Animes/Games Significant to Me
Animes and RPGs used to be quite important to me, much more than they are now. So, I figure it will be quite fun to talk about some of them that were/are really significant to me. These are the ones that either spark off a certain interest in my life or ones that I can't stop remembering now and then. Starting from the most significant:
1. Inuyasha
Basically, a half-demon got sealed to a tree by his human lover due to a tragedy, and hundreds/thousands years later, that human's reincarnation traveled back to this era to unseal him. And thus began an adventure to destroy the greatest demon, or something...
This is the first anime I've ever watched, and it made me start watching anime in the first place. Although now that I think of it, it has pretty good character backstories but pretty shitty overall story, it was still really important to me at the age I was watching it. I think I was around primary 6, and it was one of the few things I looked forward to everyday. Oh, it has a nice OST too.
2. Legend of Dragoon
This is a Playstation role-playing game (RPG), and the first I've "played". Technically, I only played a portion of its emulated version, which then stopped working halfway through. But, I watched my brother play the whole thing when we still had a Playstation, and it was fun and made me love RPG and games. I don't even remember its storyline or characters and stuff. What I remember is that it has an interesting gameplay, in which it makes menu-based combat more interactive by implementing a system in which you have to press buttons at the right time in order to execute certain combos. I know it sounds very "been there done that", but at that time, I don't think it is. Also, I think it's applied in the right place in the right pacing, since, instead of pressing random buttons during cutscenes, it forces the players to press these buttons halfway through attacking, at very precise moments. That was fun. And then it had transformations, elements, and, most importantly, a very unique and diverse fictional world for players to explore. This also sparked my love for adventures in games/shows, which leads me to...
3. One Piece
I'm not going to talk much about this anime since I've already written an entire post about it. One Piece is so high up this list because it's still ongoing, and it's still the best manga I've ever read, and it still contains the best fictional adventure and fighting, and it's still full of heart, and no other anime/manga/game/show matches up.
4. Mai Hime
This is considered a magical girl anime, but if you're watching it with the expectations of seeing a Cardcaptor Sakura type of stuff, then your heart will be torn to bits. Mai Hime is about twelve girls who are forced to be Himes. Each Hime has a unique weapon and is able to summon a creature (they call it Child) each. Via a crisis, they bond by fighting by one another's sides. They are then forced to kill each other's Child until one remains, or else the world will be destroyed. The catch is, when a Hime's Child dies, the Hime's most loved one (boyfriend, best friend, mother, etc) will die as well. At first, none of the Himes wanted to fight, but human flaws kicked in, and they were soon out for one another's life in a heartbreaking fashion.
This is what is so beautiful about this anime. What's really behind the battle royale isn't the fact that the world will end if they don't fight; It's stuff like jealousy, paranoia, greed, bitterness, emotional imbalance, overprotectiveness, etc. To go with all that, this anime's OST is composed by one of my favourite OST composer, Yuki Kajiura. Although it's quite old, I really recommend this anime to whoever likes your heart broken, and whoever is able to handle quite a bit of melodrama.
When I write my own stuff, I always feel like incorporating some aspects of this anime, but it's not easy. Mai Hime never completely leaves my mind.
5. NANA
NANA is one of the only four shoujo animes I've watched (the other three being Peach Girl, Diamond Dust Drops, and Penguin Drum).
Two girls of the same age who share the same name (Nana) sat beside each other on a train which broke down. So, they chatted while the train tried to start up again. And then, fate brought them together again and they find themselves living together and forming a really close friendship. One of them is an aspiring singer, and the other has no dream other than being with her boyfriend. And then, after the aspiring singer starts realising her dream, and after the other Nana's boyfriend cheated on her, a bunch of stuff happens and these two girls find their friendship broken piece of piece, and they try to fix it in the midst of all the chaos in their lives.
This anime is devastating. Broken friendships just get to me so deeply, and that's what this anime is mostly about. I guess that's why there's still a place for it in my memory.
6. Final Fantasy XIII
I know that this PS3 game received super a lot of criticism for being boring, being melodramatic, being linear, breaking the Final Fantasy traditions, not having particularly interesting characters, not having a lot of stuff, having the flattest main character ever (which I agree), and being beautiful, cool, but hollow. A lot of it, I actually do agree. But this game had really good soundtrack which stuck with me for a while, and it houses my favourite character of all time: Oerba Dia Vanille.
Let's not talk about this game and just talk about Vanille. She has orange hair (and all orange-hair anime/game characters are annoying), has unrealistically squeaky voice, is weak in combat, and does nothing in particular throughout the game besides narrating and feeling guilty because she blames herself for the unhappy events of the game. As her redemption, she is the kindest character in the party, has the darkest background, and appears to be the most cheerful. This makes her a very divisive character, in the sense that some people absolutely hate her while some really love her.
Let's just say I relate very well to extremely passive characters (excluding Orihime from Bleach), and Vanille is one of them. Vanille also shares a lot of my own weaknesses, and what resonates with me is that she's so passive that she doesn't fix them. Instead, she inflates her strengths to unrealistic levels, and hides the darkness behind them. It's comforting that the writers of Vanille understands this mentality, and it's nice to watch this character struggle with how she handles stuff. I've hardly seen guilt, passivity, fear, weakness, and masking of self to be handled this way in any anime/show/game/manga. Personally, I find Vanille to be very relatable, though exaggerated.
