So, without the island, that is mainland Japan, I don't know what I'd be doing now, but I do know that it would be dreadfully boring and mundane. Or, I'd be in a nice white padded room swinging away with my "Sword of Truth..." (Terry Goodkind...great books)
From the start, video games and cartoons have played right into my wild imagination; the world's that I'd create when I was younger. The wonder my mind could conjure up, was limitless with its fantastical worlds, impossible odds, and ignorantly blissful outcomes.
Countless sheet-forts later, I emerged, a young man, with a more mature view of the world around me, and a more sophisticated approach to my escape from the world around me...they're called video games, perhaps you've heard of them. In reality, you could say I simply upgraded the play fort, in which I revel. The result, however, is the same, I still bite on a good story and the spectacular special effects that go with it, it is my weakness; it is the tune to which my imagination will dance, every time.
I am consoled within those sweet proverbial forts whenever there is time to allow for a good long stretch of the imagination. Whenever time allots for my mind to run through streets strewn with the dead, dying, and zombified, you'll find me laying waste to the infestation. Whenever a world cries out in need of saving, you'll find me, the un-sung hero, grabbing evil by its horns and beating it back into the hole from whence it came. Where there is a princess in need of rescuing and a kingdom in need of restoring, I'll be there, to traverse pipe and underground system, rain or shine - I'll be there.
Why? Because, if I don't do it, who will? Certainly not the coward, too afraid to enter the portal that would inevitably transport them into a foreign, unfamiliar land and expect the impossible of them.
Then there are the cartoons, how I wish I could draw and animate to that level of brilliance. Even the smallest amount of animation eludes my intellectual grasp. I am a writer at heart; I draw pictures with words, that is as close as I will ever get. But anime touched a nerve, again, that world in which I just can't seem to live. That world where the heroes are tainted with imperfections, and overcome odds of ungodly proportions, yet in the end, they meet the fate for which they were born. They are better for their pushing on when they had nothing left; it plays to a part of the imagination that is (at least I feel), at times, lacking within our American society's writing and literature.
The story of the underdog will always be with us and will always be an easy sell. It plays to the insecurity of humanity and at the same time, it appeals to that part of the imagination that is so beloved of writers. Interesting how it is usually the fundamental and underwritten story of the video game and anime hero. Yet, instead of being average, they are usually grossly underestimated and you can't wait for "your boy" to just wreak havoc upon the opposition for thinking them (you) weak. Why do you think RPGs, Action/adventure games, and even FPS, lately, offer the ability to custom name your character? Cause people know people. They know that deep down, you WANT to be that guy, you long to be the hero that flawlessly walks away and disappears into the mist only to be spoken of in legend. (Or, for some, you want to be that chick that is being fought so desperately for, or, you want to be the chick freaking OWNING EVERYONE...
)
Call it what you will, a defiance of reality or a lack of the ability to cope with reality, but I whole-heartedly believe there is something therapeutic about allowing for your mind to slip into something engaging and thought provoking. It lets you step into a world in desperate need of you or in desperate need of a hero, and either you or someone who holds to your ideals takes a stand and rights the wrongs. In other words, does what you'd so desperately love to do for our world.
Granted, there are some pretty mindless and sucky games out there, and there is some crappy as crappy can possibly get animes and cartoons. But the reasons they are slated as thus are because they fail at appealing to what the basic fundamentals of the human complex. (Or they just aren't funny at all...but that's a different topic...eh?)
I don't know, those are just my thoughts on the subject. It's how I think as a writer...it's also how I think as a reader and a gamer and a viewer. I crave the hook that plays on my imagination's desire to do the impossible. The part of my imagination that refused to die throughout the years of growing up and demanded my attention as it grew into a source from which I drew inspiration.
Peace and Mercy,
TR