Naruto... has a very strong affecting emotional core layered with complexity and depth

Naruto is often misunderstood.  Frequently and unfairly dismissed as some sort of modern Dragon Ball Z, full of nonsensical battles and ridiculous characters.  Too many assume that this franchise is best left for the kiddies like so many other anime shows.  As any of us who follow this epic saga know, that blind assumption is a mistake.  The series, though certainly colorful on the surface, has a very strong affecting emotional core layered with complexity and depth if you're willing to look for that.

I have not watched a lot of Dragon Ball Z.  The most I ever watched was the story arc where Trunks comes from the future to stop the Androids.  But from what I've seen from comments about this subject, it looks like Naruto seems to have a stronger affecting emotional attachment to it than Dragon Ball Z had and also that it had long drawn out battles that take up episodes due to the too much talking.  Naruto does too have drawn out battles and little bit of talking in between, but not as bad as Dragon Ball Z.  Again in no way should you take offense because I already told you have not watch the complete series.  I'm only basing this upon searches on Google and forums.  Perhaps someday I'll watch the entire Dragon Ball Z series... who knows?

I've decided to talk about Naruto because it seems to have left a big impression on me since I first started watching it three years ago in March 2009 and have since praised it as such a great story.  It's a story about growth, friendship and never giving up and possibly more underlining themes I can not mention right now.  I would without a doubt recommend this story to anyone with an open mind.  The first major story arc of the series grabbed me and kept me in it's grip and forever made me a fan.

You can watch Naruto on Hulu.  You can watch episodes 1-135 while skipping 102-106 and episodes 136 and on until the start of Shippuden if you want to know only major story line plots.  With the Shippuden series, it gets a little more tricky with the filler episodes and so I'd just tell you to look it up on a Naruto wiki page.

If you want a super quick summary of the series and like to play video games, I'd also recommend the newest Naruto game released for Xbox 360 and PS3 called Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm Generations.  It's a simple fighting game and it's pretty good so far in simplifying the story.

I know that attempting to watch 100+ episodes sounds very daunting, so I say just commit to at least watching the first story arc and go from there.

I would definitely talk about this manga/anime series, but I'll leave it for another time just in case I feel like talking about it again sometime in the future.

What now?

So now that I am finished with school, my question to myself is, "What now?".  Yes, I did not plan or prepare myself for what comes after graduating college.  Unfortunately my grades are not good enough to qualify for Grad school.  Unless of course I take all the classes over again at a community college to boost my GPA, but that will just take and waste too much time.  I somewhat have a plan, but I do not think I will share it here.

What I will share is that now that I am out of school for the summer, I now have time to do things in which I did not have before such as catching up with some video games!  Workout! Learn to cook? Pick up guitar again? I do not know yet, but I definitely should pick up some sort of hobby to keep myself busy.  Oh! How could I forget... perhaps I will reconnect with some old friends, but you know how that goes.  Either you have not spoken for too long and it would seem awkward to call out of the blue to say hi and to ask to catch up OR it may not be the awkwardness, but the scheduling in which someone may be too busy =/.

I just realized that school was pretty much my big social networking area other than work.  It was a place to meet a lot of different people and now it's just gone.  Well not gone, just not as available because it will not be part of my life anymore to be going to school and seeing so many new people to talk to or whatnot.

I feel kind of sad and relieved at the same time about graduating.  Sad because I will not see as many people or friends as often as I would have if I were to still be going to school and relieved because I do not have the stress of ridiculously hard class to study for!

All right, I guess that's all I have time to talk about for now.  This was just a super quickie update so peace!

I'm still alive!

Sup world! I know I haven't been writing lately, buuuut I do have a couple of drafts that I haven't posted.  I keep getting a topic of what to write about but then I get distracted and lose my train of thought and just save as draft. So! I haven't completely forgotten about this blog, I've just been overwhelmed with school work and stuff.  I'll try to get back to those drafts. This was just a little update to keep you posted.  Peace!

It's Geek Time!

All right, if you're a Naruto fan, you have to check out this live-action fan made tribute to Naruto.  No joke.  This isn't bad at all.  Check it out and you can be the judge.

