Final Capstone Blog Post

Posted on by

As you probably could guess from the title of this Blog Post, I finished my Capstone completely, slides and recording both done, but what I haven’t done is tell you about what happened to create my Capstone presentation and the recording session. Obviously, I had to make the script, which I disliked doing because I knew that I wasn’t even going to use it, so it was basically restraining how I practiced even though it probably wasn’t going to help me, or at least that’s what I thought but it helped a lot actually, the script was hard for me because, as I mentioned before I do not like restraining my speaking to the words I put into my script, even though I obviously wrote it because I had to.

Imagine I finished my script because this is me creating my Slides, my slides were much easier than my script because I had a lot of creative freedom at my hands, and as long as I make the picture or words match what I say, which was really easy because there are about thousands of pictures about anime on the internet, and it would obviously be very easy to find the correct pictures, right? NOPE, I was completely incorrect because I have to find pictures of good size, not blurry, and it had to be within the Creative Commons License, that was fun, I was not confident about me finding the pictures, and so much that I felt like I should just not use pictures and just use words only, I found the pictures.

Wow, I think I’m done with my presenta- NO now practice about six hundred thousand times then you’ll be done, is what my brain told me, surprisingly practicing was easy because all I had to do was say the things on my script, while changing slides, “See the script was helpful”, said the smart side of my brain to the lazy side of my brain, I finished practicing on the same day as the recording.

Finally, I started the recording, I was nervous as a normal person should be and started to regret saying “Anime” as my Capstone topic instead of something that was scientific, like maybe human behavior. I started recording and messed up on the second slide, then we recorded again and I messed up again, then we recorded again and I messed up again, then we recorded again and I actually didn’t fail this time. I was later informed that because it was mask break and we had mask break basically outside of the recording area, my class was watching me record.

 

Link to the Capstone

Capstone Essay Blog Post

Posted on by

I finished my Essay a long time ago, I was just too lazy to do the Blog Post back then so I’m doing it now, my Essay I could argue was the second hardest thing, this was because I’m bad at writing, and, I dislike writing, two minuses to doing a Capstone Essay, but I finished it, even if I  didn’t want to, I just had to stay up later than I should have, basically I stayed up till 12 but I finished my essay. But technically I didn’t finish it in time because it was already the next day when I finished it, whatever, here’s the essay.

 

Anime, When Did it Start, Why is it Relevant.

When I was given the choice to choose a topic for the Capstone project I chose anime.     My main inquiry question is “How has anime evolved and what role does it play in modern society? To answer this question I will be describing how anime has evolved including the main differences between new and old anime, and how anime both influences and follows trends in the world.

 

What is anime

First of all, what is anime? This is for everybody that doesn’t know what anime is, if you know what anime is, you can skip this. Anime is japanese animation, it’s a form of art, it’s a way to show emotions, and it’s a way to tell a story, take the anime “Violet Evergarden” for example, this tells a story about a girl who has lost somebody she cares for, she has also lost a hand and has a metal hand.

 

How Has Anime Evolved? A Brief History

The first anime that was proven to be from its time was made in 1917, called Namakura Gatana meaning Blunt Sword. This anime was about a samurai who bought a blunt sword as the name suggests. Back in those days, anime was made using cut-out pieces of paper and moving them. 

 

Then, in 1923, the Great Kanto Earthquake occurred. You would think, “How could an earthquake affect made-up characters moving on screens?” Well, to simplify it: Earthquake comes. Earthquake destroys anime records. We have no information on this time except for the obvious fact that this was a setback for the evolution of anime. By this point Disney had taken over the world. Why is this important? Because it gave Japanese animators a goal, to become better than Disney but this is also when most of the animators started using Cel Animation. This gave a massive boost to anime’s quality. 

 

In 1939, WWll started. Why does this matter? Because this is when propaganda started appearing in anime. These are usually racist and violent, so I suggest you DON’T watch them. I didn’t watch them and neither should you. 

 

In 1945 as you would not think propaganda is not absent of creativity, just because of what I said about the bad propaganda does not mean that everything that is propaganda is bad because Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors got released and despite it still being propaganda commissioned by the Navy (yes the Navy was telling animators to create anime) it was Japan’s first feature-length animated film so that was nice. 

 

After World War 2 there was a lull in anime production but in 1948 a new Studio appears “Japanese Animation Studio” under that name the studio didn’t create much but in 1956 they were bought by Toei Animations which you have probably heard of as the the creators of “One Piece” “DragonBall” and “Sailor Moon” this would kickstart anime to worldwide competition. 

 

In 1958, the first feature length anime with COLOR, Hakujaden, was released. This pushed anime a step closer to Disney and started the next era of anime in the 1960s.  This is when anime started to form its industry and started to air on TV and earned Japan more recognition in the animation world. 

