Illustrations: Japanese Illustrations

Otaku is a Japanese term for people with obsessive interests, commonly the anime and manga fandom. Its contemporary usage originated with Akio Nakamori's 1983 essay in Manga Burikko. (Dictionary.com, 2014). Otaku are basically fans of Manga and Anime, they tend to know anime better than others and have massive amount of them stored away to watch or read again. Otakus can also argue with people who don't know the difference between Anime and Cartoons or Manga and Comics. They also tend to be very particular about what type of anime they enjoy. Otakus can be categories based on the types of anime they watch or the mangas they read. or which actor or musician they like most. 

Manga is style of Japanese comic books and graphic novels, mostly made for adults as well as children. (Dictionary.com, 2014)

Anime is of Japanese animation. (Dictionary.com, 2014)

Kawaii it is an adjective that means cute, or as a noun it means the quality of cuteness in an object. (Dictionary.com, 2014)

An illustrator who stood out for me was Belicta Castelbarco whose illustrations were both simple and simple but detailed and geometrical, at times. Her illustrations made me feel like a child again as it spoke to me because of the colour and lines. He style involves different mediums and a various number of styles. the elephant for example is done in pen and paint which is very creative and somewhat difficult to do.

Examples of her illustrations are below:

History of Communication and Transport

Below is the history of Communication and Transport over the decades.

Atomic Bomb

The atomic bomb or the Atom bomb was made in the United States of America during the 2^nd world war and at approximately 8.15am on 6 August 1945 a US B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, instantly killing around 80,000 people. Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, causing the deaths of 40,000 more (historychannel.co.uk, 2012). The atomic bomb cause mass chaos and killed thousands of people in japan. The Japanese people suffered a massive set back as the atomic radiation was spread throughout the whole of Hiroshima.

Films like Hiroshima where made to reacts the events of the Hiroshima Bombing. ‘Hiroshima’ is a movie that was created by Japanese director Koreyoshi Kurahara and Canadian Director Roger Spottiswoode about the decision-making processes that led to the dropping of the atomic bombs by the United States on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki toward the end of World War II. (Hiroshima, 1995)

Another film would be Above and beyond, which is a movie that follows the life of the pilot who dropped the Atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The story of the dropping of the atomic bomb is treated as a docudrama with an effort to recreate the training and operational aspects of the military units involved in the Hiroshima mission. A docudrama is basically the term used to describe a movie that is both dramatic and also a documentary in its way of telling the story. (Above and Beyond, 1952).

Other films were made such as Black Rain, The Wolverine, The Children of Hiroshima and The Beginning or the End. These movies made box office but sometimes they didn't. Some were made in Japan others in America and also other countries.

Bibliography

Above and Beyond. 1952. [Film] Directed by Norman Panama Melvin Frank. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Hiroshima. 1995. [Film] Directed by Roger Spottiswoode Koreyoshi Kurahara. Canada, Japan: Telescene Flim Group Productions.

historychannel.co.uk, 2012. Atomic Bomb. [Online]
Available at: http://www.history.co.uk/study-topics/history-of-ww2/atomic-bomb
[Accessed 24 April 2014].

My Surrealism Manifesto

Technology, Science and Me

What are Technology, Science, Reflexivity and Technicism?

 Some words, I won't lie, I have never heard of them before, but once I have to research and write on how they affect my life, I looked them up. Frankly, the last two words got me in a ‘what the…?’ moment, so I had to look them up. In knowing what Technology and Science are, I had to find out what the other two were and how they would affect my day-to-day life. After researching I found out that Technicism is a belief that technology can help make human life better. And Reflexivity is the idea that my thoughts as a person can be or are inherently biased. Science, on the other hand is, the understanding of the world around us through research and analysis. And Technology is the use of science to solve the problems of life by inventing ways of simplifying life for humanity.

My day-to-day life is relatively normal, in my books but some people may differ on that. That said science and technology are a major part of my life as they help me with everything I do.

This is how my day starts out: Wake up at 5am because my Tablet’s alarm goes off then. Then I am irritated because I was woken up from a great dream, not a morning person clearly. I look at my schedule for the day, and sigh if I have to go to business management, completely draining. 

By 6:30 I am done and ready to leave, I just have to make a cup of coffee. Remembering I need my glasses I get them and go make my coffee. My blackberry starts ringing and I answer getting a call from my mom, who just wanted to say good morning. Emails start rushing in as soon as I turn on the data on my blackberry. Putting on my headsets I turn on my music and listen to my favourite morning song ‘Try’ by P!nk. As I head to the pick up point, to wait for my uncle to take me to school I play games on my Samsung and chat with my cousins abroad, time-zones are painful.

I use the tablet to do research and look at assignment at school, while my blackberry sits silently in my bag receiving emails constantly. After a long day I sit on my bed and read a few manga (comic) pages and take nap, then start working on the things I need to do for school tomorrow. My day is normal just with a few gadgets and gizmos to help me out along the way. And with that my day has to start again with all the  technological advances that my world has to offer.

 

my blackberry

 

my samsung

my glasses

my tablet

Utopia and Zeitgeist

This is a blog entry about the view and opinions on Utopia and Zeitgeist.  It looks at how Utopia and Zeitgeist affect the world today and how they have changed the views of today.

In my understanding is a place where people live in harmony with each other. Utopia is one word that cannot be defined by simple means, it is a word that in my understanding can mean a place of harmony with no violence and because there is no violence it is my definition Utopia. Zeitgeist is a number of thoughts that that influences the way a certain time period’s culture progresses. An example of this can be modernism, or ‘The New World Order’.

During a search for Utopia and Zeitgeist on Google, among most of the thing o found were what people’s view were about the two topics. During a search on Zeitgeist I found a documentary and well dictionary definitions of zeitgeist that made me wonder is the spirit of the time really that important in our world today? And Utopia has had many effects, it has a game and a TV series and many much, clearly Utopia stands out in the world but, are the relevant to us now at this moment in time, as a world that is falling into a state of financial and political chaos.

In searching for relevant information I looked for the most interesting thing I saw and that was ‘Utopia by Thomas More – Oregon State University’. Reliable resources, for me, are ones that involve a university paper, journal, newspaper entry or a published paper by a well-known scholar. Thomas More or Sir Thomas More wrote two books about Utopia about fiction and political philosophy. As for distinguishing between information that is relevant and information that just is for amusement, it depends on how the author wrote it out, and what he/she put more emphasis on. As for Zeitgeist the relevant information was the most outstanding one, they made a movie from it or rather a film series that really caught my attention. If it weren’t relevant why in the world would they make a movie about it? Clearly Zeitgeist is very relevant to the world.

Images are my favourite part of this search: