⚡ Animelit — Microblog

Reflections on:

Yearly Plan 2017

while sifting through the content of old pen drives I came across an article I wrote about ten year ago, dated 31.12.2016 and titled "Yearly Plan 2017".

So much has changed in ten years... I want to tell my past self, hang in there things will get better. I can't share the whole article because it is a bit too candid. Still I thought I might share some quotes from it. #HFL

Best philosophical / political quotes

“I can live in a world without Socialism (and no God) but I can’t live in a world without right and wrong.”

“Human beings must not be saints or tyrants.”

“Morality is chiefly something to regulate our own behaviour and not to order around other people.”

“The government of a free country does not decide what is the truth and therefore what is moral.”

“There has to be such a thing as objective truth, if not then Journalism is nothing more than misery porn and frothing at the mouth in righteous indignation.”

“There is no such thing as natural justice, at any rate in this world. So we make it for aesthetic reasons.”

“Just because the world is unfair that doesn’t mean that rapists, child molesters and murderers should be our rulers.”

“The temptation of faith are very high but I don’t want to be a cowardly opportunist.”

“Literature cannot change the world for the better.”

"However this doesn’t mean that all virtue is virtue-signalling."

"To blow it all to kingdom come, or not come, either way it’s-"

"The British government is planning to create A National Database of the Fetishes of Her Majesty’s subjects."

identity / self-awareness

“I am a cliché.”

“The self-effacing and the self-aggrandizing are not mutually exclusive.”

“Extreme diminutiveness is a sign of immense greed and arrogance and hubris.”

“I am getting tired of role-playing the writer.”

“I always keep holding up England to unreasonable moral standards and she always lets me down.”

“I can tell a lie when I see one and I can call an injustice one when I see one, but even if I go on eliminating lies and injustices I am left with too many things to choose from.”

"I am too arrogant to take the hand that tries to help me if there is nothing I can give in return."

aphoristic / concise lines

“A good epigram is better than a mediocre novel.”

“It’s either utopia or it’s nothing.”

“An end with a horror rather than a horror with no end.”

“Human solidarity is enough when co-dependence is not enough.”

“The only mode of existence is the aesthetic mode of existence.”

“Word count isn’t everything.”

“Some things are not just symbolic.”

“The more I dislike something the more real it is.”

vivid passages

“The carnival aspect of it all, the show, it’s getting boring, a dreadful long party, where guests are taken out at random to a firing squad… It’s like people are living in a loop and pretend not to realize it because other people are pretending not to realize it.”

“I must cram every work of art I can get a hold of into my cranium in this limited time.”

“When you have gotten used to all of this maybe death isn’t so bad assuming that there isn’t more.”

“It will take a few dozen decades before I get through everything I want to read… Consequently I might as well just hang around.”

young /intellectual/ in crisis

“Orwell was right.”

“Can you fall in love with a dead writer?”

“I don’t want to turn George Orwell into my go-to self-insert protagonist in my self-empowerment fantasy.”

“I am too fond of ‘the man’.”

miscellaneous

             "The self-effacing and the self-aggrandizing are not mutually exclusive, in-fact extreme diminutiveness is a sign of immense greed and arrogance and hubris. Making it a virtue to recognize how lacking in virtue one is and then wallowing in self-loathing, drowning in guilt while being intoxicated by self-pity. The acolyte or the hermit that rejects every earthly desire shows that his greed is such that it cannot be satiated by anything earthly so he settles for nothing or deludes himself with pure wishful fantasies. It’s much easier to get sick of people and things than you might think which is exactly all that these men have achieved, nothing more."

There's more but these are some of the more mild ones which I felt were not too embarrassing to post. My thoughts? Well, a lot has changed. For one, George Orwell is no longer a great author I look up to as an ideal. He's just an alright essayist.

In general I have become more tolerant of myself and of others, because I am more fine with myself and others being selfish with their desires. I don't know if I am totally fine with reclusive people who ran away and take snipes at society, but if they can shut up and not act like they are superior.... no even if they act superior I just don't care about what they d0. More than anything I have become more pragmatic about things like faith. Namely that without faith in one's self it's hard to have courage because reason alone can't give you enough certainty. And that the way to create faith is through auto-suggestion and repetition of both action and thoughts.

Not every problem I had in 2016-17 has been resolved, but, finally I feel like I am on the right path to be decisive and resolve things one way or another, and have the strength to be fine with the outcome of my choices based on my chief desires.

