No matter whatever world we are presented with – be it the real or the fiction, there is always that one end goal put forward: peace. This concept varies on the individual and we all want a little bit of peace. Every person would go to any length they deem necessary to find “peace,” whatever it is. Because of this desire, we join groups, movements, filled with people who believe in the same things as we do. But it’s not all black and white as we would like to believe.
As I write this article, I have come to realize that our group has come a really long way in comparison to the previous year. New members have come and are gracing us with their wonderful writings on various prompts. Although I haven’t really been a part of OWLS for a very long time, I feel very proud to be a part of this wonderful, growing group of creators.
WEEKLY WRAP-UP – With all the new anime and gaming titles coming out, this week has been pretty material-intensive for me. Not knowing where to begin with the new anime season, or have the means to access newly released games, it has become a struggle for me to find compelling content to write about.
BLOG UPDATE – In the past few months, I have stuck to this one post per week rule where I try to dish out a new article every week. The whole rule seems great and all but I feel like pushing my limits, in terms of utilizing good schedules and keeping ideas fresh in my head. In that respect, I think setting up some themes would be great in order to keep me writing in a way that keeps me engaged, unlike how the current scheduling I am doing right now.
Starting next week, here is a list of what’s to come:
Expectation Mondays
Every Monday, I will be talking about five or less things that I am stoked about for the week. This could be a new episode of an anime series, a huge news announcement, an event within the community and the like.
This will keep me focused on stuff that I should be paying attention to whilst thinking of topics to talk about, in the blog, for the duration of the entire week.
Musical Wednesdays
Every Wednesday, I will be featuring a song, either from a game or an anime series, that has gotten my attention. As a pianist, I usually listen to new songs whenever I can and try to learn them so snippets of my piano playing could be found here (if I ever do get the luxury of time to do so).
I tried doing this sort of thing as a weekly song feature that was found on the right-hand side of the old blog theme I was using but I always failed to make an update, hopefully with this theme scheme I am doing the whole idea is realized.
In the Spotlight (Friday)
Every Friday, I try to highlight either an anime series, a game title, or a character from either of the two media forms. It would be pretty much similar to your usual “Top (insert number here) Best Characters” or any similar article but instead of a number of characters, it would just be one singular character.
This is to give emphasis as to why this character is so great and how he/she behaves in the game or anime title he/she comes from. Same goes for an anime series or game titled put in the spotlight.
Weekly Wrap (Saturday)
Every Saturday, I try to wrap up five or more things that were huge for the week – either a news announcement or a good article from a fellow blogger. This is because I noticed that the interactions I have with you, readers, have been really limited and constrained. Honestly, I want to hear how everyone thinks of my writing and do some good ol’ discourse.
Kind of new to this sort of “reaching out” thing but hey, I gotta start somewhere.
Other Stuff
Discussions, episode reactions, first impressions and the like will still be posted throughout the week about the recent anime or gaming titles that I have been following for the current season. I have decided to let this type of content loose since everything related to it is just out of my hat and had no proper planning whatsoever.
Although, this is pretty much late coming from me but yeah, I was able to join the Otaku Warriors for Liberty and Self-Respect or OWLS group and they have been lovely people. It is always great to huddle up with people doing the same thing and share some great ideas. If you’re interested in joining us, give it a shot.
For updates on the blog and what I am planning to do, go and check out the blog’s twitter account.
Wrapping up
This entire thing is me trying to make sure the blog stays fresh and new with the writing I am dishing out as well as reaching out to other people within the community because it is getting kind of lonely here.
I think that’s all for this blog update.
What do you think of the new changes? Got a suggestion? Hit me up in the comments below.
– Miandro
Day 23: Favorite Attack Someone used in an Anime
As I have repeatedly stated before, I don’t really put that much thought – let alone any sort of fondness, for any sort of special move, attack or any weapon and gear used in an anime series. So for today, I am choosing what looked really cool in the series, Kill la Kill.
PERSONAL ENTRY – In early May, I had the chance to participate in a debate and public speaking workshop which taught people ways on how to think logically and out of the box.
For this personal entry, I would like to talk about one motion which we debated about: “This House would prefer to live in a world where no rhetoric of uniqueness of an individual exists.”
In this debate, I was able to learn and gain some sort of self-insight on the topic of self-worth in relation to the rhetoric of uniqueness since I was in the opposition side. So I will be sharing what I thought and said during my part of the debate.
The other side brought out the ideas that calling people unique misleads them and at the end, gets them disappointed since such aspects apparently don’t exist within them at all. In their side, they claimed that life would be better without the concept of uniqueness since discrimination and misrepresentation would be out of the picture.
Thinking about these things which they said, I thought: “that cannot be right.”
For starters, they argued that the idea of telling other people that they are unique or people that personally feel that they are unique brings forth a sense of superiority and people should be aware that you are no different to anyone else.
Gathering my thoughts about what they said, I came up with this as my piece in the debate:
Why is the rhetoric of uniqueness important and impossible to remove? Competition.
If you remove the concept of uniqueness, then people would be in this mentality that their actions are basically just the same as other people so why should they live in the first place?
The rhetoric of uniqueness allows people to see and use their potential in what they do best. It may be true that two office workers may have the same jobs but if you look at it positively and differently, there is still an aspect of uniqueness in what you do.
Let us take this one example: office worker A and B are employed with the same jobs. However, office worker A does his job using a desktop computer whilst office worker B uses a typewriter. You can apply this example to two librarians working in two different institutions who prefer different methods of encoding documents.
Not motivating enough? Let me go about on a much more physical level.
