What a Tsunami Does to a Nuclear Power Plant

Over at The Mainichi Daily News they have some amazing photos of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant being hit by the tidal wave. The car being throne up into the building is particularly impressive and give an idea of scale.  It truly shows how gigantic the wave was and it was amazing that events weren’t worse at the reactor – even as bad as they were. 

Looking at this and other articles there, I realized that I want to post about such events here and not on Facebook like I did in March. Things get lost there and aren’t easy to find again for posterity, since it is a very superficial place. Events like the devastation of Japan by the tsunami is not something to readily forget, but human memory is what it is and that is limited.

It will be interesting to see if I can divorce the reality of what happened there from the fantasy of Godzilla movies the next time I watch one. Watching the footage and viewing the photographs was surreal, because in a way I’d already seen things like that happen in Japan thanks to the movies.  These photos did not help with that and I wonder if I’ll be able to enjoy those films again.

Good News for the World

The butcher of Srebrenica has finally been arrested after all these years. Ratko Mladic, the rat who commanded the Serbian troops, was captured by Serbian intelligence and will be extradited to face war crimes charges. While the timing is suspect, since Serbia wants to join the European Union and had plenty of opportunity to nab him, it is still glad tidings.  I remember ranting at the Clinton administration to do something about “ethnic cleansing,” which was a brand new phrase at the time and waiting for a small eternity to see action taken.

For people who think modern countries can always peacefully work things out internally, the disintegration of Yugoslavia should be a cautionary example. It is a very fine line between civilized and barbaric behaviors – something that should never be forgotten and carefully monitored.

Mama’s, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Otaku’s–Part 3

Pandering to an otaku audience goes to far when you make them the stars of the show.  Everything becomes too incestuous and closed to outsiders, which eventually leads to both moral and financial decline.

Part 1 can be found here.

Part 2 can be found here.

There is a great danger when any group only “preaches to the choir” whether it be in religion, politics, art, entertainment or business.  One thing that a lot of outsiders to manga/anime notice is how almost everything is currently set in high school or the protagonists are high school age.  It is as if the only valid beings in existence are teenagers.  But there are some reasons for this and it doesn’t have to do with the physical age of the audience the producers are catering to.  It has more to do with their emotional age and the curious attitude that life ends when you become an adult in modern Japan.

While young protagonists have always been part of the genre, they were often university students and you used to see more adult characters in the casts.  That’s what I remember from the 1980’s and 1990’s, so I looked through archives on the Internet to see if I was misremembering things.  It turns out that I wasn’t and that things had started changing around the turn of the century.

Perhaps this is the end result of a declining population and an entertainment driven society, but I also suspect that the pressure to succeed and conform is a major factor. Rather than deal with reality, the plethora of media to distract has become a potent drug, much like Aldous Huxley predicted in Brave New World.  The otaku’s represent this more than the average citizen, I expect.

But back to the changing protagonists.  They are nearly always high school (or sometimes middle school) students and quite often are perverts.  By this, I mean they are into sexually deviant behavior such as peeping, collecting pornography, exhibit sado-maschistic tendencies, and collect harem’s.  This includes both male and female characters in both shounen (boy) and shoujo (girl) stories. 

To make things worse, the shounen leads usually fall into two types:  rude idiots or wimpy whiners.  Sometimes they manage to blend the two, but they are usually outcasts at school.  Gone are the strong good guys out to save the day at the first opportunity; instead they have to be dragged into taking action or doing good at all.

Does that sound like a bunch of emotionally arrested anti-social misfits?  Ah, that would be the main consumer of this dwindling market, wouldn’t it? 

If that wasn’t direct enough pandering, many series are now featuring otaku’s of both genders as leads or main cast members.  Even mangaka’s (comic book creators) have become the focus of series! I’ll give a pass to Bakuman as it has been a great expose on how the industry works while still managing to be entertaining.

So what has happened is that the pandering of the industry to its dwindling customer base has resulted in a self perpetuating limit, since more and more you need to be a die hard otaku to get all the references and in jokes. But a problem with having such closed community is that things get boring fast as only very formulaic stories get purchased, achieve high ratings, or get votes.  Yes, voting is a big factor in manga success.