Next up is the new Avengers trailer.

Now if you've read The Hunger Games and are excited about the film coming out towards the end of the month... well check out this clip!

These were some of the videos that I liked from the week.  I didn't have anything particular to talk about this week so I just wanted to share a few videos I enjoyed.  Peace!

A Geek Seeing a Better You in Himself and in Others.

I’m going to talk about a couple things.  First thing I want to talk about is the image or persona of myself.  Sometimes I wonder what people outside of myself think of me.  Who cares right? Or Why should I care? Or Why does that even matter?  Well it doesn’t.  I’m just curious.  I’m curious because unfortunately people judge one another.  I’m not saying every single person does, but sadly my perception of people is fairly pessimistic. I’m not going to lie to you guys and say that I’ve never judge someone before so get that clear. 

I have been working on seeing the good in people for awhile and most of my inspiration comes from Smallville’s version of Clark Kent and David Choi's song called Better You.  Listen to the lyrics of the song and see why!  Now I say “Smallville’s version” of Clark Kent because to my knowledge I believe that in the comic world, they don’t really go into Clark Kent’s life growing up in Smallville and hence why the show was created.  Did you see what I just did there?  I made a Smallville reference.  Nerdy? Geeky? Dorky? Which one?  This brings me to my next point. 

If there is one trait about myself that I can not deny is that I’m a geek.  I’m not a nerd, but sometimes I could be a dork.  What’s the difference you wonder? Well I’m going to provide you with the difference, but do not quote me for I’m going to describe them as simply as I can and it could be wrong.  A nerd is someone who focuses their energy and time studying things that would lead them to high academic success such as studying school relating things and seeking more knowledge.  A geek is similar to a nerd, but the main difference is that they focus their studies towards knowledge on different things such as technology, sports, video games, anime, movies, etc. instead of academics. Also obsessive traits may be involved if they are really into said things.  A dork is a whale’s dick.  No, I’m kidding.  A dork is someone who is sometimes awkwardly social.  They act goofy or silly in situations of nervousness and have odd body language around others.   

I bring this up because there seems to be a negative thing about being a nerd, geek, or dork. Why? I don't exactly know. You just get the feeling when you mention a joke or reference relating to something geeky such as Star Wars, Naruto, or whatever to someone in conversation and you get this weird vibe or a sense that they're thinking lowly of you.  Maybe that's just me or maybe it's the way the media has portrayed geeks and nerds to be in movies or television shows.  Because of this, sometimes I feel I have to hide my geekiness when I'm around other people who are not as much as a geek I am.  Sometimes I just want to make a geeky reference but I end up holding myself back!  I shouldn't.  I should be myself as cliche as that might sound, but it's kind of difficult when you around people who aren't as alike as you.  In the end, I shouldn't care.  So!  Are you a nerd? A geek? A dork? or a combination of two or all? Let me know in the comments below or check out my video and like, subscribe and comment on the video.

David Choi's music video of Better You:

Video blog of this blog:

I'm going to teach you how to live.

"Rod, I'm going to teach you how to live", using Barney Stinson's words.  I continued saying, "At least through high school."

High school may be the best time of your adolescent life or your worst.  High school is deadly.  Caught up in the wrong group of people and it may affect the rest of your life.  Maybe I'm just being dramatic just for the sake of being... dramatic.  I always say that if I went back to high school with the knowledge of what I know now, my high school experience would have been even greater.  My high school life wasn't bad.  I had a great time in high school, but there are a few regrets I have that I wish I could have taken advantage of.  For example, being more open and talk to everyone, join more clubs, be more social and not limit myself to like 2-3 groups of friends... or what you could call, "cliques".   

In this day and age of social media, it seems like it would be a lot easier to express yourself in a way to share your thoughts and ideas with schoolmates and avoid being a social outcast.  To use social media to your advantage.  Don't be mistaken, social media can also be grave.  For example, like that 15 year old high school girl who ranted on Facebook about how she felt about the chores her parents assigned to her and how her father found out and posted a video on Youtube to teach her a lesson. I mean as we all know, we just have to do the chores our parents give us because that is our duty and the least we can do for them since they let us live under their roof.  Anyways, this was beside my point, back to what I was originally talking about.

