ANIME: A Certain Magical Index

This is another Shonen Jump title so it is a typical "furious hidden inner power" story with temper tantrums and a lack of responsible adults. The villains are typical "beyond crazy-evil" or "will shortly be converted to allies", which is one of the conceits of Japanese culture, VERY similar to the Post WW2 conceit in American cinema that we used to talk villains into doing what we want, or fool enemies because they're all just dumb. Pretty much all Cary Grant movies were this.

The gimmick of Index, as its referred to by fans, is that Academy City is a million students with psychic powers created by the city scientists to study their experiments. Unfortunately, the less obvious aspect of the city is some of the experiments on students are officially sanctioned violence and murders. The whole place is a bunch of schools, teachers, maintenance robots, libraries, and rapid reaction police with fully automatic rifles which are often not enough to stop the power users. One especially vicious experiment is a high level psychic who serial-kills 10,000 identical clones of another high level psychic, one after another, in inventively vicious ways for some plot reason. Yes, the hero works to save the clones, but the violence in the course of the story is like a tournament of death, battle after battle, and a secret war between the Vatican and Aleister Crowley who is running this city of psychics.

Japan has a really WRONG understanding of Christianity. The Catholic church sent priests from exploration ships in the 1700's from Portugal. They made a BAD impression and all were eventually tortured to death by the rulers of the time. Ever since then, Christianity is treated like a violent cult in Japan and while most Japanese marry using the Christian ceremony, they don't practice the faith, or understand it at all. Japan is officially Shinto in order to end the power of Buddhist monasteries two centuries ago. At the time, Buddhist monks had joined a rebellion against the shogun of the time, the shogun being the supreme ruler of Japan. He won, and the monks were required by law to marry, which violated their oaths to Buddha. While most Japanese are buddhist from their marriages to their deaths, their kids are raised to Shinto faith, mainly through visits to shrines and festivals. This cultural transition has no room for Christianity, and that faith becomes the key undercurrent of the series' second season. The war going on between black mages from the Vatican and their relationship with Index, a 14 year old girl who ends up living with the unlucky hero, cursed with God's Right Arm (literal), as factions of one side, which is incompatible with the psychic powers of the rest of Academy City. It is for this reason that the second season of the anime is not broadcast in America. Most people find it quite offensive. Most think the author of the light novels on which it was based needs application of a cattle prod or taser somewhere sensitive for the level of offense he commits against the two billion Catholics on Earth.

I just can't recommend this anime to youths of either gender. While there is a lighter side story called Railgun, the author just can't seem to resist mass murderers and ultraviolent murder-death experiments. This is unfortunate, but its the violence that ruins it. The cute and comedy moments just can't save it from the viciousness.

It is true that Japan is essentially eating its children by crushing the economy, preventing new businesses from being created by denying business loans, and even denying marriages by insuring nobody can get a job in Japan thanks to the 26 year long Clinton-Recession, which in real English means Depression. 26 years of Depression with earthquakes, massive tsunami, nuclear power plant leaks, and jobs outsourcing to Korea and China has been a continuous assault on their youth. With official racism keeping kids from leaving Japan for fear of being labelled outcastes who can't come back if things get better someday, this is more and more often turning up in YA popular media. So officially endorsed murder of teenagers seems like something going on, which is why I think it keeps turning up in popular manga and anime in Japan.

ANIME: Bleach

Bleach is a Japanese manga and anime, a kind of comic book. Its Shonen Jump, which specializes in "furious hidden inner power" stories, which are essentially about unfairness leading to temper tantrums, and usually require absurd villains I would describe as American servicemen's kids, which remains a huge social issue in Japan since America is still occupying Japan to defend it from Korea, Russia, and China, because they are constitutionally unable to extend military power beyond the islands' defense. Japan is also rigidly racist, which explains why half-bloods are considered subhuman monsters and creates a various underclass of outcastes (the appropriate literal term). The punk-rock outfits of Bleach, and the absolute absence of any real adults in the entire series, makes their choices more important but its really off-putting.