 

In 1961 when they got their first animation aired on TV Otogi Manga Calendar it documented things in history using animation. In 1963 see Mushi Productions created Astro Boy. Astro Boy set the standard for shows in the 60s and many studios accepted the challenge, although it wasn’t as complex as shows that were to be created later you could see Astro Boy’s influence on anime in generations to come after it. 

 

In the 60’s there were three to four main studios that not only created new series, they also created new genres because before the 60’s anime hadn’t been really recognized as much as other kinds of animations there were many available ideas in this time because of how discrete it was, and these Studios used that as much as possible to create new things not seen before in anime. One of them was called Tetsujin 28-go, Tetsujin 28- go is an old Mecha series — otherwise known as robot anime — that helped with the Mecha boom in the 70’s and 80’s. Like Astro Boy you can clearly see how it influenced future anime. It was also successfully released a year later in America, renamed “Gigantor”. 

 

1965 saw the release of Kimba, Japan’s first colored anime tv show, also one of the most popular worldwide series of the time. People around the world found it easy to watch because of its resemblance to Disney’s style. 

 

1966 and another anime called Sally the Witch, the first anime in the “Magic Girl” anime genre. (Yes, that is a genre, don’t ask why, I don’t know why they can’t just be happy with “Magic”  Enough of my ranting.) The Genre “Magic Girl,” like the Mecha genre, blew up in the coming decades. This anime was also considered the first “Shojo/Shoujo” anime, which is an anime aimed towards young female teens. 

 

1966 Cyborg 009 would also start airing this year, a show that like not many of the others I’ve talked about so far but like Kimba, was popular worldwide, and continued to be successful for decades. 

 

As the end of the 60’s came Tezuka stepped down from his role to work on projects of his own (Mushi Productions went bankrupt in 1973 but came back in 1977) the decade closed with many shows like Tiger Mask and Dororo, this decade ended up being revolutionary and marked the start of anime tv series’s massive genres. 

 

The 70’s have come and have marked more important stages in anime’s evolution, 1970, you know it’s going to be a good decade when you start off with a very inspirational anime, Ashito No Joe, this is an anime about boxing which you probably didn’t guess. It gained mass popularity and inspired future sports anime. Lupin the Third helped boost the popularity of anime and helped the future success of Miyazaki. During this time a new challenger, Madhouse Studios, appeared. After Mushi Productions had disbanded some of the employees banded together to form Madhouse, Madhouse undoubtedly became one of the biggest studios in the industry, an equally important studio was founded the same year. This Studio went by the name “Sunrise.” Remember the Mecha boom I was talking about earlier? Sunrise was one of the main contributors to the Mecha boom.  An anime called Mazinger Z, was introduced showcasing many of the main core features of Mecha anime that we still see to this day, 

 

In 1974 something else influential dropped, no it wasn’t a genre it was Heidi, Girl of the Alps. Remember Hiyazaku? Well he’s back in action and Heidi, Girl of the Alps is what got him back into the anime industry, and to nobody’s surprise it was successful despite being different from the normal anime of the time. It was successful not only in Japan mind you, everywhere, in the same year the highly successful Space Battleship Yamato aired which was yet another worldwide successful anime. It got many dubs, some including an English Dub and a Greek Dub. You might be wondering why this was important, you would think of a new genre right? Wrong, it was important because it started to push anime into the ways of more solid story lines. This would also make Space Operas more prominent after this series. This is also when anime started to become Serious! Candy Candy in 1976 which is a Shoujo anime which took advantage of merchandise to sell more copies of the show. My favorite type of anime is back here a Space Opera, this one named Space Captain Harlock.  Do I even have to say it’s popular around the world? At this point it would be more useful to tell you about the ones not popular around the world. Almost the end of the decade and the start of the next. 1

 

1979 Mobile Suit Gundam was released, it is very influential in many ways. These ways are just not the most obvious ways, when it first started it was so unpopular it’s sponsors cut off the show by 20 episodes (meaning that it should have 20 more episodes but the sponsors just didn’t let it continue, it only became popular after it aired, not through the anime as you would expect, but through its toys. After that the show exploded, and reruns of the show gained massive popularity, much like Yamato it changed how anime was made, and the start of a new sub genre, the “Real Robot” sub genre. As the name suggests, the genre is basically a realistic twist to the robot genre. 

 

Galaxy Express came out the same year, had a controversial impact overseas after the Japanese release the film release was released in America, but they didn’t just release it in America, oh no no no they had to cut out THIRTY MINUTES of the anime and changed the NAMES of various characters. This obviously made many fans angry as they thought this was the wrong way to watch it.  Do you still remember Miyazaki? This was just his directorial debut. 

