Blog#6:Men in Black 3

   Written by So.

   10 years since their last adventure, Agent J and Agent K are back. Again, it is the danger of the planet Earth, but this time Agent J has to go back in the past and save his partner's life too. Agent J partners with the younger Agent K to stop an evil alien from destroying the past and the future.

  As I wrote above, it has been quite a while since I saw the last series, and this was the first time I saw it on screen. First of all, I want to say that the aliens are pretty grotesque, so be careful. Seeing them on a giant screen could get on your nerves. But of course, people get used to it.

  When talking about the MIB, people imagine the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones  tag. But in this film, Agent J moves along mostly with the younger version of K acted by Josh Brolin. I thought that this was quite an adventure for the series, but when I actually saw it, my bothers were gone. Josh Brolin made an awesome image of the young version of K-not just the looks, but the atmosphere too. People who were looking forward to Tommy Lee Jones' acting may feel unsatisfied, but I myself forgot that the K I was watching was a different person.

   This is totally my opinion, but I think the comedy is a pretty much important thing in the MIB series. In that point, I wasn't satisfied enough. Maybe since K's life was in danger, J was more serious about the case, which chose the tension of the whole story. But, the plot itself was good, and the ending was somewhat touching(I was caught off guard). The 3 is a turning point in a series-in a good meaning or a bad one. I don't know what the staff is thinking about the MIB, but since the silence was once broken, it is a little shame if this was the ending.

     The trailer. Is it still playing on screen?

 

Blog#6:A rapid society

 Today, all the Japanese is always hurried by something what. Everyday, we are doing something neatly. It is good to do that certainly. But now, people are too be strict about time to be calm. They are irritated when trains are delayed, meeting has been moving not in time, and etc. These facts causes people to get annoyed. Because of them, there are some bad news.
Look at this article. Not only young people like this boy but also adults have been involved  happenings, like this.
  Don't you think they are a little bit strange or childish? I want to drop away these sad happenings forever.
  I started to think the reason why people get annoyed or irritated, but I managed to find only one answer. It is because we get irritated that we are controlled regularly by time and time is managed by clock. It is important to counts time correctly, but if we are becoming the slave of time, the situation will be bad. I think this present society is becoming the slave of time. Many people are worried about time, or speed. From now on, this situation will be continued. But I hope someday will come that everybody don't have to worry about time.

Written by Natsumi

Blog #6: Japanese Liberal Democratic Party Begins Real Gundam Project

by Midday

Yup, you read that right. I don't mean the life-size Gundam standing in Odaiba; I mean an actual operational bipedal mobile suit military unit.

For those of you who don't know Gundam, you can start by reading the wiki. The Gundam series is the epitomy of mecha anime, a franchise that was started by the animation company Sunrise back in 1979. The franchise was well-received due to the plastic model sales instigated by Bandai Entertainment, and is currently still on-going with the newest TV series Gundam AGE, an HD remaster of Gundam SEED, and the newest movie series Gundam Unicorn.

The development of a real Gundam is known to have been under consideration since 2007, when SciencePortal.jp, a website run by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency predicted the development costs to be around ￥79,521,000,000. Masaaki Taira, member of the Liberal Democratic Party, has been enthusiastically discussing this possibility for a year with various professors and party members, and had a talk with Hideki Niwa, another party member, and Harutoshi Fukui, author of Gundam Unicorn during a 1-hour slot within the 12 hour nicolive live-stream broadcast held on June 28th.

Although much of the live-stream was saturated with otaku talk on mecha anime, which included not only Gundam, but also Patlabor and Appleseed XIII, there was some fruitful talk on the realization of the Gundam development project. The project would be funded mostly by the military departments of Japan, which are currently basically rendered defunct by the presence of U.S. dominance. Although the Gundam would be developed as a military unit by name, its actual practicality would lie more in the application of its technology to other daily-life appliances. A bipedal military unit would not have any place in the army this day in age, given that nothing stronger than nuclear weaponry is virtually necessary anymore (though ironically, there is one Gundam series that implements Gundam as the next strongest unit used to circumvent the ban on the use of nuclear weaponry). Moreover, the current project does not hold a levitation function, and therefore focuses more on the ability of a transportation device to "step over" grounds of radically volatile altitudes. In addition to its application to daily transportation, an actual Gundam would be best utilized as a tourist attraction, as the current Odaiba Gundam has proven. Taira claims that being able to see a Gundam in action would mean everything to tourists around the world. There also was some discussion on creating a donation bank for the realization of Gundam, but it has not been put into effect yet.

