Words Meme
nuitsongeur picked five words for me in which I must explain what they mean to me. To participate, comment this entry with "words" and I shall pick five words for you. The words she picked were: Yami/Thief Bakura, Ryou, College, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Japan. I like memes, in case you were wondering. So, onward and upward!
I'm going to do this in the most sense-making manner possible, so bear with me.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Way back in 6th grade, I somehow stumbled across Yu-Gi-Oh!. I can't remember how, exactly, but I did. I think it was seeing of the (geekier) guys in my grade playing the card game at lunch in the Library (where I tended to "hang out"), but one thing led to another and, soon enough, I was not only being taught how to play the card game by these same boys (and, yes, my deck was absolute fail. No strategy whatsoever), but I was watching the anime after-school every afternoon and on Saturday mornings. All of my siblings followed this, in a way. My younger brother became obsessed with the card game, my younger sister also started to play the card game, and my older sister... well, she actually didn't do much. Regardless, it became rather popular at my house, and for Christmas, we each got a tin of cards. I got a Summoned Skull pack, as I remember; my brother got a Dark Magician, and my younger sister got either a Blue Eyes White Dragon or a Red Eyes Black Dragon; I'm pretty sure it was a Red Eyes. I can't remember what my older sister got for the life of me.
Around that point, we were at the Mako Tsunami vs Joey episode of the Battle City Arc of the anime. I think. Or, no, maybe it was Strings vs Yugi/Yami. Anyway, my mom and dad were usually at work until pretty late at night, so we usually watched Yu-Gi-Oh! when they weren't around. Not because we thought it was "bad" because, if it had been, we wouldn't've asked for or gotten the cards for Christmas. It was just because they weren't there when it was on.
So, one day, I guess either my mom saw the show or the cards and decided that the show was "demonic". Evil. Too dark for an 11-year-old, a 10-year-old, and their 3-or-4-year old brother to be watching or playing. So the whole series was banned at our house, and we packed away (or threw away, I can't remember) the cards because, if Mom said it was evil, it must be.
I didn't think about Yu-Gi-Oh! much after that because, well, we moved that summer, and it was hardly popular anymore, now that I was in 7th grade. In high school, I'd babysit kids who had the cards sometimes, and smile because I remembered playing it, or my brother, now in elementary school, would comment on someone who played the games or liked the show, always adding the connotation that the kid was "bad" because, for the most part, those kids preferred Yu-Gi-Oh! over the much happier, kid-friendly Pokemon series. I saw no reason why the two couldn't coexist, since, even in 6th grade, I'd still loved Pokemon, but whatever. Again, Yu-Gi-Oh! had almost no meaning for me until the spring of my Junior year.
By this point, I was in community college, rather than high school, and I had an awful lot of free-time before classes every day. And I spent that time on the computer, and YouTube. My Sophomore year, I'd become re-infatuated with Invader Zim, and was watching AMVs of it, or parodies, and, after writing fanfiction in Sophomore year, I'd neglected my account. I ended up stumbling--yes, stumbling-- onto Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series, and loved it. Here was a series I remembered, and the jokes, while more mature, were hilarious and relevant. But then it occurred to me: I didn't get some of the jokes, because I had not seen the series in so long. What was I missing?
So I watched Season 0, the infamous Toei anime that aired exclusively in Japan. I read the manga online (to the best of my ability). I watched the rest of the Battle City arc, having missed it, and I watched it with subtitles, because that was the Japanese version, and I was studying Japanese quite seriously then. I watched part of Season 3 and the Millenium World arc of the anime, having been informed that most of Season 3 and all of Seasons 4 and 5 were complete trash. And, I got into the fandom. I began writing Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfics, under the penname of Paradocs, and attempted to make them better than the normal fare, something I honestly believe I have achieved to this day. I got my best friend, Caitlin, into the series as well, and together we became Bakurae fangirls....
Oh, wait. About that. That's one of my words, isn't it?
Yami or Thief Bakura: To be honest, I can't remember what I thought of Bakura when I first watched the series. I only knew of [Yami] Bakura back then, anyway, and I didn't know about Thief Bakura (whom I shall hereafter refer to as Touzoku) until my Junior year. When I got back into the fandom Junior year, I latched on to Bakura and Ryou [whom I shall discuss later] as my favourite characters. Later on (well, more recently), I added Touzoku to that list, since he was technically Bakura anyway.
