Animangaki 2013 Touhou section: hope and gratitude for the local Touhou fans

Last weekend marks the third year of the Touhou section of Animangaki (this year being called as Animangaki Touhou Festival, with the second one being refered to as Touhou GenTouShou). As someone who was involved in helping for all the three consecutive years, I’d like to give a short review and critique on the Touhou section. This post is meant not only for this year’s post-event review, but hopefully as a review for any future activity among the local Touhou group over here.

Excuse for lack of picture for this year's event

Continue reading the rest of this post>>

Animangaki 2013: Tauhu [P]rojak

This year’s Animangaki saw the first hopeful inception of our circle, Tauhu [P]rojak, where along with one artbook and one novel released under the circle name saw the distribution of other doujin merchandise (badges, bookmarks, cookies) of other individual that chip in the booth under our circle.

Perhaps the time is right to properly introduce ourselves:

Continue reading the rest of this post>>

Early morning tweet: on life and death

I found these series of tweet from someone who I've been following, I thought it was pretty thoughtful. So here we go: 

Think about it, your life is insignificant. You're just a tiny bacteria in a tiny pale blue dot. And that tiny bacteria is very complex.

In a bigger picture, million years ago, the earth is formed, and the creation of the moon. And as time passes by, civilization rises

How significant your lives are is determined on how you contribute and how it affects your future, both famous or INFAMOUS to be history

And these people became part of human lives for the next coming generations, simply as a lesson to be learnt for the future

And gradually we evolved, in both good or bad ways, but still, evolution moves not by benefits.

As gradually human civilization crosses out of the planet to interstellar, more history gets forgotten. Only significant remains.

The significant ones are either uplifting ot tragic, so whomever in the comfort zone, you're just normal. you're nothing. But still a choice

But that doesnt say the comfort zone people has no place, its just sideswiped, still they have a role generating the next generation.

And by random in a family, a child was born to be either some guy or a significant someone. And it depends on how the environment affects it

Depedant on education and how it thinks, history plays a role to shape an individual to strive forward on decisions of the next generation

It repeats so and on. And there are people who decide to see the world born, eat people, kill people, the ones that decided to FUCK IT

A sense dangerous morality, still its a choice but its very infectious and even fools can be deceived. Hence we have religion.

The prupose of religion, the words of god, they are ORDERS. These are the ruling to bring humanity into order or else there is chaos

Whichever the religion, they have rules to abide to set themselves into order. Humans in the beginning were confused n fear, but faith...

Faith is what keeps them on the line, giving them hope to survive and confidence.

Most of the righteous ones believe in staying away from immorality. Its to ensure no one gets hurt and no chaos amongst others

But gradually now humans overlook orders in order to be different and attraction, hence the rise of immorality.

Civilization is growing at rapid pace where faith and hope is put to a higher level of challenge until human forgot their main role on earth

So looking back, at your job, punching papers, feed the kids, sit at home. And then what?

The complexity of human understanding breaks apart into smaller pieces of complexity, its like multiple flakes of complex to tinker with

And the main goal for human beings are left to desires and seek of pleasure and happiness which... not everyone will surely get.

A variable and multiple set of different humans with different characteristics are left out for interaction. Like experiment, we are unsure

Humans were left like 'what and how' in interaction. And we have parents to guide us on how do we interact with one another.

And all this lessons came from generation and generation of our ancestors, which were ones all came from the same place and one family.

We have a guidebook, whichever written by god. A guidebook to live and respect one another.

If you're atheist, its ok, believe what you believe, but do take liberty on what's beneficial and respect one another.

But the goal of desires and satisfaction can lead to ridiculous outrageous goals. A vision of creating an ideal civilization.

Sometimes racially based because we all had trouble understanding one another, so one got attached to a group and it becames a large club

Then it became a tug of war between teams, but on a larger scale, we have war. Gung ho ing your own team and all for your ideal vision

Whatever you play in your orientation camp is actually a smaller scale human interaction. Also, other than war, we have voting.

A civilized manner of agreement for vision decision. Competing using votes of population to agree on a certain ideology.

But ideology can be selfish instead of understand a global scale means. One can have a country full of beautiful people n one race based

Then they have genocide. Preventing a generation means to strive forward onto the next generation.

With multiple deaths as a statistic, a large chunk of potential individuals got thrown to the gutter, in a tragic common story.

But humans still evolved taking liberty with the lesson. But do they learnt, a mixed bag. We still have understanding humans n we have fools

And we need them both to balance out one another. Its inevetible, you can't wish for constant harmony or constant chaos. It can be boring

So we have disasters and climate control... to interact with humanity, and see results.

Thinking through, we're like experimental guinea pigs with complex understanding.

What will the future of humanity be? Weaker? Stronger? Smarter? More understanding? One may think one of the answer

But in a bigger picture, its all of it. You just didn't cover the whole continent. Not everyone is glued to the screen n tweet shit like us

There seems to be equal balance of every aspect. With this in mind, you can see where this is going. Not much to worry.

