Anime Insurgency

 

Perhaps a silly title, but it symbolically represents the love/hate relationship I've had over the years with this medium, one that has been milked to death in certain genres, yet I have always known that a few of them have made drastic impression upon me, which are the ones I have already mentioned elsewhere.

Recently, I've had a resurrection of sorts to watch various kinds of anime series in order to see if there is still magic to be found. Some of the ones I have watched include Attack on Titan, the new popular one with plenty of merchandise available already.

Themes of morbid and grotesque are combined with blood and flesh visuals. Controversial decisions are sometimes made, it has good art style, action and lore mysteries awaiting viewers. Character developments and appropriate music complete the balance and I must say that yes, I was entertained with the first season.

Another anime I gave a go was Ping Pong The Animation, a sports show, with emotions and a little bit of philosophy for table tennis. Featuring international competition, a coming of age story, a distinct art style and decent opening and ending songs.

Ping Pong The Animation isn't exactly like Hajime no Ippo, one of my favorites. But it does portray the sport excitingly, with all of it's techniques and styles. The polarizing relationships between "Smile" and Peco was also a reason to keep watching.

Luckily, I have discovered a new strong favorite anime. Based on a 19th century novel, now turned into an adaptation with royal and sci-fi themes, Gankutsuou takes time to build up before it gets to the good parts.

It truly has a unique art style as people's clothing and hair are standing out in a dynamic and artistic merit. A young aristocrat becomes friends with a charming count and decides to introduce him to friends and family, without knowing that the count has ulterior motives.

Gankutsuou really shines because it's successful on several levels, those include it's appearance, the revenge story, the unusual combination of genres and yet it remains beautiful in overall because the writing, the direction and the characters continue to stay compelling. It is unlike any other anime out there.

I also wanted to point out that around this month, I have been watching anime for 10 years now, obviously with high and low traffics. Starting with humble movies including Akira(1988) and Ninja Scroll(1993), and more or less then getting introduced through series via Full Metal Panic, it has always been stuck somehow in my mind on occassion.

The other medium I have yet to really start on is manga, and apart from a very random Yu-Gi-Oh! book, the only one I ever bought, I ought to give this a retry someday. Because some stories never get an anime adaptation, for starters.

Recent Developments

As 2015 is drawing to an end and after time seems to have fastened for this year, I wanted to take some time to reflect on my own recent developments and share these with whoever are intrigued by my personal life.

First off, I have been having different IT jobs, increasing my work experience in this branche and I have also been saving money, because I had the intention this year to move towards a home of my own. For various reasons, I had to switch work environments.

Because of these developments, moving out was not possible yet. I hope to see this happening in the upcoming months so that I can move on. It will definitely feel great once this finally starts happening where I will be able to determine my own future completely.

A true vacation, other than having experienced nice weekends in Germany and Switzerland, was not possible either. That's why it has been delayed towards next year, and it seems very likely that it will happen and become another very memorable trip.

Inbetween all this alongside my social life, my hobbies, my family and other time consumers, I have attempted to start learning Russian, because I find the language to sound interesting, and I dig their movies as well, such as Come and See(1985).

Although I can read and pronounce the Russian alphabet now, I still have a long way to go with this, and this experience has also been delayed from various factors. However I really enjoyed what I have taught myself so far, and some of the tools I have used include making Russian and Ukranian friends via Skype and Interpals, Russian apps, books and websites.

Last of all, and this is more of a future interest I have which could develop into a dream, I have been observing YouTube celebrities that follow and provide game industry topics, and it might just happen that once I have my own place to stay in, that Flok Factory will no longer be just a blog, but a channel, a stream and a website too. And perhaps not just about video games as well then.

Nothing is for certain, but I have been having thoughts about recording equipment, contents with themes and more for this project to happen, just to see if people are interested in my opinion at all, aside from the people I know personally.

Flok Factory simply is still a lonely blog which is pretty much only read by me. But I enjoy writing, and I wonder if I could take the next step and indeed start getting an audience next year which just might start following me around the internet, which would be interesting.

Let's see how the future will shape up.

Switzerland

Thinking that this year I wouldn't be going to a foreign country, me and my best friend decided to do the shortest trip I have done so far, which is that we went on a weekend through Switzerland's three largest cities.

We first landed at Geneva on friday morning in order to catch up with a public tour for visiting CERN; the largest particle physics laboratory in the world, where their biggest project the Large Hadron Collider impacts particles on each other for millions of times in order to do fundamental research on them.

To think that humanity has had the capacity, the co-operation and the know how in order to build up this nuclear research after World War II, it fills me up with hope for humanity's future among current worldwide issues such as terrorism, poverty, politics and economics.

After that fascinating experience where a legit physics professor explained to us many details about CERN and LHC, making our heads twist, we took the train to the capital Bern in order to meet a Swiss guy my friend already knew from the past.

Sightseeing Bern for a little bit, we went to another Swiss guy in order to eat raclette fondue with bacon and vegetables, which was nice. Alongside alcohol, we talked about all kinds of stuff until late in the night while visiting a local bar.

The next day, after exploring Bern some more and discovering the Einsteinhaus and Zytglogge, we went with the train towards Zürich, and from there we almost instantaneously went towards the small town Kloten. Because we both did not really want to do another citytrip, and because Zürich did not have much to offer for tourists other than museums.

The Swiss friend lives in Kloten, and we were able to couchsurf here, but not before we went to see two ice hockey matches elsewhere, because the Swiss happened to be a referee in his spare time, it was quite cool (pun intended) to experience ice hockey for the first time personally!

We ate some very good bratwurst, and then it was time to go sleep early, because our flight towards Amsterdam was happening in the morning already. Luckily the airport was 5 minutes away from public traffic.

This trip was most of all intended to visit CERN, but I enjoyed the company of the Swiss guys and doing some sightseeing here and there as well. It's just that Switzerland is so damn expensive, that it wouldn't be my first recommendation to visit, even for people from The Netherlands.