Why, though? Why would I choose Bakura (and Touzoku) as two of my favourite characters, when, as I said, I could hardly remember my opinion of them from when I'd first seen the series?
I'm pretty sure that it's because I sympathize with Bakura and, in turn, with Touzoku. As a child, he watched as his entire village was slaughtered in order to make the Millenium Items (no, I don't call them the Sennen Items, thanks), and he was powerless to stop them. So he devoted his whole existence to revenge, and became a thief. He wanted to kill Atem [or the Pharaoh, whatever] in payment for his father's crimes (and I agree, genocide *is* a crime, no matter how you justify it), and he'd been told by Zorc Necrophaides that he had to steal the Millenium Items to do so. The conflict carried over several millenia, until it rested with Yugi and Ryou, essentially.
I couldn't find it in my heart to blame Bakura for all the horrible things he'd done to achieve his goal of vengeance. I was aware that Bakura was really nothing more than an avatar of Zorc, but still. He was Bakura, or Touzoku, and he had had his life ruined by the Egyptian crown. When he wanted revenge for that, his goal was corrupted by a creature who really just wanted to "destroy the world", as LittleKuriboh so humorously phrased it. Bakura and Touzoku were smart, with a sense of humour and a purpose in their lives. They made snide, sarcastic remarks, and were regarded as sadists by people. They reminded me, in a way, of the version of myself I tried to project to the world (well, except for maybe the sadist part), and, as I had realized as I'd grown up that there was no definite "good" or "evil"clarification for people, Bakura and Touzoku definitely fell into the grey area that I'd decided most people belonged in.
Also, they looked amazing. Couldn't deny that they looked more than a bit like a pair bad-asses to me.
Ryou: Ryou, on the other hand, I viewed slightly differently from Bakura or Touzoku. While I most certainly didn't view Ryou as evil, but as a definite grey-personality, he was a lighter grey than his counterparts. Ryou didn't get much screen-time in the series (a point LittleKuriboh brings up often enough in jest), but what little you saw of him cemented the idea that he was very kind, very lonely, and quite innocent in my mind. In the anime, he was willing to sacrifice himself in order to save the lives of Yugi and his friends, if that was what it took (in both Season 0 and Season 1). In the manga, during the Table Top RPG, Ryou went so far as to actually seal his soul in the dice Bakura was using and shatter them, effectively killing him; luckily, he had his in-game avatar and another portion of his soul, the Level 13 White Mage Ryou, to resurrect him.
It was Ryou's personality that attracted me to him. He was sweet-hearted, gentle, and, a vast majority of the time, he had no idea what was going on, courtesy of Bakura and because Yugi and his friends had this lovely tendency to not explain things to him. He was the eternal underdog of the series, capable of great things, but rarely allowed to do them on his own. Most of the time, he was being controlled by Bakura, either unwillingly or unknowingly, and was manipulated many times so that Bakura could fulfill his own goals. He transferred schools often because of what Bakura did in an attempt at granting one of Ryou's most heartfelt wishes, if in a perverse manner. His mother and sister were dead, and his father was constantly gone, travelling on business (ie archaeological digs). And yet, despite those setbacks, he was a good person. He showed no signs of being "evil" himself, as Bakura was, or how Malik [the "good" half of Marik/Malik/Mariku/Whateverthehellyoucallhim] became after years of physical abuse and restraint [and, possibly, crappy Disney movies]. He just carried on and, for that reason, he intrigued me. He reminded me a bit of myself, true, because he had a definite preference for the occult, and he tended to be quiet and antisocial, and found himself usually showing the world the half of him that was Bakura [or, for me, my outer persona], and I just kept asking himself what he was thinking.
Also, he looked amazing. He was cute, sweet, handsome, the definition of a bishounen, in my eyes.
