Media entertainment

I want to talk about the amazing world of entertainment we can access currently. As a kid my dad and older brother got me watching some amazing classic movies like ghostbusters and back to the future, and many more. I am always thankful for that, but also the encouragement for other forms of media entertainments. From video games, board games, games played with toys and figures, cartoons. I remember one of my first introductions to something similar but vastly different to what I had experienced up to this point. That was anime, dragon ball z to be specific. It looked cool and interesting, growing up, of course I wanted to be a Saiyan. I fell in love with the art and animation, before that the greatest animated series I had seen was the batman animated series, which was dark and gritty (which I still love with all my heart to this day) now here was DBZ being all dark and gritty and action packed, I don’t remember the long drawn out episodes where literally all that happened was the characters screaming at each other while charging their attacks. I just remember the nonstop action and story.

Then, I was introduced to the next level. My main intro to the world of anime and everything outside of western entertainment. My brother had rented Akira on VHS, this shows how long ago this was, he told me how great it was, he simply got it and handed it to me and told me to watch it. At this point me and my brother still shared a bedroom, he told me to wait till I was alone to watch it, I at first thought it was because it was scary somehow, as I was shown a lot of horror movies by this point, so I was excited. I wasn’t told anything about the plot, just that I had to watch it. And when I did, it blew my prepubescent little mind. The art style, the plot, the story, and that gorgeous bike of Kaneda’s. everything about that movie was just perfect to me, as such it became my favourite movie for a long ass time. Then slowly my brother introduced me to more and more anime movies and shows, some we rented some he found a copy to download. I soaked up each bit. When there was a new anime being shown on cartoon networks Toonami I was there, every day it was on, reruns and all. I watched everything from DBZ to sailor moon to Tenchi Muyo. For me no anime was off limits, nothing too cheesy for me to watch. This thankfully introduced me to one of my favourite shows called Outlaw Star, and to this day is still one of my all-time favourites. Though this appeared more in my teenage years, I would stay up late as it was shown at 4am every Saturday, so I would wait for my dad to pass out from drinking, sneak through to the living room and sit and watch the episodes with fascination. Now in my mid teenage years my brother again introduced me to something new, and that was Asian movies. He started off with one of my favourites. Old boy, this story was just mind blowing. Twisted doesn’t do this movies justice. Then there were the likes of battle royal, the good the bad and the weird. And all sorts of other movies. Some action some horror, all amazing. This just opened another whole world for me. Growing up I started to get into everything I could. Manga, anime, subtitled movies. Not limited to just the Asian market but all over. In school we were forced to watch a movie called the choir, I was never a massive fan of learning French, that was just my preference, but after watching this movie, it really did make me realise I shouldn’t knock back a language/culture that can make a movie like the choir. All this growing up just made me realise how little my world was before in terms of entertainment. As I’ve grew up I seek out all sorts, thrillers, horrors and even romance stories, if it’s well written and acted I know I’ll enjoy it. An amazing example of this is an anime called Clannad. This anime is based off a virtual novel game. The anime though is just fantastic. The art is great, but the story is just mind blowing. As its based off a virtual novel, its essentially a dating same story, the main character learns about the girls back stories and ultimately chooses one of them. But the “ending” to it just broke me, the art, the voice acting, the music. All of it just collected into a giant ball of feelings that was just amazing.

Now with all that lovely background out of the way, the main reason I am writing this blog is because I feel people choose to purposefully ignore parts of it due to complete ignorance. A good example is my dad, he loves movies, but he refuses to watch a subtitled movie, me and my brother have told him time and time again about the movies we have watched, we tell him the stories and he seems genuinely excited but as soon as we mention its subtitled he just ignores it. I feel this is a shame as people miss out in some amazing stories. Same goes with video games, I feel like these are some of the best outlets to tell amazing stories such as the persona series or the mass effect series of games. There is a massive list of truly great games to list. The same can be said for everything, movies, books, comics. Hell, even music, the second you say you hate a certain type of music is when I think people are just being ignorant. Without exploring and listening to all sorts of music you can’t say you truly experience that to its fullest. My main interest in music is classical and rock. But I don’t limit myself to it at all, I love tons of music from the 80’s and everything from pop to power ballads. Hell, I’ve seen nickel back live 3 times now and loved it each time, I’ve even been to video games live where they play music pieces from video games with an orchestra. I am so thankful for those people in my life who encourage me to do more of these things as all it does is inspire me with more creative ideas of my own, see how things have went well and poorly for some media. Where as a book can tell a massive story, it will never reach as many people as a movie will these days. Thankfully as well, most modern tv shows are starting to realise the past mistake as well, the likes of say Game of Thrones, there’s very few filler episodes as its all based of a previously done story and worked on for the purposes of tv. This is something I’ve been noticing more and more of and I am so glad for it, as it just gets straight to the point and keeps within the story to the most part.

In closing I just hope that people are more open minded when it comes to different forms of media as the world is a bigger thanks to the connection of the internet, we can find all sorts of amazing forms of media out there. You just need to be open minded enough to experience it for what it is. Enjoy the stories, enjoy the tales. Maybe share a tale or two of your own.