I just watched... Spirited Away

Strike three, for Miyazaki.

Late Post, originally written a while ago. 

                What is with this world and the number three? Why is the number three used as a number to define, decide and contain so many things? Trilogies are the most common format, forming a mass equivalent to forty-two blue whales if you try to somehow calculate the masses of forms of media. What is this fixation with the number three?

                Perhaps the easiest assumption to make is that it is smallest number with a ‘central’ value, since it is the smallest odd number which lets it form a ‘typical’ arc of Introduction – Build up – Climax that is usually how so many stories enjoy progressing, as it is the most basic and the easiest to digest format, and one that is rather ‘self-serving’ in many ways.

I just watched... Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

 And I’m writing this after a long, drawn-out battle with a cockroach… which the cockroach won.

                Like a high school girl at her prom I have a confession to make: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, which I don’t have a proper short-form for since just calling it ‘Nausicaa’ is going to lead to all kinds of confusion that isn’t going to end well for you, is the second Ghibli and Miyazaki movie I have watched, with the other one being Princess Mononoke. And if I were to summarise my opinion of Princess Mononoke in a single frenzied word it’d be ‘wowzers’. Yes, I enjoyed the movie that much that I had to go beyond the reach of English language and draw out a word from the shadowy nether-reaches to summarise how much I loved it. Needless to say that my expectations rose as quickly as a man leaping to his death from atop the Eiffel tower, in reverse, and sped up 5x times. And thus I went to see the studio and Miyazaki’s first movie with lofty expectations: and spoiler-alert, I now have a man-crush on two Miyazakis.

I just watched... Grave of the Fireflies

Home Sweet Home

                Now I’m not a very metaphysical man, but if I were to get down and biblical I’d say that I really like the concept of the Seven Sins. Not because of what they are, but because of what they represent in mankind. You see, the catch of the Sins, is that yes, they are sins, but an inescapable truth is that all humans bear the Sins in some shape or form, which places our existence into a somewhat paradoxical plane as we try to avoid the Sins while being unable to change the fact that the Sins exist within us, that we are the Sins.