Japan: Japan is something I can sum up a bit easier that the first three words. For starters, when I was in 2nd grade, before my little brother had been born, my parents took my sisters and I out for sushi, and I found that it was incredibly delicious, unlike what my classmates had told me. But, back then, I was more interested in Ancient Egypt, so that didn't mean much until quite a few years later (And, yes, I am quite certain that interest played into my interest in Yu-Gi-Oh!). I was introduced to anime through Pokemon, then Digimon, then Yu-Gi-Oh!, and, in 6th grade, manga. The manga, I think, is what did it for me. With my group of friends, we passed around volumes of Ranma 1/2, and, at one point, I even read InuYasha. This started my fascination with Japan, a country whose whole culture and history was so incredibly different from the American culture I'd been raised in. So, in 7th grade, I began to collect my own collection of anime and manga. I bought Magic Knight Rayearth, read the first series (the first three volumes), and loved it. I checked out whatever manga was in my school's library, read it, and loved it. This ended up transforming into my more-general love of comics eventually. When I started high school in 9th grade, I signed up for Japanese class, and took it. I loved the language, and I memorized it fairly quickly. My teacher, Williams-Sensei, frequently commented that, while I didn't always turn in my work, I did have a knack for the language. I learned to write my name in katakana that year, something we weren't supposed to learn until our second year.
Second year passed (and I read parts of Negima!, Ruroni Kenshin, and Fullmetal Alchemist), and I was excited because next year was the spring break trip to our sister school in Himeji Prefecture, Japan. You had to be in your third or fourth year to even qualify to go, and it was expensive, but I was sure I'd be able to go. I wanted to use Japanese after I graduated from high school at this point, and Williams-Sensei had pointed out a few potential jobs to me when she'd learned of my enormous interest. You had to go through a number of steps to be picked for the trip, but, hey, I'd probably get to be one of the twenty-or-so kids who went on the trip. Right?
Well, I'd also decided that I wanted to do Running Start my Junior and Senior years of high school, and, since that meant going to community college instead of high school, Williams-Sensei informed me that I would be automatically disqualified from the trip, even if I was studying Japanese at my "new school". This broke my little 15-year-old heart, and my mom and I looked into the possibility of being allowed to do both the trip and Running Start with the principal. The short answered remained a firm, if kind, no. I took the option that, potentially, would be more beneficial to me, and chose Running Start.
Junior year meant that I was in the latter two quarters of First-Year Japanese at Seattle Central, and, at the end of the year, I petitioned with my classmates to have Second-Year Japanese added to the list of classes we could take. We were told that the college lacked the funding for a class like that, and therefore denied. By now, I was firm in my desire to become a translator someday, and, when I saw my Great-Aunt Keiko (who is Japanese, and my aunt through marriage to my Great-Uncle Larry) that summer, we spoke with each other in a mixture of Japanese and English. I'd begun picking up on Japanese slang by now, so I had to work to keep my sentences intelligent and formal, since she was my elder, not another teenager. I started sending letters in Japanese to my Great-Uncle and Aunt, since both spoke and read Japanese fluently (Aunt Keiko is from Japan, actually), and I got a few volumes of a Pokemon manga in the original Japanese to work on translating, something I've yet to do.
Senior year was, well, a mess. I translated for ProjectYGO, and eventually left it due to a lack of fluency and conflicts with a fellow staff member. The second half of episode 2, by the way, is what I translated. You should love it. Totally.
I had no Japanese class that year, so I had to study it by myself. I stopped by a Japanese import/dollar store in Seattle on a regular basis, and began to acquaint myself with more difficult kanji, words, and more delicious snack foods than I'd known before. I bought myself a fairly-basic 2,000-character kanji dictionary. I got myself more manga, and in the past year, I'm happy to note that I've added Aoi House (the whole series), the first volumes of Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and Ouran High School Host Club, the Host Club Anime Fanbook, the first three volumes and fanbook of Lucky Star, and the second volume of Fullmetal Alchemist, to my collection. The latter five titles are in Japanese.
....ANYWAY.
To me, Japan is somewhere I'd like to be. One of my two majors here in college is Japanese (the other is Chinese), and I want to work as a professional translator someday, hopefully for an anime, manga, or video game company. I like Japan for its culture, its history, and what it gives to the world.
Okay, it's midnight now, and I have a schedule planned for tomorrow, since we're on break through Tuesday right now. I'll finish this with my last word, College, tomorrow. I also might be moving rooms to live with a friend down the hall tomorrow, so keep your fingers crossed on that front.