I said, "Think of a hobby that sparks your creative ideas and flourish it.  Whether it's photography, cinematography, writing, drawing, whatever it may be and express it and share it with everyone.  Join a sport, join a club.  Do some sort of extra curriculum that allows you to be with people and make friends and bonds along side your creative hobby and express and share it with them, but remember to be yourself and never feel you have to hide who you are. You'll be golden."  Of course, I may not be the one to talk of such great knowledge because I certainly did not do that in high school, but that's definitely what I would do if I could go back.  Unfortunately I can't, but the least I could do is guide my younger brother as best as I can.

Do you think it's wrong of me to hand down an ideal that I wish I could of done back in high school to my younger brother? Or do you think it's a good thing that I'm giving him some sort of older brotherly advice?  Let me know in the comment box below.

A Chronicle of Unbreakable H E R O E S

Taking the superhero genre closer to home. If I were to describe Chronicle, that's what I would say. Being a fan of science fiction that involves superhuman abilities, there would be no doubt I would enjoy this film. Do not worry, I am not going to spoil anything. I am simply going to try and articulate how the film made me feel.

The directing direction that this movie uses won me over because the movie is about 3 high school kids who gain superhuman abilites by discovering something extraordinary and its way of telling the story through its innovative cinematography through a character's actual video camera. This movie could relate to a wide variety of audiences because it explores an aspect of discovering powers in a way that we can relate to and that is; "What if you discovered you had superhuman abilites?". It takes us closer by adding, "What if you were a teenager in high school discovering you had superhuman abilities?". This film is an example of answering those questions.  To convey those questions,  it is filmed through one of the character's video camera making it feel more like you are there. That choice of cinematography hit the spot. For those who have watched it already, what would you do if you discovered powers? For those who haven't, I recommend seeing it.

Since I'm on the subject of the superhero genre, there's another film I would recommend watching and it's called Unbreakable starring Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. This was one of M. Night Shyamalan's good films that came after The Sixth Sense. It is about discovering superhuman abilities as well, but in a different point of view. I like to say that it could be an origin story you could put in the realm of H E R O E S.

Now if you haven't heard of H E R O E S, then let me fill you in.  H E R O E S was a superhero genre television show. There are a lot of mixed reviews when it comes to deciding whether or not it was good or bad. I would like to say it was good to some extent. I could understand why others may not have liked it after the first season, but I stayed loyal to the show and watched it until the end. While I'm on the subject of H E R O E S, I'm going to have to say that it borrowed similar story telling ideas from L O S T. If you watch both of them you can see similarities between characters and story telling.

Chronicle, Unbreakable, and H E R O E S. I recommend watching them if you have the time to do so and especially if you like to suspend your disbeliefs and believe super powers can exist.

LOST Home in the Chronicle

Hello world!

It's that time again.  Time to blog.  I realize that most of these blogs are going to be a bunch of rambling about what's on my mind and what matters to me so forgive my blogs for not be grammatically correct or what not.  During the week I always get ideas of what to blog about but by the time I get down to write something, I forget what I was going to blog about!  Perhaps I should just make a note in my phone when I get an idea.  I could actually talk about a lot of things.  Most of what I think about though is usually a reference to a movie, a television show, a video game, a Youtube video or something random I witnessed/observed in public. Pretty geeky stuff.  I suppose I'll go by the same formula of blogging I did in my last post.

LOST.  I must say that show easily goes straight to one of my top favorite television shows even though I jumped onto the wagon before the final season started.  =/.  None-the-less, it captured my attention and heart. I bring this up because one of my friends made a small reference to the show the other day and so then I went through one of my obsessive phases where I just start looking stuff up and blah blah blah... you get the picture... Anyways, the show is a serial drama that follows several survivors of an airplane that crashes onto a mysterious island in the South Pacific.  The story is told in two different types of storylines; one main storyline taking place on the island and a side story that takes place in one of the survivor's life before the crash.  What makes this show one of my favorites are the themes that it presents such as life, destiny, faith, philosophy, religion, etc.  I highly recommend this show to anyone that has interest in mystery/science fiction/supernatural/drama genres.  I recently just found a user who has uploaded seasons 1-5 in 720p HD on Youtube.  I haven't searched if anyone has the final season, but here's the link: LOST.
Here's a fun song for the LOST fans that was made as the final season ended:

(Wow, I just figured out that I can just share Youtube videos here instead of linking them.  Now I'm going to go back to my other posts and edit them in.).

