a half it feels).

"Tadaima" (I'm back) - Shinji
10 minutes pass
"Okaeri" (Welcome home) - Misato

     Are these long pauses really necessary? I found myself asking this question after having watched this very scene. I actually checked to see if my video stopped loading or if I was having internet troubles when this still-frame first began, but once I heard noises in the background, I realized it was just a really, really long pause. You don't ever see pauses like these in shows, it was pretty interesting and unique.
     So I've noticed something; it seems all these older shows (from 90s) share a pretty common plot explanation theme. They all tend to leave the viewer in the dark for most of the show (until around episode 20) then they suddenly bring in the plot explanation and everything makes so much sense. This show is no exception. I'm wondering exactly what changed, if it was societal, cultural, or just people complaining about lack of plot explanations that made the shows nowadays explain the plot more throughout, rather than a burst right at the end. I'm not saying I like it or dislike it, it's just different and makes me wonder about the change.

     In conclusion, if I were to rate this, I think I'd give it a 10/10. I'm not going to bullshit with the "but nothing is perfect!" mentality. This show is damn good. It's so damn good that I've spent 3 posts here (aka 3 weeks) talking about and analyzing it. If any show can do that for you, it deserves a 10, no questions asked. I think one of the few complaints about the show could be the ending, but even that for me was spectacular. Personally, I wasn't expecting anything in particular from the ending, so seeing something completely different from the action-packed 1st half was an incredibly cool experience. I know a lot of people who had issues with the TV show's ending wanted an action-y ending, so I could understand how some might be disappointed. However, the movies that have been released did indeed please both sides: the intellectual and the action. 

     The whole production of Neon Genesis Evangelion was a risk, not only due to the money issue, but also because of Hideaki needing to create an anime that was different from all the rest. Some might say it's these exact factors which acted as a catalyst for its success, some might say it's because of the people who produced it, some might say that it's because of some other reason. Whatever the reason, it's a great show, and I'm glad I could talk about my thoughts on it.

     Thanks for reading, everyone. I'll be back again next week with some more content.

Neon Genesis Evangelion - A Psychoanalytical Trip (History/Setting/Theme)

Hello again, everyone. Hope you're doing well. I've been working on this on and off for the past week or so and I've got a lot of projects going as I'm sure you're aware (as well as some Starbow (an sc2 mod) to play) so the other parts might take a while to come out. But without further ado:

Neon Genesis Evangelion

     Neon Genesis Evangelion. What a show. Holy shit what a show. For those of you who haven't watched this show yet, please do so now, as there are going to be spoilers in the coming posts and major in depth analysis not only of the characters, but also of the ending episodes and those that lead up to it. THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING: SPOILERS ARE CONTAINED HERE (and in the next few related posts).

Production and History of Evangelion

     Neon Genesis Evangelion: An anime classic. Created in 1994 by Gainax and written/directed by Hideaki Anno (Fun Fact: I later learned Hideaki was also the lead animator in Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind". Another movie that you should definitely watch. Fuck, just go watch all of Miyazaki's movies while you're at it, they're all classics).

Hideaki Anno

     NGE was created in the midst of an extremely poor time for the people at Gainax, who had barely any budget to create any anime at all. Hideaki wanted to create an anime "with a soul", and when talking with a representative of King Records, he was promised a time slot for "something, anything". There had been a previous anime that was in Hideaki's mind named "Aoki Uru", or "Blue Uru", which eventually failed, but it had an important theme that was kept when Hideaki began working on Evangelion. "Not running away" was this very aspect. Not running away from your fears, your own self, other people, the life you have, responsibilities. Hideaki wanted to include all of these into the anime he next created. Perhaps he drew this theme from his own life, from his so-called "depression period" which took its course over 4 long years before and during the creation of Evangelion. Many speculate this to be his reasoning for this anime's dark turn at the end, which, in my opinion, is probably true..however, there were also budgeting problems occurring in Gainax which resulted in an increased amount of still frames and less "animation" (think of the last 2 episodes).

Setting

Tokyo-3 on top
Geofront & Nerv HQ on bottom

     So we start off in the year 2015 in Tokyo-3, a fortified military city meant for defense against humanity's number one threat: Angels. Angels are huge, "beings" which come in various forms. One comes in the form of a human, one in the form of a 3-d diamond shape, one in the form of a huge spider, among many others. It varies quite a bit throughout the show.

The 9th Angel named "Matarael".
Its eye secretes acid that can melt through protective
layering in order to reach Nerv's headquarters

 The city defends itself against these beings by retracting its buildings back into the ground when Angels appear, and Evangelions ascend to the surface. These Evangelions are piloted all by 14 year old children whose mothers have died very soon after the Second Impact. Just for some background: The Second Impact is an event that happened in the year 2000 where a massive explosion happened in Antarctica, moving the Earth off its own axis thus creating very severe climate changes around the world. Each mother's soul is extracted out of the body and placed into each Evangelion where the mother's daughter or son will pilot it. This enables the daughter or son to have a strong synchronization rate with the Evangelion and thereby produce the best results in defeating the Angels.

