Until recently I didn’t have too much to say about my school life, it was uneventful to me at least. I’m certain that it had something about the fact that I could not relate on a personal level. I did not find it impossible to connect to the rising prices of student fees, that may or may not happen in the next ten years, nor could I resolve myself to feel about the inequalities happening in Gaza, after all, I didn’t know anyone directly involved.
I found myself concerned over an extremely trivial issue, not on campus, but on the web. I was browsing through the Wowhead forums and IRC when a moderator contacted me about an anime that was causing a uproar by the Korean Netizens. While I was usually apathetic, being both a Korean by birth and heritage, and a lover of anime and manga, I inquired upon this anime. The anime is called Hetalia, The Axis Powers; apparently combining Japanese characters for “useless” and “Italy” and referring to the events of WWII in a satire. Korean Netizens felt that the manga portrayed Korea as a dunce and overall insulted Korea, and the Netizens petitioned to have the anime cancelled and removed. Then I recalled that in UTM Anime Club, we were going to be showing the said anime.
Upon realizing this, I immediately took to the UTM Anime Club forums, to see if any posts have been made regarding this anime, and to both my disappointment and excitement, I found none and I created one copying and pasting the chat I had with the Wowhead IRC. I took into consideration that the Koreans overreacted, and that Anime fans were generally dismayed by the cancellation of the series on a private network in Japan, so I weighed my options and decided to take a neutral approach to the situation, to take a position where I can tell the world about how unfair Japan’s advertisement of Korean stereotypes and at the same time, not hate the anime for political and historical reasons.
The first to respond and the person that I first discussed this issue in-depth was… Let’s call him BB. BB took the information, said that he could understand why people would be upset but countered that with the fact that he couldn’t be bothered to care about the issue on a personal level. He wanted his anime. I came to the student center on Thursday waiting for a call from the Student Union for a budget proposal discussion, when suddenly, I saw BB sitting by the couches beside the Druken Duck, and so I approached him to touch upon the issue.
“Reading the wall of text I wrote I see.” I said as my eyes crept onto the words on his laptop.
“Oh hey, yea I was just going through what you’ve wrote.” He replied cheerfully. After talking to BB for about twenty minutes, we came to a mutual understanding, that the WWII issue was serious and as Japan never apologized for their actions, they should not parody it, and Korea, should lighten up a little bit. This encounter gave me a boost of confident to take into the next anime meeting, to talk about it in the open and why I felt that viewing the anime shouldn’t be taken lightly. We then proceeded to talk for another forty or so minute about nothing before I decided to call it a day.
I came home and into the forums with a few more replies, something about freedom of speech and to take the entire thing as a satire, so I did a bit more research and I took upon myself to leave a general reply on the thread.
Friday, Anime Night, rolled on pretty quickly. I came to watch the usual animes, I was a bit late running into the presentation room, but I didn’t miss anything. As I walked in the door, the club president offered me a strawberry flavored pocky, a biscuit stick covered in sweet coating of cream or chocolate, I reached out for a buck or two of change before I realized that she was offering a snack for the sake of it, not to sell it.
“Oh, I thought you were going to sell them to me, I was reaching into my pockets.” I said with a smile and a snicker.
“Nope, although you could still buy one.” She smiled back and pointed at the various boxes of pocky littered on the table. The proceedings went on as usual, watching through our animes, intermission, pizza, snacks, sales and raffles, of which I’ve won another poster for my sister. Then Hetalia, the five minute controversy, was shown. The anime itself was rather well done and funny, however, I felt that the issue I had in mind should be brought up, and so I asked the president for permission and took the stage.
“My grandfather lost his home to WWII and he hasn’t been able to go back to his homeland in sixty-seventy years, how is that fair?” I started off, not quite the way I wanted it to start, but a start nevertheless. The details became a bit hazy from that point, I talked about how WWII was a serious event and should not be parodied, and I seemed to have talked on my side for about a minute or so before the execs who were buttsore about anime loosing its statues came up and started questioning.
“Why is Korea so self-centered, it parodies other animes as well, what makes Korea so special?” One of the executives asked.
“Aren’t you being self-centered by wanting an anime that offends other people as well?” I asked, thinking back, I think my grammar could have been suffering a bit from my temper.
And again, I fell into a haze. I stared around the room, most of the people were quiet, except for the two execs almost yelling at each other at the center of the room, one of them talked to me, and I talked back, and then I heard the exec screaming at me: “If you don’t like the anime, don’t watch it!” She then proceeded to literally run towards the podium to continue with the evening anime.
The president then called off the debate, saying that it was a bit too much for the schedule. I was infuriated to say the least. “She cut off my words and she yelled at me, is that something an exec should do?” I asked the president in a corner of the room.
“No, that was uncalled for.” She replied.
“I demand that the anime be put off until she explains herself to me.” I demanded, but my demands weren’t getting me anywhere, nor was it earning me any points. “Could you at least tell her not to yell at me when we talk?” I pleaded.
