Full Metal Alchemist

Saturday, 26 November 2005 T: 11 03

I have completed my first series of Anime – Full Metal Alchemist. It is a series which is very much unlike Naruto and Bleach. The latter two are fundamentally and simplistically revolving around the need for perseverance and the power of love and friendship. Full Metal Alchemist do include them, yet the award winning anime also very much focus on philosophy and perhaps ask the questions many are and will continue to search for.

I slept at 4 to complete the last several episodes of Full Metal last night, in order to feel that sense of completion. Yet upon finishing that last episode, that feeling of hollowness, of emptiness is still there. Maybe because it wasn’t a ‘happily ever ending’ after all.

I seem never to get tired of that cliché ‘happily ever after ending’. Maybe it’s just that sense of deprivation of such perfection in this world. I long for perfection, I seek for it, and I’ll never attain it in reality. Perhaps it’s always it’s such TV shows, be it those Chinese serials, movies or anime, with such endings that grant me the glimmer of hope that perfection can exist. This hope and wish is very much wrongly placed, false and baseless. Yet is it not this hope that often grants me that encouragement to go on, in pursuit of that almost impossible dreams and fantasies?

Will there be a ‘happily ever after’ in my life, in this world we termed real and tangible? Can my dreams be fulfilled? In my dreams they will be. Perhaps dreams are never meant to be, if not they won’t be called ‘dreams’ in the first place…

Like several other movies and shows, the ending of Full Metal cruelly and brutally pounds home that fact that what we seek will not be what we get. Putting in hard work may not at all have its results. The same love may provide unequal happiness in the lives of others. This is all limited by our abilities and our psychologies, somehow already pre-set right from the beginning. There will be no equivalent trade in this world after all.



p.s. watch it, it is an excellent anime.

a bugging question

Monday, 21 November 2005 T: 22 05

Having just watched a TV serial showing a guy beating another over a girl, I begin to feel curious about the norm and possible reaction of the girl in particular, especially that of a real incident. Will there be a feeling of honour, or just a complete ‘freak off’? I always find myself wondering what are truly in the minds of them when they learn that someone whom they are uninterested in are seriously infatuated with them? I believe that answers to these questions should lead to my better understanding and comprehension of the world.

the miraculous feat

Sunday, 6 November 2005

Today, science-fiction novels and movies always predicted work to be replaced by robots, robots that are capable of performing duties as commanded efficiently and without much rest. Even more amazing movies that I Robot or Stealth suggests machines capable of making decisions and think like a human mind. While these prove to be great and possible concepts of the future, some doubt that machines can every have emotions. It seem too impossible.

My answer to that will be why not, if actually one that is capable of making considered decisions is actually created. In a way, the human ability to reflect and think is what made us different from the other animals which we considered more lowly than us. And isn’t this ability to reflect and think based on our capability to feel, to respond to surroundings as well as be able to learn from past experiences. Thus, if a robot is able to consider choices, able to learn from mistakes, then will he not be prone to emotions as well, that is to love and to hate.

What rather amazes me is the wonder that the we are just made of atoms, and it’s the interaction of zillions of these particles which made up me. What amazes me is this ability to reflect based on basically chemical reactions in my mind. What marvels me is a survival instinct that animal and plant possess, and my question is do cells have, especially when some are simply created to die? If not, then isn’t it possibly curious to realise that while the smallest unit of life do not have this instinct, the gathering of thousands of such units feel the urge to survive…