Huynh - Princess Mononoke: Nostalgia

Princess Mononoke was very nostalgic for me, because I remember watching this on TV back in my childhood, and now that I think about it, I'm surprised they even aired this on US television! The main reason I loved it back then was for the carnage and awesome magical things going on in the film, but when I watched it this week with a different perspective, it was even more amazing!

Picture taken from cinemagora.co.uk

There was much evil going on in the film, from the gods turning into demons to the people who cause the gods to turn into such monsters. With evil, there's good; and vise versa. The gods were originally good and protected the land and the humans worshipped them, but as humans got more powerful, they started to relinquish their dependance on the gods. The humans started to use their intelligence to create weapons that could kill gods, and this type of action enraged the gods who have ruled the lands for hundreds of years. Humans were going against the order of nature, and against the Forest Spirit.
There was one human in particular who displayed much compassion for the outcasts of human society, but showed none for nature and its inhabitants. Lady Eboshi is one who buys the contracts of prostitutes from brothels and takes in lepers. She gives them all they want to eat, as long as they work for their stay which isn't easy. On the other hand, she invades mountainsides for iron, destroys forests for wood to keep her iron forge burning, digs up mountainsides and forests to get iron from the sand, and kills any obstacles including animals to get to the iron ore. She's constantly trying to create stronger weapons to get what she wants, so she has the lepers create the detailed weapons for her in the background. This is good and bad, because she's giving them a purpose and somewhere to live, but at the same time she's taking advantage of them because they have nowhere else to go.
Another example would be Jigo, a traveling monk who Ashitaka (main character) meets on his way to see the world with "eyes unclouded". He gives Ashitaka help with money and also gives him a meal and information. Jigo is revealed to be a hunter who has been given pardon by the Emperor of Japan to kill the Spirit of the Forest or "Nightwalker". He takes advantage of Lady Eboshi and uses her troops to be meat shields against the animals of the forest. He is evil to both humans and nature, but only shows partial compassion to humans. He gets Lady Eboshi to kill the Nightwalker and takes its head, but fails his mission when Ashitaka and San stop him.

It must be something about relations between race and compassion. One feels more compassionate to one's own race rather than another. That can be between different species of animals and even nationalities of humans. It's just how humans work, it's complicated.

Huynh Perfect Blue

Perfect Blue was a good wake up to "reality". I've always wondered about reality, and what it is, but I get so lost in it, I take a break from thinking about it too much. The thought of reality is overwhelming and can get scary at times. Perfect Blue was very interesting, in the storyline as well as the way it was showed. The view is left in the dark most of the time, but there are extremely subtle hints in the movie. Like how Rumi was extremely sad when Mima had to do the rape scene. Of course it is something that one would be against, but it seemed that Rumi took it personally, as if she had been raped herself. In Rumi's mind she was indeed raped, because she projected herself as Mima, the pop idol, getting raped. Throughout the movie, the audience doesn't know if who they're watching is Rumi's image of Mima, or the real Mima. Throw in an insane stalker, Me-Mania, and you've got yourself a movie that is more confusing than Inception!

A picture of Me-Mania taken from foros.cristalab.com

I believe that we never saw the real Mima until the end of the movie. Rumi was being haunted by her past self the entire time in the movie. When Mima is filming the TV series, Double Bind, I believe that was Rumi the entire time as the actor, manager, and reflection of the pop idol. You can interpret this movie in many ways, which is amazing! What the director did here is amazing, and simply awesome.

Back to the idea of reality, I think something like the matrix is going on here. If you've never watched it, it seems pretty lame now, but the concept is really good (to me). This life is all fake, something like a "hyper-reality", and that our real bodies are outside in the "real" world. We're all living here in "this world" trying to make an identity for ourselves. Maybe we're all trying to find our "real" identities of ourselves, so we can accept our "true selves" in the "real" world. Is that the meaning of life "here"?

Huynh My Take On Akira

After watching Akira, I didn't exactly know what to think or even say. It's an interesting movie, and it has so much symbolism in it that it's hard to keep up with it if you aren't exactly sure of what to look for. I know I was lost in the movie, but when I went to class, it opened up a new perspective on the entire movie for me.

Akira to me was amazing if you look under the surface. The underlying meanings in this film are so crazy creative that it was surprising to me that they thought of this back in the 80's. I'm not undermining the people from that time period, but I'm saying that this type of film would be amazing in any given time period with similar circumstances. 

The human experimentation done by the government and the overall power of the corrupt government was a real eye opener for me. Now that I try and relate to this movie, it seems as we're heading down the path of the movie. I don't know if human experimentation is going on now, but I'm sure something grotesque of the sort is happening behind closed doors unbeknownst to the public. Our society is slowly getting controlled by the government more and more. In Korea and most of Eastern Asia, I know that the government requires vehicles to be equipped with a front facing camera by the rear-view mirror so that they can monitor the people and to see accidents as witnesses themselves. That's in addition to the multitude of CCTV cameras that watch over the streets and intersections. I say this is an invasion of privacy, but that's what your home is for, not public streets. Government regulation usually does lead to safer streets, but also heavily regulated streets.

Taken from London Cyberpunk Tourist Guide

The people in the film are all trying to find "themselves" and Tetsuo Shima, who I believe to be the main character of the film, wants to find himself as a greater and stronger being than he is now. The main character of the story could be the audience themselves, as it tries to give a fair warning as a possibility of what can happen in the future.

When the movie tells you that Akira is in everyone, I totally believe this statement. Akira isn't a person, but rather the ambitions of people. The ambitions of the character Akira led to amazing powers which attracted envious people who also wanted the power, so they tried to find it using the character via dissection. Tetsuo's "Akira" led to him becoming that grotesque form, which consumed himself, everything, and everyone he loved. It's a way of telling the audience that there's a point when to stop. Don't find yourself looking too far looking for yourself.