The first two arcs of the story are worth watching or reading, but after the events in the afterlife the story seems to largely run out of ideas and the author is famous for offending most of his audience with a two page print of the Japanese kanji (word-symbol) for Heart on a big white page at a crucial moment of the plot. Like the author was high and just didn't know what to do next. You can offend your audience. And they will remember it, and NOT forgive you for it.

Bleach is famously mocked for penis envy in its second episode with the reveal of the hero's hidden inner power which creates a huge sword taller than he was, which says more about the series than most any review, including this one.

Note that hair colors other than dark brown, sometimes depicted as purple, are strong indicators of half-blood "change" as in spare change which is meant to be a deadly insult in Japanese exclusionary racist culture. Having a different hair color is reactionary, and essentially dares people to mention it and start a fight. Unlike how Japan depicts itself, in Anime, bullying and fistfights are common. As I know some Japanese English teachers in Japan, actual Japanese schools are vicious, violent, and suffer badly from ADHD and ADD. Japan is not kind or peaceful or polite. They just say they are. They are to tourists. But not to each other. Japan has real problems with inbreeding in their history and has only slight objections to siblings marrying. They only recently outlawed families adopting and raising minor orphan girls to be wives to family members. In most Japanese states (prefectures) age of consent is technically 13, abortion is free, and rape isn't treated as a proper crime by the authorities since the maximum punishment for a pure japanese rapist is 2 years and $2500 fine. For a halfblood or foreigner the crime is life in prison or death penalty. Keep that in context when you consider the really different values and treatment of people in japanese teenagers. The consequences are so very different depending on who your parents are. So when a person meets you, the immediately say "pure japanese" if they are, which is pretty much a free pass on any crimes they commit. What this means in America is that Bleach characters commit criminal acts that they justify by their temper tantrums. These are not good role models, and responsible parents would object to their kids reading about these people. I just can't recommend this series for that reason. It is too violent and teenage boys reading it may mimic the actions in the series.

Book: Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief

So years ago I saw the movie based on this best selling YA book series. It was only okay, not a great film. There were several distracting elements, namely that the author seems to be largely ignorant of Greek Mythology. For instance, a key character in the story is daughter of Athena. Pallas Athena is a virgin goddess and patron of Athens. Virgin. Can't have sex. Like Artemis. I get the feeling that the frequent mentions of ADD and ADHD is specific to gain those sufferers as its primary audience. Other aspects of the setting are fine, such as Olympus moving to the top of the Empire State building is a touch clicheed. Perseus was the son of Zeus, not Poseidon, btw. The author got that wrong too.

The book is a lot better than the movie, which was rushed into 90 minutes and left a lot of the plot unexplained. For new authors, a journey is a good way to show off a setting. The book has a lot more of this than the movie did, which largely skipped it.

Would a teenager like this book? A teenage boy? He talks about impulsiveness, and temper problems, which I know are major problems with ADHD kids. The last one I knew was getting kicked out of his school for fighting. True, that school was about half meth junkies, and that's a middle school here. Drug problems in Rural California are ridiculously common. Apparently welfare moms aren't good at saying no to drugs and raise children who say yes.

The primary gimmick is that kids who can't sit still are really "special" not from ADD and ADHD problems, but because their REAL missing parent is a god so they have strong magical powers. In Japan this kind of thing is called Chunibyo (Chu nee beyo). Its considered a serious problem of delusion there. To be fair, most entertainment is for distraction from reality, and this will do that. The writing style is like a light novel, so it's light on scene detail. This is probably appropriate for pacing a story when your reader has ADD. Would I recommend it? Hmm. I'm not sure. Finding good books for male teenagers, since the market is fully saturated with ones for teenage girls, is difficult.

