The Sunshine Award 2015

Firstly, a big thank you to miharusshi (AnimeRaifu) for the nomination. It is a surprise to a total blogging beginner like me. Here’s miharu’s Sunshine post.

I’ve seen other nomination-based posts like Sunshine and they are always fun to read. So I hope I can at least entertain any readers that stumble across my newly started blog.

---

Now to the questions:

1. This may be weird to ask, but what do you love about blogging/writing? What I love about blogging the most is probably the opportunity it offers writers to express themselves. Their thoughts, the ideas, the creative contents, all of these can be shown to the world through blogs as a platform. I think that is very relevant in this age. To me, a blog is like a self-contained little peaceful world that can stand among the media empires, not getting swept away by the ever updating news feeds.

As for writing, I’ve always loved it, oddly enough, because I usually don’t take the initiative to start writing. But I still remember fondly the time sunk into writing English essays during the high school days. It felt satisfying to produce a written piece after hours of looking up words on the thesaurus, re-reading and editing, and letting the flowing ideas in mind to take over the writing hand. (Trying to improve on my writing at the moment; it feels immature when I read some of my writings *cringe*)

2. Name some bloggers/writers you look up to. Why do you look up to them?

My entry to the blogging universe is introduced by iblessall. At that time I was getting back into anime and it was where I spent most of my time on. Naturally, I ran out of anime to watch because I don’t know many. So in the process of looking for quality shows, I landed on the island that is mageinabarrel. The The Top 20 Anime List provided me with some excellent anime-watching experience. So to find out more about this amazing guy who, with a single blog post enhanced my enjoyment of anime, I started reading more of his blog contents and eventually followed him on twitter. I admire his writing, analysing skills (on visual arts and cinematography), and the ability to read between the lines (Monogatari posts come to my mind). He opened up the world of aniblog-ing (and anitwitter) for me. Bless him.

Author wise, Enid Blyton. A marvelous, legendary story writer that got me into English language (English isn’t my mother tongue). Her books are fun. I must have read House-at-the-Corner for like 5 times when I was young.

3. Have you ever owned a pet? Why or why not? Sadly, no, if you don’t include fishes. It was mainly because most pets like dogs and cats are furry, and for a health-related issue when I was a child, it wasn’t good. I would love to have a dog and a cat, or two for both, in the future.

4. Name an/some anime you thought was/were decent and tried to like or love but couldn’t.

This is a bit tough… I have a lot of shows that I didn’t finish, but I don’t necessarily dislike them. I think Medaka Box is one. It is an energetic show but I just don’t have the desire to watch it. Oh and this one could get me internet-slapped – Chihayafuru. I loved that show at the start, like, a lot. But I started watching it in lesser and lesser frequency and in the end I just put it to my backlog and did not return to it again. A shame, really. I do not know what went wrong there.

5. Briefly list some of your favorite movies and what you like and dislike about them.

Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) – Technically an animation, but I loved it since I was a kid. Horses and wind and freedom, what’s not to be loved?

Pacific Rim (2013) – Giant robots versus giant monsters. If you hate this you hate fun, I’m sorry. (The theme music is great. The rock cover of it by LittleVMills is even better.) What I disliked about it? Some plot-holes. But it’s giant robots versus Kaiju, it’s showing that you don’t need a great plot to enjoy yourself.

Gravity (2013) – This is an unique space-themed sci-fi thriller. It’s eerie. It’s tense. The atmosphere. The mood. The visuals. The depiction of fear. The acting. They are just brilliant. Plus the twist. You will know what I mean if you have watched it. If you have not, watch it. Highly recommended.

Others include Avatar (2009), Lilo & Stitch (2002) (first time I ever cried watching a movie), WALL-E (2008), Seven Pounds (2008), I Am Legend (2007), Night at the Museum (2006), etc.

6. Do you have other hobbies aside from consuming anime/manga/LN/VN–or basically aside from Japanese visual goods?

Taekwondo is something I love right now, something that I couldn’t do when I was young but finally able to do it. I’m big into video games. At the moment I mostly play XCOM, Starcraft, indie games, and a bit of MMORPG here and there. I’m deeply fascinated by video games lore; Starcraft and Warcraft stories are my favorites (thanks Blizz).

Music is a big part of me. I don’t play them but I love them really much. I can’t go out without my earphones and musics. Recently more into video game OSTs, like…. this one and… this one (vocal version). This one, too (you would not have guessed what the lyrics meant, with it as a combat music in mind).

Also, reading twitter. That counts… right? It must be.

7. Since it’s still the buzz these days, kindly share your honest thoughts about same-sex marriage.

I can accept them. As in, I have nothing against people marrying their love ones.

In terms of its social effects or whatever, I really don’t know much of it. I don’t read about the ‘for’ and ‘against’ and the arguments, nor the scientific aspect of it, if there’s one. So on this point I’m probably on the fence.

What I think is that, people should be allowed to be together with the ones they love. I think that is a very positive thing. So I’m good with that. It’s a happy thing, it’s a gay thing. (A-ha!)

---

---

There goes a close to a thousand words post. Hope you enjoyed the reading, at least a lil bit. =P

(I have no one to nominate because I don’t know many anitwitters/bloggers T.T)

Thanks for reading!