Evangelion-01
Piloted by Shinji Ikari

 Up above you see the Geofront. This particular place houses Nerv's headquarters underneath the city of Tokyo-3. Solar panels line the waters at the top and provide natural lighting down below the surface. To my recollection, nothing at all is said about the Geofront in the show, so for the most part it's unimportant. However, a thought just came to me: it could be alluding to the theme of the show, which I guess I'll talk about a little bit here. The Geofront, placed underneath Tokyo-3 seems to symbolize that there is much, much more to what you observe with just your eyes. All you see is the surface of a person, not what goes through their mind or what lies beneath beneath the skin. The surface could be completely different from each person's unique Geofront, and nobody would know. Nobody is going to know unless you open it up for all to see and observe. And most people, from my experience, tend to cover this up as well as how they truly feel in order to avoid conflict. However, quite the opposite happens. What we're faced with in this show is an increasing amount of Angels forcing their way to the Geofront, trying to pry out some sort of understanding of why Nerv and the Human race is so defensive. Hideaki might be saying that even if we create all these barriers between our true feelings and other people's feelings, we just get more and more people trying to prod at us, and eventually they'll break through. This is one of the reasons why "The Human Instrumentality Project" is a thing in this show, which I'll talk more about down below.

Theme

Theme: the subject of a talk, a piece of writing, a person's thoughts, or an exhibition; a topic.

     Just in case anybody was unsure of what a "theme" exactly was, there it is. So you might be asking "what is the subject of Evangelion, exactly?" Well, let's take a look at what the show has to offer: we've got middle school students piloting robots which fight these monstrous beasts called Angels, a gigantic fortified city, deep seeded problems in each characters' psyche, along with some minor romance mixed in. Are all of these the themes of Evangelion? I'd say, yes, they definitely are. Near the end, really close near the end, we see all of these themes (yes, even the seemingly pointless romance) tie in together and creates this really remarkable, emotionally booming media. Evangelion touches on the term "separation anxiety" which is often seen in children (think of babies/children crying when parents leave them with a baby-sitter, or whatever) and some people who are afraid to be alone. Evangelion says "No, it's not just children and some people, but all of mankind who have this. We are social animals." and takes it one step further when Seele (the head corporation) initiates "The Human Instrumentality Project", which ends up being an extremely large part of the plot and conclusion.

Human Instrumentality Project begins

This Human Instrumentality Project addresses this very issue of human loneliness and separation anxiety. "What if there were no misunderstandings? What if there was just one "you" and not different perceptions of yourself in other peoples' minds? What if nobody ever felt loneliness?" These are just some of the issues that Evangelion begins to answer when draws near its end and ones that I'll be going over in the later blog posts.
Hope you enjoyed reading. Next time I'll be writing about the characters, their development throughout the show, and their creation by the people at Gainax. Probably some other stuff I'll spew onto the paper, too, but we'll see. See you next time.

An introduction

What's up everyone? And by everyone I mean the probable 1 or 2 people that will actually take the time to read this. To those people, I thank you for taking the time out of your, I'm sure, busy and hectic, schedules. I might wanna start with an introduction, as is common with many stories and blogs, I'm sure. Not that I've actually read any blogs before, but that definitely seems like a good first step to take.
I'm Tylzy. If you could look up at the top, I'd hope you'd be able to figure out where the 1st half of that name comes from. The 2nd half, however, comes from one of my online aliases "Cozy". I know you're asking "Yo! Tyler! "Cozy" is a pretty sick name, why'd you change it?!" And my answer to that is: "Cozy" SOMEHOW is a very common name, at least in terms of internet aliases, so I figured I should save the trouble of having 50 billion account names and just switch it to be a combo of my first name and alias. Overall I'd say it turned out to be a cool nickname.

Anyway! Let's get to what everyone is dying to read about: Anime, Gaming, and most of all, about me: Tyler!

Young Tyler looking
pretty baller

All jokes aside, anime and gaming have been a really big part of my life for as long as I can remember. Yes! I was even watching anime and playing video games since I was this young off to the left. Of course, my anime tastes when I was this young mainly consisted of "Pokemon" and "Yugioh", and some Toonami shows like "Naruto". Not at all the same quality/sophisticated taste that I have nowadays. I was a kid after all, nothing out of the ordinary there.

Book I referenced a great amount
for tips as a kid

Not only had anime been a part of my life for a long while, but manga had been an even greater and larger influence on my early childhood. As a kid, I drew a lot. I don't think I have any pictures to upload at the current moment, but I remember waiting until my parents went to bed so I could hop up out of bed and turn on a night light to draw. I remember teaching kids around our apartment complex how to draw Chibi style characters. There was also a time when this other kid and I were practically in a competition for making comic books. That's how much I loved drawing, especially drawing manga-style characters. So needless to say, it was an incredibly important aspect of my life, and anime seemed like the only logical choice to migrate towards after my drawing bug died off.