I believe that the realization of Gundam can only be made possible by Japan, where the eccentric fever of the franchise lies. Due to poor education, declining social standards, and rusty government policies, Japan has been seceding from most, if not all, of the current fronts on modern innovation and therefore has been continually losing ground as a first-world country. This realization of Gundam would bring international attention to Japan once more, along with financial support that Japan is in dire need of. Thoughts? The actual live broadcast (one hour) can be watched in Japanese from that nicolive link on the source list.

Source: ANN, nicolive, SciencePortal

Blog #6: My Plan During the Summer Vacation

Hi! I'm Koichi.

After we finish our tests, summer vacation comes! In this blog, I'll introduce my plan during the summer vacation.

First, I'm going to go to Nagano Prefecture with my club members. We stay there for 5 days. During this stay, we hold debate in English. I think it is hard, but this experience helps my English skills improve.

Of course, we will have other events, such as fireworks and suika-wari. Most Japanese people enjoy them every summer. If you don't know them, please watch videos below.



I believe this stay is fun!!

Next, I'm going back to my home in Hakodete, Hokkaido. Hakodate isn't as hot as Tokyo, so I'm looking for going. I think it is good to study or read books. I hope my I could finish all assignments in Hakodate. Also, I want to see one of the most beautiful night views in Japan. Have you ever seen this sight?  If you have never seen it, I recommend you to see at least once.

So far, these are plans during my summer vacation. Do you have any plans during your summer vacation? If you do, could you tell me what your plan is.

Anyway, we MUST go through tests before the summer vacation:-(

Blog#5:Crimes in groper

 Hello! This is Natsumi.
 As you know, there are many crimes everyday. On the other hand, there are some false crimes. In Japan, gropers are major as false crimes. In my opinion as an woman, I hate gropers. I don't want them to grope on the purpose of sexual meaning. But, I know I don't have to dislike men meaninglessly and I have to hear their's opinions. So, I tried to search about the case of people who was arrested as a groper by mistake. Look at this article.
 I looked for articles about the opinions of victims of groper through the Internet, but I couldn't find good resources. There are many sources about false crimes or the way in avoiding being arrested by mistakes. This result shows that many men worried about being arrested as gropers by mistakes.
 As one way to come to existence of groper, some railway companies have trains which is allowed to ride only for women.But, these trains for women have been controversial since that plan had been practiced. There are agreement and disagreement about this action. I will tell you about them.
 Agreement: Many women feels relief for this train and it makes groper not to do wrong thing.
 Disagreement; Men think it is one of race discrimination. It is also natural that other trains are more crowded than a special train. Many people think it not so good and irritating.
 Problems surrounding groper and women are becoming more complicated like all above. And recently, there are many people are more interested in false crimes, especially in groper. Then let's look at this movie.

  

 Through this article and movie, I want to hear your opinion at the sides of both men and women.                                              

Blog #5: Determinist View on Murder

by Midday

To be honest, I was never really interested in crime, gangsters, or murder of any sort, both in fiction and non-fiction. I have studied these topics in class, and have watched/read a few fictional works that focused on these topics as well, but they never really struck me deeply, probably because I was looking more into the unlimited realms of the universe rather than the confines of human society and human life. However, I have always questioned the absolute property of morals and ethics as defined under civil conduct. I would like to focus on the topic of murder, by first starting with the obvious and then investigating the deeper roots of what exactly murder is, and why it is not permitted in society.