 

Some can argue that 1980 was one of the most influential decades of anime history, and I would agree with them. This is getting too long so I’m taking out some less important stuff from here on out. 1983. Anybody here who knows who GI Joe is? Raise your hand if you know who he is. Let me give you a fun fact. He was animated by Japanese animators, and so were Transformers (back when they were just a cartoon). You have probably heard of “My Neighbour Totoro” and you’ll probably not be surprised to know that Studio Ghibli, created by Miyazaki, had made it, and that Studio Ghibli was created in 1985. And that is the end of this section more will be added but this is all that is needed so far.

 

The Difference Between Old Anime and New Anime

One very big difference is the way characters are drawn,and you know that it’s a big difference when there are literal MEMES about it, but I won’t be showing you those memes because I’m too lazy to find them but I can show you different drawing styles from an anime you probably heard about… Pokemon. Just look up “Pokemon Ash Designs” and you’ll see how they have changed over time but enough of me ranting about how they look different time to get to the next point, there is MUCH less fan-service, I mean this is pretty obvious how much fan-service are they going to be able to put into propaganda animations me personally would never think that there would be fan-service in propaganda, and I would be correct, 

 

If you look at an anime now or think of an idea for an anime and you want to create one from a dream you had or some really brilliant idea, the idea was probably already made, but not with the old ones, those are mostly original why? Isn’t it obvious, anime back in the day wasn’t popular as I mentioned before if you were paying attention so not many people would be making it, just some people and some animation studios so most of the content was original, not made before and back then if you made an anime that was so original, you might even start a popular genre like Mobile Suit Gundam did. 

 

Another difference is that now we can do something called CGI, and this is the part where I force myself to study CGI, as you probably know CGI is also named Computer Generated Imagery, this can be either 3d or 2d animation, objects or renderings in a film, television program, video game or simulation. Back in the day they didn’t use CGI instead they drew everything, we still do but it’s easier now because we can just recreate the drawing as a CGI and insert it into our anime.

 

How Does Anime Affect the World

Anime affects the world as one of the best ways to tell a story in an animated way. this means that this is a way to let the creator take his imagination and make a story about it, and it might not even be an imagination, it could be what happened to them but put more in a fantasy-like perspective. Anime also affects the person watching it. Your personality might change depending on what kind of anime you watch. Like if you were to watch a violent anime, like maybe Hunter × Hunter (really good anime, I recommend it) you would become more violent, but you could also become more like Gon, stubborn and doing things his way, or like Kurapika, vengeful but nice to his friends. It depends on what you like in the anime or who you look up to in the anime. Anime can also help cope with things that somebody is dealing with in real life, for example the anime Violet Evergarden. Violet Evergarden, the main character, went to war with his Major, Gilbert who she respected very much because he was the first person to treat her like she was a normal human, but in the war Gilbert died. This is something a lot of people can relate with because of the loss of somebody that they care for. 

 

Anime can follow trends like when anime started it was in the middle of a war (world war I), so most of the anime in that time were propaganda films to discredit the other side of the war. It still happens today. Superheroes are still popular today like Batman and Superman so, Kohei Hirikoshi made an anime about superheroes called “My Hero Academia” which happens to be one of the most popular anime, it starts with a boy who is powerless but gains power, so kind of like Spiderman. And back when Disney started to get popular, anime were more childish and like cartoons, inspired by Disney’s animation style.

 

Conclusion

I hope next time you watch an anime you wonder about what happened from 1917 to 1968. There were actually very interesting things happening during that time. I hope you read this knowing what anime is, if you didn’t I suggest you find out then read this presentation again. It will make much more sense. But still the things I talked about aren’t really things you would know unless you were trying to find them out, because it’s not like anybody would analyze Katsudo Sashino’s 50 frames around 16 times just trying to find something cool in them. That was a joke. I didn’t really do that.

Capstone Interview Blog Post

Posted on by

I finished my interview 6 days ago and I didn’t start the blog back then but I started now so I will tell you the process of doing the interview, which was much easier than I expected it to be, I expected myself to be the only person without an interview.

May 6, 2021
First, you have to find somebody to interview, which is debatably the hardest part, at least that’s what I thought because I really did not have any faith in myself to find someone to, interview somebody, about anime, but we found somebody, multiple people actually. I found somebody called Susan Napier, who is an anime professor at Tufts University, and some others. I hope somebody responds.

May 7, 2021
I didn’t expect anybody to respond because, as I said I was asking to interview somebody about anime, but the next day somebody responded, they said yes, and who was it? It was Susan Napier the only one I remember the name of she said that she was honored to help but she had to do it the next day,, so without ANY questions for the interview yet, I Started making questions, at least trying to, the limit I would make was at least 10 and at most 15. It was successful I think I got 13 of them, shoutout to the Teacher Aid who helped me, Ms. Clemente. I was feeling pretty good with the questions that I had, and I refused to look them over because I can sometimes be really stubborn and this was one of those times. I knew that some of them didn’t make sense, I knew that because the one it was, didn’t make sense to me either, I was too lazy to change it, I just thought that I would reword it later when I was doing the interview.