Because so many stories are printed in weekly magazines such as Shonen Jump, the editors rely on sent in votes from the readers on what titles are succeeding.  At least the comic books in the United States are stand alone titles and sink or swim on their own merits.  In Japan, a tiny amount of readers hold vast sway over what lives or dies.  These are the most motivated and obsessive otaku’s who have been handed immense power over the content published – simply because they bother to vote when most readers don’t.

No wonder things have gotten to such a point.

Getting back to boredom with content being a problem; there are only a few ways to break that.  One is new and innovative stories and ideas, but the otaku’s aren’t really interested in that.  Their behavior is that of a drug addict instead.  What they want is a more intense high, or in other words, the same old tropes but taken to ever greater extremes.  So more sex, more perversion, bigger battles, and anything else that is titillating to break the boredom.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good series of manga’s and anime’s being produced.  But much like the decline in television shows here, it is like panning for gold in a sewage treatment plant.  I don’t foresee things improving at all in the short or long terms.

So parents, check out what your children are watching or reading, especially on the Internet.  A lot of people view comic books and cartoons as innocent fun, but those days are long gone.

Well, after writing this extended rant, I’ll have to be fair and do some writing about some of the nuggets of gold I’ve found in manga and anime.  But that will have to wait for another day.

Follow Up on the La Crosse Tornado

Much to my relief, there were no serious injuries. But there is a lot of property damage as can be seen over at The La Crosse Tribune’s gallery of pictures.  From what I’ve heard back from church members, one had his work trailer crushed by a tree and possible house damage.  I know someone who works at the damaged K-Mart and he wasn’t working that day, but I imagine it will make his job interesting for awhile.  Given what happened to Joplin, which is roughly the same size city, I’m very grateful things turned out the way they did.

La Crosse probably won’t get federal disaster relief but Governor Scott Walker has toured the damage. 

Locally, I still haven’t gotten out to see any of the damage near Caledonia, but might today. 

Meanwhile, the people of North Minneapolis and Joplin need our prayers.

It was a tense night and early morning following from wondering how people I know in the area fared.  Most I contacted didn’t suffer any damage and only a few haven’t gotten back to me yet.  This is one of few times no news being good news is true, I think.

Tornado Hits La Crosse

What had been a good weekend turned ugly this afternoon when a violent storm system ripped through the area.  While where we live in Yucatan was close to the path of the tornadic part of the storms, but we got off light with one tree limb down on the property.  I’ve been through intense rains, many storms, and a tornado before but this was the heaviest rain I’ve ever seen.

Reports are still coming in but it appears nobody was killed or seriously hurt despite tornados touching down in multiple places in Fillmore, Houston, and La Crosse counties. It sounds like there was a tornado near Houston, barns destroyed near Hokah, and damage north of Caledonia.  Also, power line poles were knocked down around Valley High west of Hokah. 

South side La Crosse took a lot of damage though, with K-Mart and the Pepsi bottling factory having their roofs torn off.  Lots of trees and power lines are down in the initial reports.  Thankfully, the gas main leak was contained quickly near Gunderson Lutheran Hospital and evacuations were rescinded.  I am concerned about the homes near the K-Mart being said to be badly damaged as I have friends who live in that neighborhood.

Meanwhile, North Minneapolis, MN and Joplin, MS got hit by other tornadoes today.  It looks like the damage was extensive, especially in Joplin.  One fatality reported in Minneapolis, an unknown amount in Joplin, but so far none locally.

All I can do at the moment is pray for all involved.

Mama’s, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Otaku’s–Part 2

The amount of perverted behavior in manga’s and anime’s is astounding.  This is not healthy imagery for our children and teens to be exposed to.  Parents need to be aware of this.

Part 1 can be found here.

Diving into the world of the otaku’s was an unpleasant experience and downright nauseating at times.  I quickly learned that I was better off reading spoiler filled threads in fan forums before even sampling an anime or manga.  Explicit sex, rape, naked girls who look ten or younger, incest, sadism, bondage, bestiality, and other perversions all can be found – and is readily available through fan translations of material not imported to the United States.