This week, Wong Fu Productions released their first episode of their new short, "Home is Where the Hans Are".  Be sure to check it out right here:

Also! Chronicle comes out today! I want to watch it.  Of course it tends to my geekiness because it's a superhero genre film!! Yeeaaaahh!! Check out the trailer!

All right, that's all that I had on my mind for now. If anything else pops up, I'll blog it... or vlog it! check out my first attempt at vlogging!  I don't know if I'll be doing it often although in the video I say I will try.  I kind of like writing better, but whatever.  I don't know.

Peace out world!

A Journeyman Proposed to His Girlfriend in a Love Language with a Fire Flower

Okay folks, there are a few things I'd like to blog about today but before I get to them I would like to thank whoever has read my past few blogs already.  I only know of one person who reads this blog and is the only one I personally told about this.  So thank you readers and pass this along to anyone who you think would like to know about the things I already have talked about.  I don't necessarily have a plan of execution for these blogs nor do I have a way to organize my thoughts.  As time goes on, I will think of some way to organize my thoughts. Okay enough of that.

The first thing I want to talk about is a television show that only went through half a season and did not succeed because it premiered during the 2007 Writer's Guild of America strike.  Yes, I know it's an old show and that it premiered about 4 years ago, but it still matters to me.  It's a great show! The show I'm speaking of is called Journeyman starring Kevin McKidd.  The series follows the character, Dan Vasser, a San Francisco reporter working for the San Francisco Register.  So what? What's so interesting about this show? Well, the thing about Dan Vasser is that he travels through time! Cool right?! But he can't control when or where he goes which then has an affect on his personal life.  Why does he travel through time? He travels back in time to help the life of a random person that is supposedly meant to change so that something good can happen in the future.  I won't spoil much about the show so you're going to have to watch it for yourself to see why this show matters to me.  You can watch all 13 episodes on hulu. Journeyman.

Also, I want to talk about is a video I came across on Youtube a few weeks back and thought it was beautiful.  It's about a guy who proposes to his girlfriend using internet memes.  I myself am not too familiar with all the internet memes out there, I only know a little bit.  There's not much more to say about it than for you to watch it.

And since I'm on the subject of Youtube videos, I came across a video my brother showed me and thought it was very cute.  Although it was a remake of an video already on Youtube, it received more views than the original!  Of course though, they are both cute.  I'll provide both of the links so that you guys can see both.  The main reason I like the remake is because it was filmed at a park not too far away from my home.  Without spoiling too much about the videos, it's about a boy who meets a girl at a park bench.

Lastly, I just had to add this last video because I  just finished watching it while typing up this blog.  This video is made by Freddie Wong and it's called Fire Flower.

  

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this blog and the links and everything I shared.  Share this blog! I will be blogging and posting things that matter to me and hopefully in time, they can matter to you.

Fung out!

Playing an MMORPG

MMORPG.  Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.  Now I was never one to ever think I would play such a genre of video games because of World of Warcraft.  I shouldn't judge the people who play WoW because what do I know about the community of players? I don't know what their experiences are as a person or why they like the game.  All I know is that it's an MMORPG and that they like it.  How does this genre differ from any other, well in order to play this game you have to pay to play monthly.  The reasoning behind paying to play is because the developers who create the game have a team of people who work on the game to detect bugs or glitches as well as making patches and updates.  Those people can't do it for free right?  So that's where the players' money goes to or at least I would like to think it goes to.  You may or may not know, but there's a little stigma that goes along with people who play these MMOs.  Such examples would be parodies like what the comedy show, Southpark, told.  You could look it up and watch it right now if you want and then get back to this.  If you already watched it, then good for you.  The episode creates stereotypes among this community of players in a satirical way and it's enjoyable to watch and laugh about it.  That's it. That's the image people could possibly picture if they were to think of someone who plays WoW or such similar game.  Sit around at home playing WoW all day only to get up to eat and use the bathroom.  (Except in Carmen's situation... haha).  I can't say for sure that's how the hardcore MMO player plays because I haven't met or seen a typical hardcore MMO player and if I have, well I wouldn't know now would I?  