You are apparently beautiful to the person sitting beside you but Lynda, the woman on the other end of the room which you are in, is not beautiful to the person sitting beside you.
But hold up, let’s think about this situation differently.
If you are beautiful to the guy sitting beside you, then you must not be beautiful to others. Doesn’t that create some sort of desire and annoyance therefore would somewhat encourage you to a certain extent to look good to other people?
In the case of the person who is not considered beautiful by the guy sitting beside you, she could possibly see this as a challenge and therefore would make personal steps to look beautiful in that person’s eyes and ultimately, to others as well.
This is why people get so easily discouraged and depressed – especially with our generation today.
Say we were to metaphorically compare our entire existence to a clean, white cloth. As time goes by, you notice a stain which was formed after you sneezed into said cloth.
Now, do you take your laundry materials and clean that stain? Or do you just look at it without doing anything at all?
In the realistic case, people would most probably wash that stain. Same as with life, you need to either wash that stain or cut that piece of cloth – whichever is most appealing to you.
If there were no sense of uniqueness, there’d be no atmosphere of competition which in turn would lead to some sort of pause in the processes of life.
If that would be the case, then why live in the first place when you don’t have reason to live? You might say, “I don’t know why I still live,” then I say to you, “Should I call a random person to figure out why you still live or would you want to look at the reason yourself?”
Every individual thinks very differently from one another. Isn’t that a form of uniqueness?
The concept of uniqueness varies from person to person and whatever their interpretation of it can drastically affect how they live their lives.
I don’t know if this article made sense or anything but I hoped it somewhat cheered someone up or made them think twice about life. It’s really disheartening to see people my age succumbing to depression and anxiety just because they have the wrong mindsets. Exterior factors can fall into play and considering that thought, I hope this can be a great “exterior factor” for people to ponder on.
As the Desmond Doss, from the movie “Hacksaw Ridge,” said:
With the world so set on tearing itself apart, it don’t seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit of it back together.
With that note, hope this article helps. Also, happy mother’s day to all moms out there.
DAY 1: Very first anime that I have watched
I was about seven years old when I first found anime. The local television network was bringing in a new segment of their channel called “Toon Saturdays” which featured a lot of anime series showing in the morning.
The first anime series that I saw was Shakugan no Shana.
The first episode drew my interest as it featured a monster-like creature being controlled by a person which sucked out people’s souls whilst suspending the flow of time. It was a pretty interesting concept to me.
In this episode, the main character Yuji was immune to these time-suspending effects since he is the host of a special relic of some kind called the Reiji Maigo which means that his soul was no more but the remains of it still flicker brightly within him.
In this world, once your soul was somehow devoured or taken, you had a “torch” remaining which would flicker until it’d go out as you get erased from existence – no one would remember you. Your friends, relatives, family, classmates – everyone.
However, flame hazes like Shana battle with these people and keep ordinary humans safe.
It was a wonderful and interesting ride for me. A world filled with such fantasy, mystery and concepts that were new to a six year old me.
I grew along with this series from its first season to its fourth last season. I saw how characters like Yuji, Shana grew more mature and more independent to make some sort of difference in this big fantasy world they are involved in. How certain past enemies became important allies, how alliances were made, how groups formed.
Everything in this series fascinated me to an incredible level and leaves me in awe while reminiscing my experiences during the creation of this article.
How love is such a great driving force – even to those who wield strong, unimaginable power.
After watching this series, my interest into these new and more in-depth “cartoons” grew stronger and has lasted until this day.
Shakugan no Shana has always been a benchmark anime for me and I always find time to re-watch it whenever I can. Despite being released so long ago, it still has its entertainment value.
PERSONAL ENTRY – Since I have been running out of time to keep this blog up and going, I have decided to do the “30 Day Anime Challenge” to get myself used to the current schedule I have at the moment.
Recently I have been busy collaborating with a group in the social media platform, “Habbo Hotel,” and it’s been doing good so far.
If you want to view the list, it’s on here.
The challenge starts on May 1, 2017 so that it will cover the entirety of the month of May.
Hope you have fun reading.
Miandro
PERSONAL ENTRY – It has been half a year since I started Miandro’s Side and it grew quite fast than I anticipated. The blog has been a past time for me until I decided to write articles regularly by the end of last year. That was the case since school was ending for me and I had a lot of free time in my hands.
I never thought that I would grow quite well here. Back then, I had a Tumblr blog called “miganiano” which had articles similar to what I’ve been writing here. The only thing that was off for me is that growing in Tumblr was so unrealistic.
In the span of a year, I grew a hundred-fifty person following on Tumblr but I couldn’t feel any sort of engagement with them. It was the usual “I like this post since it says (insert anime here) so I’m going to re-blog it” which did not sit right with me.
I wanted to have people read my articles and interact with them as well.
So I decided to switch blogging platforms from Tumblr to WordPress since it was highly recommended by people I knew – and boy, was it the right decision.
Never have I felt such active interaction between me, a writer, and the reader – it was such an exciting thing for me. I got to meet people who were doing the same thing as me and it was really fun having to converse with them in the comments section of my articles.
As of late, the blog has been slowly getting inactive because vacations and all that jazz (also I got stranded due to a storm but hey im back).
The regular articles will resume on April 18th as I still have catching up to do. Attack on Titan season 2, Tsuki ga Kirei, Sagrada Reset, Sword Oratoria: DanMachi, Eromanga-sensei and a lot of others.
Again, I am very glad on how this blog has turned out and you have not seen the last of me yet. I am going full force on this one.
Miandro
Miandro's Side