“If you want, you can go talk to her, but I will not get between you two.” She explained herself.
Following her instructions, I walked to the table where the exec was sitting, and I asked her; “Can we talk outside a bit?”
“No.” She said with a straight face, and to be honest she driving me insane, to the point where I contemplated if I should report the entire club for discrimination, I knew that even if I could not take them down, I could murk the Student Union with yet another headache.
But then the exec beside her explained “She’s a bit busy, can we talk here?” to which I agreed.
“I felt that you shouldn’t have yelled at me and you shouldn’t have cut me off like that.” I said, a bit angry and a bit sad.
“I yelled because you weren’t getting my point.” She maintained a straight face, how so, I could not imagine.
“That the Koreans shouldn’t be the only country to get mad?” I questioned her and her sanity, and who in the right mind decides if others should be angry or not.
“No, that Korea shouldn’t have cancelled the anime. They don’t have a right to decide what other countries produce, look at china, they block everything that happens inside their country.” Things made a lot more sense after that point, but at the same time, I knew I had to give up, after all, I could not force her to change her mind on how to approach the issue, and methodically speaking, her way made more sense.
On my Expressive Writing professor’s recommendation, where he realized if he was influencing me or not, I had purchased a netbook, and for a couple days, I was busy configuring the settings to my personal preference, trying to boot up Ubuntu really. I took this as an excuse to avoid the Anime Club forums for a while, and for a while I stayed away. The issue arose in my thoughts now and then, and I finally built up the courage to take a peek at the forums, and to my dismay, an exec posted a link to a counter-petition to the anime, threatening to delete any potential troubles.
This irritated me, and I messaged the president, but I took the liberty to read through the other posts and my original topic, and to my surprise, found that the exec who yelled at me was not aware of all the issues I was talking about.
Then everything came crashing down on me, I felt relieved that the exec didn’t know everything, because she admitted to wanting to watch the anime, but being able to concern herself with why the Koreans are upset. The PM from the president came back, telling me that the exec was in the wrong for posting the petition there and will talk to her about having it removed to my section, where I could freely counteract.
Then I realized, hey, maybe the execs have enough humanity in them, which, ironically, I am an exec of another club, so in that thought, I mocked myself. I realized that people can’t get over emotional things quickly, that things dear to them will hurt, even if you know the others are telling the truth.
Maybe, just maybe, I could become a bit more human too.
Until recently I didn’t have too much to say about my school life, it was uneventful to me at least. I’m certain that it had something about the fact that I could not relate on a personal level. I did not find it impossible to connect to the rising prices of student fees, that may or may not happen in the next ten years, nor could I resolve myself to feel about the inequalities happening in Gaza, after all, I didn’t know anyone directly involved.
I found myself concerned over an extremely trivial issue, not on campus, but on the web. I was browsing through the Wowhead forums and IRC when a moderator contacted me about an anime that was causing a uproar by the Korean Netizens. While I was usually apathetic, being both a Korean by birth and heritage, and a lover of anime and manga, I inquired upon this anime. The anime is called Hetalia, The Axis Powers; apparently combining Japanese characters for “useless” and “Italy” and referring to the events of WWII in a satire. Korean Netizens felt that the manga portrayed Korea as a dunce and overall insulted Korea, and the Netizens petitioned to have the anime cancelled and removed. Then I recalled that in UTM Anime Club, we were going to be showing the said anime.
Upon realizing this, I immediately took to the UTM Anime Club forums, to see if any posts have been made regarding this anime, and to both my disappointment and excitement, I found none and I created one copying and pasting the chat I had with the Wowhead IRC. I took into consideration that the Koreans overreacted, and that Anime fans were generally dismayed by the cancellation of the series on a private network in Japan, so I weighed my options and decided to take a neutral approach to the situation, to take a position where I can tell the world about how unfair Japan’s advertisement of Korean stereotypes and at the same time, not hate the anime for political and historical reasons.
The first to respond and the person that I first discussed this issue in-depth was… Let’s call him BB. BB took the information, said that he could understand why people would be upset but countered that with the fact that he couldn’t be bothered to care about the issue on a personal level. He wanted his anime. I came to the student center on Thursday waiting for a call from the Student Union for a budget proposal discussion, when suddenly, I saw BB sitting by the couches beside the Druken Duck, and so I approached him to touch upon the issue.
“Reading the wall of text I wrote I see.” I said as my eyes crept onto the words on his laptop.
“Oh hey, yea I was just going through what you’ve wrote.” He replied cheerfully. After talking to BB for about twenty minutes, we came to a mutual understanding, that the WWII issue was serious and as Japan never apologized for their actions, they should not parody it, and Korea, should lighten up a little bit. This encounter gave me a boost of confident to take into the next anime meeting, to talk about it in the open and why I felt that viewing the anime shouldn’t be taken lightly. We then proceeded to talk for another forty or so minute about nothing before I decided to call it a day.