So why talk about this?  Well some of you readers don't know this, but I'm a Star Wars fan.  Now my level of "fan-ness" could possibly be laughable to those diehard fanboys out there so it's hard to claim myself as a high level fan.  But to some of my friends or people who know a little bit about me would say I really like Star Wars and compared to them, I'm like a super fanboy geek when in actuality I just know a little bit more about Star Wars than the average person.  If there was a survey and the question was, "How much do you know about Star Wars?", I would put "above average" and not "all-knowing". Anyways back to the point!  Recently, an MMO of Star Wars was released and I regardless of my thoughts about playing MMOs, I just had to play it because it was Stars Wars.  Also, I have to add to the fact that it was said this MMO was to delve more in story than any other MMOs have previously and so that little fact interested me more! I decided to buy it and play it.  I'd give MMOs a try and see what my opinions about it would be after.

After is here and no, I didn't even complete the game yet.  Not even a quarter way.  I only just finished the prologue which goes up to level 15ish?  I'm not sure. So a week or so of playing this MMO, I'd say it's not bad.  I wouldn't go as far as playing all out non-stop for days, but it's enjoyable.  The first thing I noticed when I first started playing was the complicated controls.  I'm pretty sure I'm still not playing the game to the fullest potential because I don't even know what the best combos are or what path of the skill tree to even go. A skill tree is some sort of path that you can take when your chosen character levels up.  It's kind of complicated for someone new to these types of games and I'm one of them.  It doesn't really matter though, because I'm playing the game mostly for the story and to understand more mythology and lore about the Star Wars universe.

Okay, I swear I won't always be talking about video games! I'll change the topics around, but these things take time... time I should actually be using to study for school. Speaking of school... this happens to me a lot...check this out...Internet Distractions.

A Quick Resident Evil Obsession

For some odd reason I've been obsessing over Resident Evil ever since my last post below.  In this obsession, I uncovered a lot of information from  this Resident Evil Wiki as well as searching Youtube for cut scenes from the video games that users have actually uploaded.  I've found the cut scenes for the games The Umbrella Chronicles and The Darkside Chronicles.  These games serve as retelling of the series.  Like a summarized version of the original games as well as having exclusive plot points not included in the other games.  The Umbrella Chronicles summarizes Resident Evil Zero, Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis as well as including all new stories that involve Albert Wesker, Chris Redfield, and Jill Valentine.  The Darkside Chronicles summarizes Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, and an all new story featuring Leon S. Kennedy and Jack Krauser (first introduced in Resident Evil 4).  There hasn't been any game or exclusive content that summarizes what happened in Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5, but maybe  will be included with the release of Resident Evil 6?  Only a guess.  For any of you curious readers would like to take interest in this series here are the links to the cut scenes of the games I just mentioned:

The Umbrella Chronicles (should be in playlist format for easy viewing.)

The Darkside Chronicles - "Memories of a Lost City" (Resident Evil 2)

The Darkside Chronicles - "Game of Oblivion" (Resident Evil Code: Veronica)

The Darkside Chronicles - "Operation Javier" (A new exclusive storyline to this game)

Also, there is an official recap of the events spanning Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis called Wesker's Report made by Capcom which can be found here.  If you watch it, the last part about Sherry has been officially omitted by Capcom.

Now there are people who uploaded all the cut scenes from all the games, but I'm not going to include them here because that's a little too much work that I'm willing to put into this entry.  I already gave you enough to get the gist of the series.  Hopefully a new fan can be created.

Back.