As for the spectre of politics haunting my writing like a bad miasma, I do fall back into bad habits from time to time but politics is no longer a key aspect of my identity. I have lived through too many political disasters since then, and yet come out the other end alive, so I do not regard it as be-all and end-all subject of art or my thinking and writings.

[ This paragraph is an aside about internet safety: Of course, I would have said that politics is just a side-show back then too but given the time I spent listening to political podcasts on a certain video sharing platform, I certainly did not live like that was the case. I may have become both more conservative and liberal at the same time. For example, I can say "I told you so," about the online safety act and other changes which have occurred but I have seen change and I have seen life go on after it, moreover although I believe I have gained more than lost through the internet, I don't have much sympathy for the corporations who are being regulated either. Still I am the same person, so at heart, I cannot say I believe in neither official state-management of the internet or in the oft repeated mantra and panacea about how parents should be in charge of their children's internet usage. To be frank, now that it's all in the past, for me the internet was the best escape from the control of adults; so ultimately it doesn't matter to me if the role of the controlling adults is played by the state, parents or corporations. Ideally I believe in those policies which put the control of the lives of people in their own hands as soon as possible because that's how you create independent adults, but I am also aware that we are all susceptible to influences of others, especially children, and so there needs to be "sensible defaults" on these internet platforms which disable features like infinite scroll, short videos, algorithmic recommendations by default. The difference between me and the current social reformers, is that I believe that anyone should have the right to enable those features one-by-one if they so wish. All intelligent children wish to some extent be treated like adults, and it is because they can't be taken seriously offline that they turn to the internet where age doesn't matter as much (for now), of course they cannot fully get that wish to be treated as adults, but I don't think ignoring their agency like this will lead to their proper development. #InternetSafety ]

In any case, I have abandoned writing purely self-reflective writing like this because writing likes this goes in a loop and does not lead to much action. Still this article I wrote on the last day of 2016 was a tiny step, a start, or even a prelude to a start to my current actions, and I couldn't be here without those so I am grateful I indulged in these sentimental writings. For the time being I will back them up somewhere so I won't lose them and clear my usb pen drives for other uses. And  from now on I would rather put those emotional words into the mouths of fictional characters than mine.

Drove an automatic car for the first time today. Was alright except in very slow traffic where I had to constantly change gears to neutral. Thankfully we took the expressway so it was fine.

Also tried Google maps on Android Auto on my way back home.  Quite nifty. Wish my car back in the UK had it too so the screen in there would not be purely decorative except for the rear camera.

#HFL

All achievement, no matter what may be its nature or its purpose, must begin with an intense BURNING DESIRE for something definite. -  Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

Struck up a conversation with a backpacker from south England coming to Sri Lanka. Apparently he is going to help the sea turtles lay their eggs or something. He had to run across the overgrown mall that is Instanbul airport and asked me if I had internet to connect to his friend in SL. Seemed like a nice lad of about twenty-five, answered some of his questions about Sri Lanka throughout the flight. Asked for my WhatsApp and last I texted he’s doing fine and was excited for his journey despite the heat. Wished more people were talkative as him, made the flight much less boring than it would be otherwise.

Watched a couple Japanese movies on the flight too.

exit 8 was a neat concept and I think I have seen YouTube shorts with the same concept but at the same time it was a bit simplistic theme wise, in a feel good kind of way.

Rewrite and I have a S/E/C/R/E/T  are both high school romance movies with something supernatural about them slightly. But you can read the synopsis in the screenshots.

Riraito/rewrite is unsurprisingly based on a novel given how the prominent role which novels play in it kind of romanticised being a novelist.  Even tho it came out in 2025, it felt kind of nostalgic which also makes sense since the book is from 2012. It’s also nostalgic because you get to see the characters in their high school years but also as adults grumbling about getting older. The successful novelist main character is married as well and the character who plays her is 30.

As for I have a secret it felt like more straightforwardly a movie aimed at high schoolers rather than people who have been to high school. As for the novel it’s been adapted from, it’s by the same author as I want to eat your pancreas, which also got adapted to a semi-popular anime movie which I will release a blog post about.