You will still have smart people, idiots, strong, weak, beautiful, ugly, the variable is all there. But you can't choose. You are chosen

No point of being jelly on one thing or another. You're just a pathethic amoeba trying to fuck and die happily. Still the ending is death

But in return you may give life to another, or inspire others, or both,

Your goal to think is your contribution to the world and future generation. So what kind of ideology shit you want to share?

I am done with this vessel. Im sure this poor soul will woke up wondering what the fuck is he smoking.

Cosplay 'dramas': What's the big deal? (Part II)

So in the last entry I mentioned on a few points which I figured trigger the whole chain reaction of 'dramas' that is so common nowadays in our cosplay community: There's the part about confidence, the misguided chase for fame, the unnecessary attention seeking, and the unacceptance how some people change (more of a personal relationship between people really).

Now, let's further look at some other possible reasons for the whole deal behind these 'dramas', eh?

Continue reading the rest of this post>>

Cosplay 'dramas': What's the big deal? (Part I)

First of all, you might want read these few articles in which I share their sentiments on some issues that they have with cosplaying. And they make a better point than I could too on other aspect that I've missed in this entry; check them out:

Cosplaying and Fame – Are You a Model or Hobbyist?

The In-Voice: The Last of Cosplayers

What's this Cosplay deal?

Emahgerd cosplay dramaaaaaaaaa

Sooooo this whole post might come of as slightly weird, coming from someone who has only been immersed in the whole 'scene' for a rather brief period, and who's not as involved as some of the rest in the community. But even in the short while I'm being involved, there's a few issues I have with the aspect of the cosplay community that I figured I'd put out a couple of my 5 cents on the subject.

...OK. Maybe more than 5 cents... Hence why I decided that it's best if I split it into two parts. So here's the second part of the entry for you to read later.

Continue reading the rest of this post>>

Rest in peace, Ryutaro Nakamura

The official Twitter feed for the Chibi Neko Tom no Dai Bōken anime announced on Thursday that anime director and storyboard artist Ryutaro Nakamura (Serial Experiments Lain, Kino's Journey) had passed away on June 29 at 4 p.m. after months of being hospitalized while fighting pancreatic cancer. The announcement was made after permission was given by his family. He was 58 years old at the time of his death.

Source


This is quite sad for me: Serial Experiments Lain and Kino's Journey are both one of my top favourite series, with the first one, if I could say, changed my perspective (with its topic on the internet and social networking and the sort), and the subtopic on religion, technology, evolution - it's unlike anything I've ever watched then.

Funnily I found it because one of my friend constantly uses Lain as her avatar, and I'm intrigued when I saw the description of the series.

Rest in peace Ryutaro Nakamura. Thanks for all the memories.

Tauhu rojak

I was at Times Square's Borders, on the carpet, browsing through this one novel - 28 Hari - when he called.

It was this one guy on one of the provided bench - earlier the vacant spot was occupied by this bored looking woman, and it was then that I gave a mental slap to my forehead, seeing as I didn't take the provided comfort provided by the shop.

He asked where I was from. 'UM,' I replied. And him? 'Oxford... nah, just kidding'. I would later learn he's from Damansara, and how he was on a trip around KL area.

He was this one tall guy, with spectacles, and a blue scard hung lazily around his neck. He was reading one of the novel, Cerpen. Seeing as we were both reading, our conversation geared towards books - apparently he had read the book I was holding, and he remarked that he liked reading book on music... as well as a bit of novel cinta, if I'm not mistaken.

I never gotten around to know what he really does, but he was saying how he's writing for songs... and also this one biography on M. Nasir. He likes listening to Nasheed, folk music... anything but black metal (though heavy metal is OK with him). He's the eldest in a sibling of five, with all boys save for his youngest sister.

His name is Sham. He was carrying a pink slingbag, and he passed me a copy of a book on Yusuf Islam in the short while we were on the bench.

Since he talked of writing, I mentioned how the local publication is good now - Fixi, Lejen Press - look at these eye catching cover designs, he pointed out.

It was Ramadhan. I told him I'm breaking fast in UM's mosque. He said I should try Masjid Al-Bukhari - I might just try it one of these days, while I'm in KL.

He know of the art performance in Perdanasiswa every Wednesday evening. He commented how UM has no Mass Communication course. He was asking if people could come in the university's library.

All the while I'm trying to imagine how involved he is in his art - whether I would meet him again, where he would proudly produce his writings (be it in the form of book, or a song).

Eventually I bid him farewell. His hands were smooth, and cold. I wondered how long he was in the bookstore.

On the way back to UM, I bought a pasembor (or rojak tauhu as it's called outside of Kedah or Penang yo) - I've been craving for it ever since we christened ourself (a bunch of enthusiastic people working on a Touhou Project artbook) Touhou Projak... and that is a different story.

There was an abundance of food that day at the mosque - nasi ayam and bubur lambuk. Nasi ayam was alright, bubur lambuk is how I'd describe as 'nutty and meaty'. I had my pasembor last, and it was good.

My craving was satisfied, but I sure could go for another round of it another day.

An enthusiastic art person, and a pasembor. Both connected in the sense that both I've encountered by chance.