The way of a ninja - It's how they work it.

Naruto is a Japanese animation television series which came out in 1999 in Japan. It is a show which depicts Japanese values through ninja characters. It is a long running and popular show, pushing into somewhere around two hundred episodes. It is even very popular in America, where it has been showing on Cartoon Network. It is an action and adventure kind of show with comedy thrown in, where the ninjas go on missions and, in essence, try to protect their lives, their values, and the values of their villages.

The clip of Naruto which I chose to analyze is one where the titular character of Naruto and his team of ninjas, led by his sensei Kakashi, go on their first real mission to protect a bridge builder and protect him until he is done building his bridge. They end up fighting a dangerous criminal named Zabuza, who has a little protégé name Haku. Both are high level criminals who the team eventually ends up getting the upper hand on and, for the most part, beat them. Haku dies protecting Zabuza just a little bit before the clip starts. After that, the rich businessman, who was paying Zabuza to keep the bridge from being built in order to prevent free trade, shows up with an army of thugs to take care of Zabuza and Naruto’s team. Zabuza had just lost use of his arms from the fight, and so he asks Naruto for a Kunai, which he uses with his mouth. Zabuza ends up killing off the sleazy businessman and dying himself from being stabbed by the thugs. Zabuza then ends up dying, hallucinating up an image of Haku in his last few seconds.

I am going to look at this clip from two different perspectives. The first one is looking at it in terms of the cliché good and evil with an added heaven and hell aspect to it. Zabuza is, right before the clip, an evil sort of person, defending his evil boss, the rich businessman. Then he changes his to a good person when he realizes the error of his ways through the death of Haku. He stands with the good people, and rips off his bandages, which hid his true good character underneath. He uses the weapon of the good guys, the kunai and tears through a crowd of evil thugs to reach the most evil person, the rich businessman. Zabuza, bearing his evil nature, kills the businessman and thereafter, his repented soul is carried into death, the memory of Haku bringing him to repentance.

Another way of looking at this clip is as a battle between the classes. Zabuza, being a criminal with an unclean appearance and slang ridden speech, is a great example of someone who is lower class. The rich businessman is an example of someone of the higher class, who attempts to manipulate those lower than him. They are not quite at the lower class level in terms of how they live, but they are not of high class living. However, when Zabuza goes after the rich businessman and successfully kills him with relative ease, it perpetuates the stereotype that low class people are strong and dangerous, very capable and very willing to kill, while high class people tend to have little ability to fight and therefore hire other people to do their dirty work for them, hence the thugs. In relation to what Gramsci writes, according to the hegemony theory paper, the lower class in this clip is struggling against the upper class for his own reality. In this regard, the upper class person is depicted as a bad person trying to control and set limits in the lower person, with the lower class person being more of a hero type character, trying to fight for freedom.

Also present in this clip is the portrayal of power. It is almost clearly in the hands of Zabuza, despite his lower class. It is when he dies at the end that he relinquishes his power (because he dies). The rich businessman, who is supposed to have power through his riches, has some power through the thugs whom he controls, but it pales in comparison to someone who earned his power through hard work, a Japanese ideal. It is through this power in his hands that the Japanese ideal overpowers the power of upper class and is shown to be more important.

Oh Friend, You Simply Must Know about Sasuke

I interviewed my friend Matt for this assignment. He has seen a relatively small amount of anime overall, and, while he has seen a little bit of Naruto, he has only seen something like the first five episodes. In contrast, I have seen over a hundred episodes, but only enjoy the series a little bit. For those who do not know, Naruto is an anime about ninjas. It pertains mostly to ninjas fighting for the most part, but there is a lot of talking and story to it. It is all pretty interesting but tends to get dragged out sometimes. Anyway, onto commenting about the interview.

Matt is a self identified gamer, computer technician, overall technology savvy, and a college student. Apparently Matt’s journey into becoming a gamer started in second grade for him. A friend of his who lived down the street showed him their Super Nintendo Entertainment System. He loved it so much that he somehow convinced his father to get him one of his own and has pretty much played video games ever since. Strangely enough, I know that I have gotten people into video games pretty much the same way in which he was gotten into it. Matt got into being a computer technician because a few years ago he was going to replace his laptop, and he was unsure of how to do that. A friend of his recommended that he build his own laptop, and he embarked upon the task of building his own computer. Ever since then he has been maintaining his computer and really exploring the limits of it. Every so often he will mess up his computer really badly and then somehow figure out a way to fix the problem. Figuring out how to fix that problem usually gives him quite a thrill. His overall technology abilities mostly stem from how good he is with computers. However, his interests go further into other things like being able to hook up speakers, set the clock on a vcr, figure out just about any wiring system etc. It is a very neat part of him which actually makes him very good at fixing things.

As for him being a college student, he means that in the sense that a part of a community at a university in which is within close proximity to many people. Also involved is going to classes that are quite challenging to him, more so than he has experienced before and also really being in charge of how he lives his life. It is a more recent part of his culture that developed which he seems to enjoy quite a bit. When I asked Matt about what he would call the different chapters of his life, he did not quite seem to know how to answer this. He went into explaining the different phases of his life to me, and then gave two different labels to the chapters of his life. The first set of labels was pre-tenth grade, high school, and college. The second set of labels he gave were childhood, high school, and college. This interesting in that despite being eighteen years old, he describes his life in three phases, with the bulk of it being his childhood. I figured he could have come up with a couple more titles for his chapters, but he probably was thinking solely of the big picture and the biggest changes in his life that he can remember. Those changes mostly pertain to him coming out of his shell so to speak and making friends, with him becoming most open with the most friends in his college phase.