May 8, 2021 [Drumroll.wav]
Finally, the fated day came, this meant at 2:00 I started my interview with Susan Napier the anime professor. In the beginning, I was nervous (“you don’t look like the nervous type.” FOR ALL YOU KNOW I’M A GIRAFFE) so I just ignored my nervousness and asked a few questions, after the first 3 questions I felt better about asking my questions. When I looked at the questions that I made, they still didn’t make sense t me and I was too lazy to change it so what I did is I just didn’t ask it, at the end of the interview when I asked all my questions, I was forced to do a question, Ms. Clemente thought of. (fun fact: I’m pretty sure today or yesterday somebody else replied I forgot her name but I’m pretty sure she’s also an anime professor, she told my teacher to email her the questions, I don’t know if my teacher sent the questions yet though, but if she did either she forgot to tell me the answers or the professor forgot to reply.)

This is where you go do something productive and stop reading this.

Questions for the interview

Random Things :D

Posted on by

I want to be an anthropologist when I grow up, why? It all started when I found my favorite video game character, Korekiyo Shinguji, and he is the ULTIMATE anthropologist, and I thought “What is an anthropologist and what does he do??????” and then google told me, an anthropologist studies human behavior and culture, and I was like “wow that’s really cool, I wanna be an anthropologist.”

Danganronpa V3 - Korekiyo Shinguji Free Time Events - YouTube

Capstone Main Inquiry and Sub Questions

Posted on by

I have just finished my Main Inquiry Question and Sub Questions for my Capstone, I am very satisfied with everything that I got, especilly because this topic is something I very much enjoy, Anime. If you wanted to know what they are I will link the questions below, but now I think it is the research phase, I have a feeling this will be the hardest but most fun part of the capstone because we will get to learn about new things we never knew about before, but I think it will be hard determining what information is useful because there can be lots of useful information that look like you need them but after a while they don’t work at all and you have to do even MORE research to find something that works. Research is usually the one I find the most fun so I’m very excited about that, but after research is my least favorite part actually making the presentation understandable and interesting for everyone because if only you enjoy it there was no point in creating the presentation but if lots of people enjoy it you feel even better after Capstone.

Link

My Imigant Interview Project

Posted on by

The person I chose was my mother, and I chose this because she can be with me basically all the time so I don’t have to do a zoom call for it, also because my mom is very nice and will probably be more open about her questions and let me have her photos. I thought my questions weren’t too good because they all were very simple so I didn’t like the questions but my mom liked them.

Finished Constitution project

Posted on by

I have finished my constitution project, very proud of what I have accomplished with this infographic. If you want to see the finished product, I’ll put it under the text. If you want you can skip over this boring text and see the project, go down and look at it. I liked studying for this project a lot because this topic interests me a lot, as I have mentioned before. Big shout out to Max because if he didn’t bring it to my attention that LGBTQ+ rights count in social rights, I wouldn’t be doing this project and, my project would be very different from what it is right now.

Research Phase of my Constitution Project

Posted on by

the most helpful site has been Wikipedia because I can look through more than just the LGBT+ rights section I can look through everything about LGBT+ so that helps me a lot, when I found the other sites they looked useful from what I read at the beginning but near the end they got less useful so I might switch them out of their position and replace them, i’ll keep the research I got from them but i’m taking them off my resource list. maybe they can be bonus resources?

My Constitution Project and why I chose it

Posted on by

My constitution topic is Civil rights and my subtopic is LGBTQ+ rights and my question is “What are the rights of LGBTQ+ students?” This wasn’t my first question but actually a question suggested by my teacher  my original one was “Have LGBTQ+ rights changed how we live our lives?”. I chose the subtopic because I think LGBTQ+ is a really interesting to study and when I found out LGBTQ+ counted as part pf the civil rights category I immediately chose to do something with LGBTQ+.

Best and Worst of 2020

Posted on by

2020 has been a weird year, horrible year, an annoying year, a wonderful year mostly weird because we’ve learned a lot of stuff from 2020 but we still strongly dislike it, even though it taught us a lot of life skills like, if your sick WEAR A MASK, and other stuff like that. but hey it’s all over soon the dream of 2020 is gone on the new year, and also Christmas is here YAYYY don’t hold a party. Hey but still good things happened like me not able to decide which summer camp I want to go to next year Wigwam OR Woodcraft, yeah this is a hard decision, also more good news the world might not burn to death because we got a new better president his name is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. or, Joe Biden, Trump completely ignores global warming but better president AKA Joe Biden says he will try to get rid of global warming so we might not go out in ashes if we do good enough to not die YAY WE STILL COULD DIE FRO GLOBAL WARMING THOUGH. ill have a status report of 2021 by around this time next year ->- bye.