The limited film selection on flight entertainment systems forces me to watch Japanese films which I would otherwise overlook, and which I have heard nothing about. This is one of the things I look forward to the most when going on a flight. Honestly I don’t even know if there is a way to watch these movies online, but as a note for my future self I will say right now that I don’t feel like any of these films are worth rewatching. Maybe once I learn to read Japanese then I can read the novels but I doubt it’ll happen cause to truly enjoy them you need to have the time on your hands and lack of urgency which I lack these now. Like I am too bothered about paying my bills and other stuff than to worry about micromanaging the relationships with school friends which is kind of what the characters in I have a secret do. I also think a major obstacle to my enjoyment is also that I no longer feel like the bonding youthful activitities which the characters engage in, like going on a school trip or watching fireworks at a local festival (in riraito), to be that interesting or desirable. In fact, I view them as tropes in fiction at this point to understand them. Although I will say that the hero show play which the students put up in the I have a secret looked pretty fun and was certainly the best scene in the film. I can’t say that I found the character’s speech about how, the saddest thing is when people can’t forgive themselves for their mistakes,  to be particularly compelling but maybe I would have if I was younger, because it would have been the truth then.

I have not entirely disawoved myself  from the view that the youth knows what the truth is because they haven’t grown numb to life yet and they possess the right instincts towards life. So I do wonder what the cast feels like in productions like these. Obviously it’s a show put on by older adults, and the fact that they are acting out their youth in public as a performance actually separates them from the ‘true’ experience of youth untainted by performative acts informed by nostalgia of the author. On the other hand they have been handpicked to represent the best and ideal and most momentous version of youth which the intended audience is either supposed to long for or see themselves in already. So much of fiction is informed by the thought of the demographic it is aimed, a thought which states: “Wouldn’t it be cool if x happened…’

i guess the distinguishing feature of this youth themed stories is not that the characters are not goal oriented but rather that their goals are oriented towards their school relationships and romances, even when there is some other distant goal what it serves is the goal of furthering the bonds between the characters. I guess it’s because your friend relationships are the most important when you are in school.

i hear people who didn’t do well in school socially say that it never changes, and perhaps it is so, but the earnestness with which people seek each other certainly changes, as our goals and priorities change to become more financially and career motivated. There are advantages to this, and the wisdom of maturity comes from an habituation to unwelcome and welcome changes, we play the long game as each days gets shorter and less unique, but the price is the intensity of feeling which is unique to first time youthful encounters which can never be replicated, even if you were a god who could return to your youth. Speaking of Gods, if such beings were to exist I wonder if they feel things faintly or at all and whether they are just numb to everything due to a lack of new experiences or thoughts or feelings. Could a god feel first love ever again? That would explain the indifference to suffering in the world but then again I am no theologian or philosopher…

The time looper is also inherently a kind of minor analogy to a god in that sense, although in riraito the boy from the future doesn’t seem to grow tired of people just because he is repeating the same script with multiple different characters. However, as for me, I felt a bit bored, because I had already seen it done, although in not exactly the same exact details, in Steins;Gate.

#HFL

no one ever is defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality. - Napoleon Hill,

Visited the Ninewells hospital's medical university section. It was like a maze in there. I could easily get lost. All the entrances are sealed with fireproof doors, but escaping through them during a fire might be a pain if you don't already know the layout. I spoke with a researcher there, and it seems even his supervisor isn't familiar with the proper routes. Still, precisely because of that maze-like structure, it seemed like a cool place to be in. There were plenty of medical students lounging around. The researcher's own lab was kind of cramped and full of cables and audio-related equipment, #HFL

Went to a Japanese group study session. It was fun for me but it was only fun because I already knew the definitions of the vocabulary we tested each other on. A nice extra which can't replace input-based solo study. #HFL

Went to Edinburgh Weaverley station yesterday to buy anime related stuff.

Bought Anime blurays from HMV and Fopp. Got 10% off using a bar code in the unidays app.

Visited a model shop called Wanderland Models. Had little gunpla but good prices.

Visited Forbidden Planet. They had some nice figurine Haruhi tucked away in an inconspicuous place. Manga selection was kinda small but they had 3 for the price of 2 promotion. The student discount doesn’t apply for the 2 for 3 deal cause “it’s already discounted.” They also have more and better gunpla tho prices seemed higher. Store is a bit small so it gets crowded easily.

Visited Anime Republic which is a anime merch store near the train station again. There were some decent looking things like keychains but anime hoodies seemed kind of cheaply made. Also a friend told me their merch is not official but I couldn’t say just by looking at it. There were some tables at the back where some people seemed to be playing a trading card game.