I came home and into the forums with a few more replies, something about freedom of speech and to take the entire thing as a satire, so I did a bit more research and I took upon myself to leave a general reply on the thread.
Friday, Anime Night, rolled on pretty quickly. I came to watch the usual animes, I was a bit late running into the presentation room, but I didn’t miss anything. As I walked in the door, the club president offered me a strawberry flavored pocky, a biscuit stick covered in sweet coating of cream or chocolate, I reached out for a buck or two of change before I realized that she was offering a snack for the sake of it, not to sell it.
“Oh, I thought you were going to sell them to me, I was reaching into my pockets.” I said with a smile and a snicker.
“Nope, although you could still buy one.” She smiled back and pointed at the various boxes of pocky littered on the table. The proceedings went on as usual, watching through our animes, intermission, pizza, snacks, sales and raffles, of which I’ve won another poster for my sister. Then Hetalia, the five minute controversy, was shown. The anime itself was rather well done and funny, however, I felt that the issue I had in mind should be brought up, and so I asked the president for permission and took the stage.
“My grandfather lost his home to WWII and he hasn’t been able to go back to his homeland in sixty-seventy years, how is that fair?” I started off, not quite the way I wanted it to start, but a start nevertheless. The details became a bit hazy from that point, I talked about how WWII was a serious event and should not be parodied, and I seemed to have talked on my side for about a minute or so before the execs who were buttsore about anime loosing its statues came up and started questioning.
“Why is Korea so self-centered, it parodies other animes as well, what makes Korea so special?” One of the executives asked.
“Aren’t you being self-centered by wanting an anime that offends other people as well?” I asked, thinking back, I think my grammar could have been suffering a bit from my temper.
And again, I fell into a haze. I stared around the room, most of the people were quiet, except for the two execs almost yelling at each other at the center of the room, one of them talked to me, and I talked back, and then I heard the exec screaming at me: “If you don’t like the anime, don’t watch it!” She then proceeded to literally run towards the podium to continue with the evening anime.
The president then called off the debate, saying that it was a bit too much for the schedule. I was infuriated to say the least. “She cut off my words and she yelled at me, is that something an exec should do?” I asked the president in a corner of the room.
“No, that was uncalled for.” She replied.
“I demand that the anime be put off until she explains herself to me.” I demanded, but my demands weren’t getting me anywhere, nor was it earning me any points. “Could you at least tell her not to yell at me when we talk?” I pleaded.
“If you want, you can go talk to her, but I will not get between you two.” She explained herself.
Following her instructions, I walked to the table where the exec was sitting, and I asked her; “Can we talk outside a bit?”
“No.” She said with a straight face, and to be honest she driving me insane, to the point where I contemplated if I should report the entire club for discrimination, I knew that even if I could not take them down, I could murk the Student Union with yet another headache.
But then the exec beside her explained “She’s a bit busy, can we talk here?” to which I agreed.
“I felt that you shouldn’t have yelled at me and you shouldn’t have cut me off like that.” I said, a bit angry and a bit sad.
“I yelled because you weren’t getting my point.” She maintained a straight face, how so, I could not imagine.
“That the Koreans shouldn’t be the only country to get mad?” I questioned her and her sanity, and who in the right mind decides if others should be angry or not.
“No, that Korea shouldn’t have cancelled the anime. They don’t have a right to decide what other countries produce, look at china, they block everything that happens inside their country.” Things made a lot more sense after that point, but at the same time, I knew I had to give up, after all, I could not force her to change her mind on how to approach the issue, and methodically speaking, her way made more sense.
On my Expressive Writing professor’s recommendation, where he realized if he was influencing me or not, I had purchased a netbook, and for a couple days, I was busy configuring the settings to my personal preference, trying to boot up Ubuntu really. I took this as an excuse to avoid the Anime Club forums for a while, and for a while I stayed away. The issue arose in my thoughts now and then, and I finally built up the courage to take a peek at the forums, and to my dismay, an exec posted a link to a counter-petition to the anime, threatening to delete any potential troubles.
This irritated me, and I messaged the president, but I took the liberty to read through the other posts and my original topic, and to my surprise, found that the exec who yelled at me was not aware of all the issues I was talking about.
Then everything came crashing down on me, I felt relieved that the exec didn’t know everything, because she admitted to wanting to watch the anime, but being able to concern herself with why the Koreans are upset. The PM from the president came back, telling me that the exec was in the wrong for posting the petition there and will talk to her about having it removed to my section, where I could freely counteract.
Then I realized, hey, maybe the execs have enough humanity in them, which, ironically, I am an exec of another club, so in that thought, I mocked myself. I realized that people can’t get over emotional things quickly, that things dear to them will hurt, even if you know the others are telling the truth.
Maybe, just maybe, I could become a bit more human too.