Then I started asking Matt about what he thought about people who watched anime. For the most part, he does not typically differentiate them from normal people because he figured normal people watched anime. When I made a distinction of hardcore anime watchers and people who just watch it casually, he then formed some opinions. He thought the hardcore anime watchers tended to be some pretty dorky and outgoing people. This answer kind of surprised me because I have always thought that the more hardcore anime watchers tended to be less outgoing and keep more to themselves. However, he sees it differently than I do. I think he may have formed this opinion based on people who go to anime conventions such as Otakon, which is a huge anime convention that takes place once a year at the Baltimore Convention Center. People dress up in costumes and are usually very out there with what they do. He has been to this convention once and seemed to have enjoyed it quite extensively. When asked what he thought of the anime community as a whole, he got a picture of a bunch of people who love anime meeting somewhere and doing what they love, which is watching anime. He might have envisioned this from what I have told him about the anime club on campus.

I then asked him what he thought about the Naruto series. It has been so long since he has seen it that he really does not remember much about it. He started watching it because a friend recommended it to him, but he cannot remember why he stopped watching it. He has agreed to watch a few episodes soon so that he can get a better idea about the series. He is unaware of the existence of ‘Narutards’, a term used for people that are really obsessed with the series, usually to the point of it being rather ridiculous. When I explained to him what they were, he could not help but sing his head low and pretend like they do not exist. Unbeknownst to him, they make up a good bit of the population that enjoys this series. People love ninjas, and they love things pertaining to them. Matt did make a comment that he knew that a lot of people though that the manga (Japanese comic) of this series was better than the anime, which goes an old argument very much like book versus movie arguments.

For the most part, the interview went very well. I plan on having him watch some more of the series so that he can understand why people rave about it so much. Sadly the series has a lot of slow parts, but they should not be too bad for what I will show him.

Interview, in a nutshell

I plan on interviewing one of my friends that I have known for a few years. He does not really have much experience in terms of watching anime like I do, but he is aware of the show I am doing for my topic. I am thinking of asking the following 5 questions:

1) How would you identify yourself in terms of your culture?

2) If you wrote an autobiography about yourself, what would the titles of the chapters be, and why would the titles be what they are?

3) What do you think of people who watch anime a lot, so called Otakus?

4) What do you think of anime in general?

5) What do you think of the people are big fans of Naruto?

Geppi's: a Glorious Endeavor

On Sunday afternoon Justine and I went to Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore next to Camden Yards. I walked into the museum and was immediately amazed by what I was seeing. I was surrounded by the images of my youth, objects of my envy. I immediately knew that this would be a great museum for me to enjoy, and I found myself to be right about that. I thought that the museum was a fantastic place. They had all of this memorabilia, all which looked quite rare and worth quite a bit, all on display for my viewing pleasure. I loved it. Seeing all of these collector’s items was a real treat for me. I really liked everything in the museum. I especially enjoyed seeing the comic book room, filled with an incredible amount of old comics of varying types. I could swear that I was wide-eyed the whole time I was in the room admiring the great collection before me. I do not remember a single thing I did dislike about the museum except for me not being able to go upstairs to see more awesome images. Within the museum, I did encounter an object which had great meaning to me, and that was the atari system enshrined within one of the displays. They had some of the worst and best games for the system right around it, but that is besides the point. I have spent many hours playing different games on just such a system, which I still have somewhere around my house(in a box in my closet). The atari represented one of the great starts to my culture, the culture of gaming.

At some points in the museum, I encountered some things that I do actually have or had at some point. One of those examples is the atari obviously. I am sure there were more, but I cannot remember what they were anymore. I also happened to encounter some items which seemed quite risqué. I believe just about all of the images which I saw of near half naked women, of which I remember quite a few but cannot remember exactly what they were, were controversial when they came out. However, within the museum, they definitely stood out as objects of interest that I will investigate more closely on my next visit. Sadly, both Justine and I had papers to write on the Sunday we went, so we could not get an in-depth look at the whole museum. We spent a scant two hours or so in the museum, and we could have really spent the whole day in there and gotten so much more out of it. We left, but I know that I will definitely go back on a day that is better for me. It was a fantastic tomb of popular culture over the 20th century that I simply must take a closer look at.

Ok, so I have a topic which I must deliberate on this semester. This topic is the Japanese animation show Naruto(that rhymed). It is a very popular series which of course originated in Japan, derived from the manga series of the same name. It has become one of the most popular anime series to date and has brought around great enthusiasm for ninjas in people.

In the series, the titular character Naruto is a trickster who wants to become a powerful full-fledged ninja, but no one quite believes in his abilities. He then discovers that he has the powerful nine tailed demon fox sealed inside of him, who brings great strength to Naruto. After getting his ninja headband, Naruto sets off to try and become the greatest ninja around.

That, in a small nutshell, is the premise for Naruto.

The First Post. Dramatic!

So hey, I'm Chris. I know that I am absolutely surrounded by culture. I know I have my laptop with the Heroes graphic novel open, I am watching the Simpsons, and am about to play a video game. All parts of culture. I am interested in pop culture because I, as most people do, participate in popular culture. I mostly play video games and follow the culture surrounding that. I anticipate enjoying expanding my knowledge of the culture and what goes into it.