Went to Happy Lamb hot pot to eat a hot pot style buffet. It filled me up but not sure it tasted good enough for £36, the “ulitmate” meal. Maybe I should check the cheaper meals. I wouldn’t have minded paying £24 for a similar meal. My friend thought staff was kind of cold compared to last time he was there but I didn’t notice it, though I struggled to communicate with them cause both staff and I have a thick accent. What I can say however is that it kinda felt like a race cause of the 100 minute limit. There was only one set of tongs so it was kinda annoying having to share it, as was keeping track of what I and others put into the hot pot. Still definitely worth trying at least once. The best food was the Wagyu which honestly didn’t taste that different than normal beef for me but then again I like beef. The worst food I put in the hot pot was the eggplant noodles. Go for udon.

Finally went to Blackwell’s bookshop after getting the road wrong a bit cause Edinburgh is not a flat city, at least not this part. By far the best manga and book selection. I wanted to buy the Genki Japanese textbook but it was like £60 or thereabouts. Far more expensive than online.

Heard there might be some anime collab merch at uniqlo but was too tired to go there by this point.

The whole trip cost £200 which included 3 blurays (steins gate, code geass season 1&2, and Gunbuster) and three omnibus volumes 1-3 for £46

When a friend asked me what does "Wakarimasen" mean I replied "I don't understand" without even thinking about it. #HFW

HOW TO OUTWIT THE SIX GHOSTS OF FEAR from Think & Grow Rich #TGR

SYMPTOMS OF THE FEAR OF DEATH

The general symptoms of this fear are:

• The habit of THINKING about dying instead of making the most of LIFE, due, generally, to lack of purpose or lack of a suitable occupation.

• This fear is more prevalent among the aged, but sometimes the more youthful are victims of it.

• The greatest of all remedies for the fear of death is a BURNING DESIRE FOR ACHIEVEMENT backed by useful service to others.

• A busy person seldom has time to think about dying.

• He finds life too thrilling to worry about death.

• Sometimes the fear of death is closely associated with the Fear of Poverty, where one’s death would leave loved ones poverty-stricken.

• In other cases, the fear of death is caused by illness and the consequent breaking down of physical body resistance.

• The most common causes of the fear of death are ill-health, poverty, lack of appropriate occupation, disappointment over love, insanity, religious fanaticism.

the text later goes on to say that decisiveness just as ardent desire is also a cure for this fear of death. In other words: “Relieve yourself forever of the fear of death by reaching a decision to accept death as an inescapable event.”

THE SEVEN MAJOR POSITIVE EMOTIONS (according to Napoleon Hill). #TGR

The emotion of DESIRE
The emotion of FAITH
The emotion of LOVE
The emotion of SEX
The emotion of ENTHUSIASM
The emotion of ROMANCE
The emotion of HOPE

Watched the Moonlight Sonata Murder Case (Episode 11) of Detective Conan.. It's real pity there isn't anywhere to comment along episode to episode. Some of the websites like Kissanime used to have hundreds of comments. Watching this along with a bunch of commenters would have really been fun. It's a thousand episodes so I doubt I can convince anyone I know to watch it either. I feel tempted to stream it online on the server but what if no one joins. Maybe I can find some Detective Conan server.

Even with 48 minutes (so two episodes) for the case, it still felt too short and it didn't hit as hard as when I read the manga. I suspect it's because I have seen too many anime, sometimes I wish I could unsee the anime I have watched so I could look at it again with fresh eyes. Then again I felt like the manga did a better job of explaining the case, like I didn't feel like there was any aspect of the case which I did not understand. Then again maybe I was just too young to realise there were gaps in my memory. The idea that Dr. Narumi/Seiji was cross-dressing never came to mind when I first read it, I mean the idea that there could be men who passed for women itself was alien to my grade schooler mind after all. The tragedy that Aso's suicide message was telling his son to lead a honest life but that it was too late just hit a lot harder back then didn't hit as hard, maybe I have become a bit and heartless after seeing too many tragedies both real and fictional. Come to think of why was Seiji using the same music code sheet as his father if he had never come across his will before. I went back and checked the manga, apparently it was the previous mayor who told him about the code but then I wonder why the previous mayor didn't try to destroy the suicide message by Aso. Maybe I could write a better mystery though I am probably just feeling a bit cocky today.

I wrote a note to my neighbours upstairs because they were too noisy. Let's see if it works. #HFW

What do a murder and a romance have in common that fantasy and sci-fi do not inherently have? A pre-determined end. In a real mystery novel with a detective and a case, the story ends when the case is solved and the detective explains the trick. In a real romance the story ends when the lovers confess and get together because there is nothing more boring to watch than a happy romance. Meanwhile science-fiction and fantasy have no built-in 'self-contained' ending conditions, and so can keep on going on and on. I used to think this was a strength when I wanted to see endless, sprawling stories with an ever-growing cast with an ever-longer history in an ever-larger world. The problem with this theoretical infinite potential is that in practice my memory is fallible so the longer it goes on the harder it becomes to keep track of all the details both as a writer and as a reader. I have come to appreciate ending things. Maybe I have just grown old, when you are young, it is easy to imagine friendships and love which stretch to eternity and an endless adventure which grows to an unfathomable depth, going from strength to strength in an irreversible progress.