Don’t expect me to name titles; I’m not going to help the kiddies using search engines to find smut.  I will, however, go into some plot lines that are out there in successful shows and comics.

And just after I posted Part 1, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced the first titles they state have to be moved to 18 and over categories.  One involves a comedy manga about a 24 year old married to a 12 year old and depicts child rape. Another is very popular (and one I accidently stumbled upon to my horror) about a high school brother and sister who are having an affair .  That is the tip of the iceberg for that title, as it is far, far worse than just that.  The rest all involve sex at school, rape, group rape, and incest.  Such cheerful and amusing topics.

No doubt somebody will come along and read my posts with growing outrage that these topics are considered bad or damaging.  One of the most disturbing things about reading posts in the fan communities is the amount of support for all these perversions, especially the lolicon (pedophile) stuff.  The argument of it being fiction, and cartoon fiction at that, is often bandied about with the insinuation that it doesn’t really hurt anyone.  They should have to deal with real life victims of such things and then say that.

That said, there are people raising concerns and complaining about the content, not to mention the declining quality of stories as the publishers pander to the otaku’s. That illustrates why manga and anime will never be big in the United States, as we still have some of our morals intact – at least where it comes to protecting kids.  Though I’ll sadly admit that’s declining too as we have outfits like Ambercrombie & Fitch selling padded push up bikinis aimed at seven year olds.

It is the focus on underage girls that has caused the local government in Tokyo to crack down.  With the immense power of being the main market in the country, this will effect the entire industry. The sheer amount of prepubescent looking females in scanty attire in anime and manga is mind boggling.  Add that to most of the females being teenagers in the genre and it becomes clear that they are pandering to a bunch of perverts.

One of the more insidious and less obvious showcases for this is the “magical girl” subgenre.  These stories feature girls who magically transform into costumed super powered heroines fighting evil.  The most famous series would be the Sailor Moon anime adaptation that was so huge more than a decade ago.  For the U.S. airings, there was quite a bit of censorship that Americans were unaware of, including cutting the lesbian content.

Interestingly, the “magical girl” characters have changed over the years.  Originally, they were teenager who turned into adult forms to fight evil but somewhere along the way it changed to loli’s (derived from lolita) turning into teens and finally into loli’s turning into skimpily dressed loli’s.  The transformation scenes have been known to have hidden frames with the character completely nude.  Since the producers of this material are pandering to their audience, it says a great deal about said audience.

Yet otaku’s wonder why they have such a bad reputation.

Personally, every time the Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, slams the industry it makes me smile. Those who do the right thing will always be vilified and he is truly hated by the otaku’s worldwide.  He may be a bit of a loud mouth, but he gets it.

Part 3 will wrap things up and cover how the pandering has hit ridiculous heights as protagonists have changed over the years.

Debunking Myths: Mormon Edition

Over at LDS Living, there is a good article on some of the Mormon myths that have sprung up within the faithful members of the church. I highly recommend reading it as I’ve been told some of them.  We have a duty to be truthful in all things and I’m glad this article has been published.

There is one myth that has been spread quite a bit of late amongst politically minded Latter-day Saints and that is the Joseph Smith prophecy about how the Constitution of the United States of America would “hang by a thread” and be “saved by men from the church.” While I understand the human need to find comfort in dark times, relying on something that isn’t official church doctrine or even accurate in the first place is not a good thing.

Finding out the origins of this particular piece of Mormon folklore was a pleasant surprise this morning.  With it having emerged fifty years after the Prophet Smith’s martyrdom, I have to wonder how many times those dismayed with the country’s direction have repeated it at any given time. Certainly we are in times that make the myth very attractive again.

For me, the following quote from the article says it all:

President Joseph F. Smith, who spoke after his son at that conference, re-emphasized his son’s remarks by calling the content of the prophecy “trash.” He said, “It is simply false. That is all there is to it.”

So I hope those LDS faithful who think our country is guaranteed to be saved at the last possible will open their eyes – especially to the faults of candidates they might vote for simply because they are fellow church members.