Manga like Bleach, Deathnote, One Piece, and Naruto are all about the violence and temper tantrums. These are not stories to keep teens out of jail. They are popular, and have quality anime made about them, but they're still about temper tantrums and violence. Not about controlling your temper, but having more tantrums. MRIs have shown that violence goes to the pleasure center in the brain so committing violence is physically addictive, which is true for both genders, but managing ones temper should be a core skill rather than something abused and landing the sufferer in jail.

Librarian's Introduction

For the last year now I've been a library volunteer. I mostly work on Saturdays, though for the last year I also worked either Wednesday or Friday due to staffing shortages. Fully staff of volunteers and school workload has gotten me back to Saturday's only.

I usually listen to an audiobook while I shelve the books back to where they belong, or shift books down shelves to make room. It is a pretty good workout, shelving, but I wish I had a couple more arms because you need two arms to move the books apart, an arm to hold the book your shelving, and another arm to hold the books you're carrying. 6 hours of shelving is a pretty good workout and I get sore muscles from it.

On an average day I pull the hold list, remove the expired holds, then shelve books from the prior day. There's usually around 3-4 carts of these. Yesterday, because I was told they were fully staffed on Friday's now so didn't need me, there were 7 carts to shelve when I arrived at noon. They occupied as much floor space as the entire front desk, and were about 300 books. Once shelving is done I polish CDs for an hour, then shelve books for the remaining hours until my quitting time. I work around 6 hours a day. I'm well suited for it. I'd like to be paid. Getting paid is why I'm now studying to be a librarian.

Why Chuckles? My ex-wife used to mockingly call me that. She often chuckled herself so perhaps this was an unconscious self-appellation misapplied. I am also Chuckles because I find comedy and parody my preference while working or exercising, such as Discworld by Terry Pratchett. I strongly recommend reading, watching, and listening to the series. All the books have audiobooks, you see. I find it hard to cynical about people reading, unlike some of the paid librarians. They are already making a choice for literacy in a widely admitted post-literate culture. Their reading makes them better people through a personal willingness to educate. Yes, some people come in for free Wifi and post to their facebook before returning to a sleeping bag in the woods or the homeless shelter, but lots of people want either education or entertainment, and that's really the library's job. I feel like the attached computer center detracts from the library since it forced a local net cafe, which charged money, to close. Now the library does the same thing for free and it wastes a lot of time and security efforts out of the budget that COULD have gone to books and media more appropriate to library services. Computers are cheap. Buy your own, hobo. Sorry if that sounds rude, but really, they are. If they have money for hooch, they have money for a Chrome netbook (thin laptop with wifi).

I plan to post a lot of book reviews and comments on my education as a library technician and eventually as a full librarian through first Cuesta College (San Luis Obispo online) and then San Jose State University online master's program. My goal is to be PAID to be a librarian. I will move to the job since the local library system has multiple important problems I won't get into.

I suspect that since I'm a Republican Conservative male and I respect libraries as cultural institutions of the First World as proof a place is civilized, I'm more employable in places like Weed, Susanville, Red Bluff, Redding, or other small English speaking farm/fishing/timber towns with roots in the land, have been overlooked by tax and spend Communists, and have learned to get by through determination and faith in hard work. Places with retired seniors, too. Folks with the same politics and language as I have. This does mean dealing with rural poverty, but that's part of the job. Not getting worked up over those folks, and not escalating emotional instability into hostility is really important.

Dealing with unstable people who walk into libraries should probably be taught in school but I haven't seen a course like that listed. It also means dealing with people raised to be polite, and welcome those who respect farming and ranching (like me), and the elderly, which I have pretty good skills with. Its a little odd, but being able to teach modern technology to the elderly is a useful skill to have. Old people often have money. And most of them read. So they care about libraries, just need some confidence with their e-readers and smart phones when the grandkids aren't handy.

I will be posting book reviews here as well as commentary on my classes and thoughts on the career.