I'm not very knowledgeable in law, and law is certainly not something that can readily be understood within a few weeks of shallow research, so I will just borrow a few words from wikipedia. Murder, under American jurisdiction, is defined as the unlawful killing of a human by another human with malice aforethought. Murder is the more severe version of manslaughter, which lacks intention or malice aforethought, and both murder and manslaughter are the major forms of homicide. Satsujin-zai, under Japanese jurisdiction, is defined as the classification of penalty consisting of the killing of a human by another human with the intention to cause death. It is interesting to note here that America is one of the few countries that do not consider euthanasia as murder, while Japan follows majority by declaring it illegal. Also, suicide used to be considered unenforced felony in the United States, but was removed from the classification of crime completely by the 1990s, while in Japan, suicide has been treated as a silent/unwritten illegality that results in no punishment.

There are your definitions. Now, I would like to address the determinist interpretation of murder. I find that from time to time, critical thinkers tend to use determinism as a means of rejecting the idea that punishment for murder is justifiable, and I would like to go about explaining whether that is true or not. Determinists take the following stance. Neither law nor social standards, nor biological human intuition even, are absolute entities that reach a universal consensus. As a matter of fact, humans are seldom ever intuitively against the idea of murder, because killing is a necessary competition within animal nature. What is the objective truth value then in declaring murder as an evil? There is none. Murder is just the name of a particular event that happens when certain situations and circumstances are met. In the universal flow of time, humans are powerless in decision-making, and the whole concept of responsibility and causality become defunct given that human individuals are not granted the power of free will. (Note, this is not an argument about whether free will exists or not, which would spark a whole other topic, but just an explanation of the determinist view. It is nearly impossible to support free will, however, and only one realistic method exists.) Hence, some determinists would claim that law and society are unjust in punishing an event that does not involve any form of responsibility nor goes against human nature.

The greatest flaw in this argument is that the idea of determinism is only being used in a part of the explanation when determinism has to be used for the entire explanation for the argument to pull through. In the case that murder and human nature are subject to determinism, law and society must be subjected under determinism as well. The complete determinist explanation would be that all phenomena are results of determinism, meaning the fact that humans feel the necessity to punish murder is not a matter of responsibility or justification, but just another inevitable entity. Therefore, determinism can never be used to declare that punishing murder is wrong, nor can it be used to describe any phenomenon under an objective right-wrong scale.

However, determinism brings up a significant point; murder is not wrong. It is very true that law and society are not absolute entities. Moreover, as the American law states, law only punishes "unlawful" killings, meaning law does not deny the idea of killing in every respect. The idea of murder exists as a major entity because humans are prone to committing it, easily pictured by the prevalence of warfare. The point I am trying to get across here, is that when you see some major criminal of mass murder, do not just end your thoughts thinking what a bad person he/she is or how sad it was for the people involved. Criminals are humans, much like we all are, and we all have a chance of standing in his/her position. Right or wrong only comes into play within the realms of civil conduct. Think about how that criminal was raised or developed to become a criminal, and blame not only the criminal but the environment. I believe that kind of critical thinking is what is necessary for the overall progress of civil ethics and morals.

Blog#4: Heroism of crime movies

Written by So

 Crime movies have been a major genre in movie history. But, why has the people allow these type of movies to become such a giant field? There has always been protests about violent pictures, like video games and comics. We sometimes hear about crimes that were affected by scenes from games and comics, but hardly from movies. The country with the biggest gun problem creates the most movies with gun-fights.

 So, how are crime movies accepted by the crowd? The way is how to show the crime as an act of justice, or to get the audience to feel sympathy to the character. For example, evenge is a famous factor which is used from the past (The Outfit(1973), Ocean's Thirteen(2007)).In a recent movie I saw, 3 Days had a motive to save someone. All of these factors are used to change the criminal into a hero. However, a pursuit of heroism does not only mean good. First, such heroism may dissolve the character's feeling of sin. As movies become more entertaining, such conflicts become postponed, or not shown at all. And another, is that the movie loses the crime as the main point and becomes more of an action movie-the good guys beating up the bad guys.