So, yup, these are some animes and games that connected with me more strongly than others. The end.
1. Inuyasha
Basically, a half-demon got sealed to a tree by his human lover due to a tragedy, and hundreds/thousands years later, that human's reincarnation traveled back to this era to unseal him. And thus began an adventure to destroy the greatest demon, or something...
This is the first anime I've ever watched, and it made me start watching anime in the first place. Although now that I think of it, it has pretty good character backstories but pretty shitty overall story, it was still really important to me at the age I was watching it. I think I was around primary 6, and it was one of the few things I looked forward to everyday. Oh, it has a nice OST too.
2. Legend of Dragoon
This is a Playstation role-playing game (RPG), and the first I've "played". Technically, I only played a portion of its emulated version, which then stopped working halfway through. But, I watched my brother play the whole thing when we still had a Playstation, and it was fun and made me love RPG and games. I don't even remember its storyline or characters and stuff. What I remember is that it has an interesting gameplay, in which it makes menu-based combat more interactive by implementing a system in which you have to press buttons at the right time in order to execute certain combos. I know it sounds very "been there done that", but at that time, I don't think it is. Also, I think it's applied in the right place in the right pacing, since, instead of pressing random buttons during cutscenes, it forces the players to press these buttons halfway through attacking, at very precise moments. That was fun. And then it had transformations, elements, and, most importantly, a very unique and diverse fictional world for players to explore. This also sparked my love for adventures in games/shows, which leads me to...
3. One Piece
I'm not going to talk much about this anime since I've already written an entire post about it. One Piece is so high up this list because it's still ongoing, and it's still the best manga I've ever read, and it still contains the best fictional adventure and fighting, and it's still full of heart, and no other anime/manga/game/show matches up.
4. Mai Hime
This is considered a magical girl anime, but if you're watching it with the expectations of seeing a Cardcaptor Sakura type of stuff, then your heart will be torn to bits. Mai Hime is about twelve girls who are forced to be Himes. Each Hime has a unique weapon and is able to summon a creature (they call it Child) each. Via a crisis, they bond by fighting by one another's sides. They are then forced to kill each other's Child until one remains, or else the world will be destroyed. The catch is, when a Hime's Child dies, the Hime's most loved one (boyfriend, best friend, mother, etc) will die as well. At first, none of the Himes wanted to fight, but human flaws kicked in, and they were soon out for one another's life in a heartbreaking fashion.
This is what is so beautiful about this anime. What's really behind the battle royale isn't the fact that the world will end if they don't fight; It's stuff like jealousy, paranoia, greed, bitterness, emotional imbalance, overprotectiveness, etc. To go with all that, this anime's OST is composed by one of my favourite OST composer, Yuki Kajiura. Although it's quite old, I really recommend this anime to whoever likes your heart broken, and whoever is able to handle quite a bit of melodrama.
When I write my own stuff, I always feel like incorporating some aspects of this anime, but it's not easy. Mai Hime never completely leaves my mind.
5. NANA
NANA is one of the only four shoujo animes I've watched (the other three being Peach Girl, Diamond Dust Drops, and Penguin Drum).
Two girls of the same age who share the same name (Nana) sat beside each other on a train which broke down. So, they chatted while the train tried to start up again. And then, fate brought them together again and they find themselves living together and forming a really close friendship. One of them is an aspiring singer, and the other has no dream other than being with her boyfriend. And then, after the aspiring singer starts realising her dream, and after the other Nana's boyfriend cheated on her, a bunch of stuff happens and these two girls find their friendship broken piece of piece, and they try to fix it in the midst of all the chaos in their lives.
This anime is devastating. Broken friendships just get to me so deeply, and that's what this anime is mostly about. I guess that's why there's still a place for it in my memory.
6. Final Fantasy XIII
I know that this PS3 game received super a lot of criticism for being boring, being melodramatic, being linear, breaking the Final Fantasy traditions, not having particularly interesting characters, not having a lot of stuff, having the flattest main character ever (which I agree), and being beautiful, cool, but hollow. A lot of it, I actually do agree. But this game had really good soundtrack which stuck with me for a while, and it houses my favourite character of all time: Oerba Dia Vanille.
Let's not talk about this game and just talk about Vanille. She has orange hair (and all orange-hair anime/game characters are annoying), has unrealistically squeaky voice, is weak in combat, and does nothing in particular throughout the game besides narrating and feeling guilty because she blames herself for the unhappy events of the game. As her redemption, she is the kindest character in the party, has the darkest background, and appears to be the most cheerful. This makes her a very divisive character, in the sense that some people absolutely hate her while some really love her.
Let's just say I relate very well to extremely passive characters (excluding Orihime from Bleach), and Vanille is one of them. Vanille also shares a lot of my own weaknesses, and what resonates with me is that she's so passive that she doesn't fix them. Instead, she inflates her strengths to unrealistic levels, and hides the darkness behind them. It's comforting that the writers of Vanille understands this mentality, and it's nice to watch this character struggle with how she handles stuff. I've hardly seen guilt, passivity, fear, weakness, and masking of self to be handled this way in any anime/show/game/manga. Personally, I find Vanille to be very relatable, though exaggerated.
So, yup, these are some animes and games that connected with me more strongly than others. The end.
Labels: anime/manga, games