This is the WORLD where I write my musing about manga/anime/video games and make comments on certain aspects. It's just a little something to stir up a conversation so please don't take me TOO seriously on the things I write here. I'd love to hear your opinion so feel free to comment.

Ethnicity

At the end of this last semester, a girl in my anthropology class (who is from Japan) gave a very interesting presentation on Japanese-Brazilians. I was struck by her descriptions of Japan. At one point, she said that Japan was a place for all people who are ethnically Japanese. She also had a quote in her presentation about the Yamato Damashii, the spirit of Japan. It amounted to something like being proud of the country that you live in. So for example, Japanese-Brazilians would be part of the spirit of Japan by being good citizens of Brazil.

It was really intriguing to me. Perhaps that is because I am a hybrid myself.

At the end of her presentation, she mentioned that Japan, just this last year, told all of the Japanese-Brazilians in Japan to leave. They have all been given a one-way ticket back to Brazil. She called this the worst kind of racism.

Pronounciation

So as I'm browsing through music to listen to at work, I decide to put in Orange Range. And for some reason (maybe partially due to the fact that I just took a Japanese test on foods), I got to thinking, "How do you pronounce that?" I mean, do you pronounce it "orange range" like in English or do you pronounce it "orainjii rainjii?" (I'm probably butchering that katakana.) And if you pronounce it one way or another, does that mean that you are saying it wrong? I mean, it's obvious to tell what the band's name is, even if you don't speak Japanese, and besides, it's written in English, not katakana. So does that mean that it is pronounced "orange range?" Or, because they are a Japanese band, screw how it looks, it's "orainjii rainjii?" Bleh, confusing.

More Sephiroth Musing

WARNING: The following content may contain spoilers for the videogame Final Fantasy VII. Read at your own disgretion.

You know what is just tragic about Sephiroth's character? He's acting on completely false pretenses. After all these years, he's still going around thinking he's a badass because his "mother" was a Cetra. Which it totally wrong! His mother was a completely normal human woman who got injected with Jenova cells. And even then, Jenova wasn't a Cetra at all. Actually they never explain what Jenova is..."Calamity from the Skies"--what the hell does that mean?! Okay, she's an alien. (Actually, that's kind of gross. You've got alien cells in you that make you crazy. Gross.) I think probably Kadaj and the gang are better fitted to call Jenova "mother" because they're clones--they weren't really "birthed." But still, they have the same genetic make-up of Sephiroth so I'm sure they've got some Hojo and Lucrecia DNA in there somewhere.

So I'm really curious what would happen if someone just broke the news to Sephiroth. "Hey, man, you're actually not Cetra. You're just a genetically altered human. Don't sweat it." He'd be going through serious identity crises, I'm sure. Not that I think it'd make him any less crazy because Jenova cells just seem to have that effect on people (even Cloud went through a bit of crazy in the game) but maybe he'd be a little less full of it, you know?

Correlation

After playing the ending of Final Fantasy X-2 for the third time, I feel that there are some really strange correlations between this game and Final Fantasy VII....

WARNING: The following content may or may not contain spoilers for the videogames Final Fantasy X-2 and Final Fantasy VII. Read at your own disgression.

First off, there's this scene in ch. 5 of FFX-2 where you talk to Shinra and he says he's analyzing the energy of the Farplane. He describes it being limitless and a source of life for all of Spira. Wow, Lifestream, anyone? Shinra goes on to say that the energy from the Farplane could power a city just like Zanarkand. Actually, when I watched this scene I thought immediately of that theory that the Ivalice in the FF games is all the same Ivalice and a good chunk of the FF games are connected to each other. I seriously doubt that Spira and whatever the planet is called in FFVII are the same thing though.

Secondly, at the final battle of FFX-2, when Lenne's spirit is finally able to talk to Shuyin, Shuyin says, "But I wasn't able to save you." Lenne replies, "That doesn't matter." Granted, this game was released before Advent Children so whoever wrote AC definitely could have drawn on this scene for inspiration. The correlation just seems a bit creepy, especially since almost those exact lines are said by Cloud and Aerith. Cloud, if you had died after Aerith's death, would you have ended up like Shuyin? I sort of doubt it but it's always a possibility, I guess.

I've also decided that Vegnagun looks like a giant moth. Sort of a weird design for a final boss. Maybe a Godzilla homage? Still weird.

Villians

So I was watching cutscenes for Final Fantasy IX the other day and reading people's comments and everyone's like, "Kuja is way more bad-ass than Sephiroth!" I'll agree he's a creeper but I never really thought about how well he rates on the "evilness scale," if you will. Someone else wrote that Sephiroth is overrated because all he could ever do was TRY to blow up a planet through the entire game but Kuja did blow up a planet in a matter of moments. I've got to hand it to Kuja--he did blow Sephiroth out of the water on that point. I guess his looks are deceiving.

Have to say though--his design for Dissidia looks pretty good.