Gaming has a similar story. Ever since I can remember, I've been gaming, mostly console when I was younger and slowly migrating towards computer and competitive gaming. The first interaction with gaming that me and my family had was when my Grandma got one of those old Gameboys. The huge clunky ones that were "so cool!" and "hip!".

Remember me?

And because my Grandma took care of my brother and I pretty often while my parents were at work or school, she let us play with it. Of course, when we first played with this, our whole world was turned upside down. "You can play with something like this and have this much fun?!" It was an entirely new concept to us and it was fascinating. Something new, something unique to our generation. My brother and I had to have it. So without much convincing, my parents bought a Gameboy Pocket (the smaller, but still in black and white version) for both my brother and I. That hand-held single-handedly (or...double-handedly) started the flame in my heart for my love of video-gaming. Each time a new system was released, we bought it, along with a vast number of games. With most of my childhood being in the Gamecube "era" I would have to say it's my favorite console of all time. There are countless classics that I remember as a child and it's one of those timeless memories that no other gaming console has done for me. Games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Metroid Prime (1 and 2), Pikmin 2, Animal Crossing, Kirby AirRide, Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door, Super Mario Sunshine, Tales of Symphonia, Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. So many good games and memories.

Best console NA

There was a time in 4th grade I remember specifically, where my best friend at the time (and currently) would always play Melee before catching the bus for school. We'd play for hours and hours on the weekend and we'd have to practice before school just to get the extra edge against each other. This particular morning, like every other, we were practicing for the 30-some minutes before catching the bus, but we had fought just a smidge too long, so we were a little later than usual. "Oh shit" I'm sure were the words running through my mind. You have to keep in mind, as a kid, I was extrememly strict with myself on rules and regulations, so something like missing the bus to school would be a catastrophic misfortune to my day. I didn't want to play hooky and get in trouble with my parents or be yelled at by teachers. It's just a bad thought, especially for a 10 year old. 

Just some young hustlers being hustlers
Erik on the left, myself on the right.

Immediately after looking at the clock, we rush out the door and sprint downhill to the bus stop and as we arrive, I look down the road and see the bus quite a ways away. I instantly burst into tears, my mind melting into a bubbling mess. I can't form coherent sentences to save my life. My friend who is accompanying me, Erik, decides to try to calm me down, as he was a much more relaxed kid than I. "It's not a big deal, dude. Do you want to see if your parents are still home?" He asks. I agree, but am very skeptical that they'll be home, because they always leave by 7:30 or 7:45 and by the time I'm at the door of my family's apartment it's already 7:50. I walk into my house crying and crying, thank god my mom is home to calm me down. She promptly drives us both to school and we carry on with our day. A simple and easy fix, nothing worth sobbing about. Just another day in the life of Erik and Tyler. A video gaming story at its finest.

Tyler Age: 17
Longer hair swag, eating with family

Tyler (in the middle if you couldn't tell by now): Age 18
Prom picture with friends and South Korean foreign
exchange student

Looking back on some of these stories, it seems a little ridiculous, and it strikes me as incredible how much I've changed over the years. It's amazing how over the years your looks change (as dumb as this sounds, I still find it really odd how much older I look) and how my views on certain subjects have changed or remained the same. I'm going to be 19 coming this April, and am currently rooming with a kid from Chicago in my community college's apartments. Life is pretty confusing, going straight from High School to college after all. Although after this semester, I'll be moving back out west (living in Iowa at the moment, I guess that's an important fact to state) to Washington where I'll be rooming in an apartment with my good friend: Erik.

Tyler: Age 18 (taken today)
In room writing a blog entry

Because of the move and my overall attitude/intuition about college, I'll be dropping out of college after this Spring semester. Don't get me wrong, I'm not getting kicked out of college or anything. I had basically straight A's all throughout my mandatory education and graduated high school with a high 3.8 GPA. 3 A's and a B for last semester. Dropping out of college has absolutely nothing to do with difficulty, or funding, but more of a personal choice. A personal philosophy I guess. I know that I'm not going to enjoy working a 9-5 job for a company that I don't care about. I know that if there's a will, there's a way, without higher education. There's other ways to find information and learn things without a teacher. We're in the information age, dammit! The internet is HUGE! So I'm going to use it all I can, to better myself and show other people that there is an alternative to college after high school. Not everyone is cut out for the safe college route lifestyle. So I've decided to make a life that I like living, a life that is worth living.

So join me on the journey to find some happiness in life. Take a seat, grab some coffee, watch some anime, play some video games, and enjoy the ride. I know I will.