Well it's been three semesters since my last blog post on Xanga.  For awhile now I've been thinking about reblogging and so here I am.  Hopefully I will be updating more frequently as I have in mind, but things change and maybe this may be my last entry until a year from now.  Who knows?

So what inspired me to finally just start blogging again?  Well I'm going to provide you with the long story AND a short story for those who just want to get to the point.  I'm going to start out with the long story and provide the short story after.  Separated of course.

LONG STORY:

It all started with an update from the Resident Evil fan page on Facebook.  They posted something about the Resident Evil Retribution trailer.  From there, it sparked my interest by asking, "What happened in the previous movie?".  I had forgotten and so I went through my hard drive to see if I had downloaded it and I did.  This meant that I had watched it before, but I just couldn't remember what it was about and so I decided to watch the movie to refresh my memory.

If you're wondering what was going through my mind by asking why I even cared, well it's because the trailer to Retribution gave me the impression that it was a prequel of some kind to the Resident Evil film mythology and so immediately I liked it because I like the idea of story telling where it deals with the flashback or past of a character that has been introduced to the audience that you have no knowledge of their background.  Questions like, "Why are they the way they are?", to a character is intriguing.  This fascination of story telling was introduced to me through the television show, LOST.  I could get started about how other television shows that I've watched before such as Prison Break or even now like Once Upon a Time and the new series that just started this Monday, Alcatraz, but I won't.  Anyways, back to what I was originally saying.

After finishing the movie, I happened to see another post from the Resident Evil fan page, but this time linking to the Resident Evil 6 trailer. After that, I was so psyched up about it that I had to spread the word and share it by posting it up on my Facebook which lead to me wanting to express my opinion on the matter of the video game franchise and the film franchise.  I could have expressed this story longer but I wanted to get to sharing my opinion already because I still have the short story to tell.

SHORT STORY:

I watched the Resident Evil Retribution trailer, watched Resident Evil Afterlife, watched the Resident Evil 6 trailer, and finally decided I wanted to express my opinions some how and my brain automatically thought about blogging which lead to revisiting Xanga and finally creating a blog here on Blogspot.

Now for the main part.

Back in 2002 when I was 13 years old, the first Resident Evil film was released.  You could possibly have guessed I was a fan of the Resident Evil video games and so you could imagine a fanboy's excitement over a movie based upon it.  I remember watching it with a friend at a United Artist theater that is now a Best Buy.  I remember walking out of the theater with disappointment and thoughts of anguish for what Sony and Paul W.S. Anderson did to the franchise.  As the other films were released, I had small expectations for them and that served me well as years went by.  For some reason, I don't know why, but... I see the film franchise in a different light now.  I've come to accept Paul W.S. Anderson's ideas on the film franchises simply on the plain and simple fact that they are based "loosely" on the video game franchise.  The opinions and ideas about that have probably always been out there and I don't know why I never saw it.  The matter of fact now is, are the Resident Evil films good?  Good in the sense of using the Resident Evil realm and ideas with cameos of characters from the game as well as putting his own character to give "his" Resident Evil an original story.  Of course there are many bad critiques about the film that the super dedicated fanboys complain about.  I have not read much about the complaints, but I could imagine what some of them can be because I,  myself, am a fanboy of the franchise.  But once you keep an mind open to Paul W.S. Anderson's ideas, most of those critiques won't matter.

Wow, I got to hand it to the Resident Evil team for dishing out an all-new idea for Resident Evil 6.  Looks like they are bringing the series back to its roots.  When Resident Evil first started out, it was well known for its genre as a survival horror video game. Resident Evil Zero to Veronica stood by this genre, but with the release of Resident Evil 4 and 5, the genre slowly moved towards an action genre with little survival horror aspects as well as replacing the antagonistic zombies with crazed villagers of some sort.  Now it looks like they are molding the two together by putting together survival horror part from Zero to Veronica and the action from 4 and 5 and finding a good middle.  Oh and not to mention the "Hollywood" style story line.  I say "Hollywood" style because the trailer sort of reminded me of the Uncharted series.

Well this blog took me quite awhile to write up due to a few distractions.  It kind of reminds me of when I procrastinate from doing homework except this blog is not for school, it's for me and you.