The point is that I have been watching Detective Conan Remastered Version and even though I am only 10 episodes in, it is clear that it is something special, because it is both a romance and detective story, and both a episodic series with fast closure but also a grand story of an ever-growing web of relationships. It's great. Each episode can be enjoyed itself giving you closure but the story keeps on growing and growing as well... Even though I read the manga more than 10 years ago, all the memories regarding the characters who never show up in more than a single case are coming back to me, whereas I find it hard to remember the main characters in a lot of anime I watch.. Why is that? Because their stories end in one two episodes. Fortunately, no one reads my micro blog, as I wouldn't want their to be an English speaking "fandom" for Detective Conan. Already, the few who bother to read/watch it can only see it cynically as a story which is dragged out just because it sells without even understanding why it sells, or in other words what's good about it. Then again it's not like I own Conan so it's a really stupid feeling to feel protective or proud over it.

Money is as shy and elusive as the “old time” maiden. It must be wooed and won by methods not unlike those used by a determined lover, in pursuit of the girl of his choice. And, coincidental as it is, the POWER used in the “wooing” of money is not greatly different from that used in wooing a maiden. That power, when successfully used in the pursuit of money must be mixed with FAITH. It must be mixed with DESIRE. It must be mixed with PERSISTENCE. It must be applied through a plan, and that plan must be set into ACTION. -Napoleon Hill #TGR

There are authors like Mark Manson who went from pick up artists to self-help gurus but this connection is kind of faint. Maybe it's the fact that pick-up artists tend to be non-spiritual (perhaps because they subconsciously view spiritualism as feminine), but the root of self-help thinking such as the "law of attraction" is always spiritual.

Sure you can explain away the law of attraction's spiritual roots by claiming that it only works because desiring something induces you to change your behaviour. However to me that feel like a crude post-hoc rationalisation.

"Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent advantage." - Napoleon Hill #TGR

Not automatically, of course, just as what doesn't kill you doesn't automatically make you stronger, but if you are creative enough it is possible to turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

It's very faint in my memory but I remember a time when I felt uneasy to know behind the scenes information about anime. I guess I wanted to, as far possible consider those worlds to be real, or at least a realistic simulation that I could learn something from and apply it in my life, rather than a contrived scenario whose every-step was a deliberate choice of the creator to get a desired effect from an audience.

Today, I watched the first episode of the remastered version of Detective Conan/Meitantei Conan/Case Closed, and it's bringing me back to my memories as a seven year old reading the first volume of conan. I was around the same age as conan, so much time has passed but the feelings are still the same, which is a pleasant surprise. If there is something different, it's that I feel a lot free-er as an adult.

Anyway to focus on one thing which struck me is how Shinichi says he doesn't want to be a mystery writer like his dad, but wants to live out the life of characters like Sherlock Holmes. Was Gosho Aoyama projecting his own feelings or the feelings of 5-12 year old boys who were his audience? In any case, as fantastic an ambition it is to be a real life sherlock holmes, I do not think it is wrong.

So many young children get discouraged to do anything by a "realism" which dooms everyone to their lowest expectations of themselves? The cure to stoic presenting "realism" is to realise that it's just a front for cowardice, a mask of "reason" for an abject fear of failure.

Yes, the naïve teacher that told you that you could be anything that you wanted, if you were lucky enough to have such a teacher, was actually telling you the truth. Well it's only part of the truth, because you would have to do a lot of thinking, planning and acting but it is essentially true that you can just do things.

came across what looks like a cherry blossom tree near to the uni library #HFL

Exams are a good method for learning but they are not a good way to test and assess knowledge. This is because they cause unnecessary stress, so if it was unto me I would let people do exams to learn the material but I wouldn't give them a test to ultimately judge their ability. Google notebook llm is surprisingly good at generating multiple choice questions. The podcasts are okay too as long as you keep them medium to short. The exams also might be better when they are short as well. When I say 'better' I mean better at learning rather than 'testing as much knowledge as possible.'

"TWO FORMS OF IMAGINATION
The imaginative faculty functions in two forms. One is known as “synthetic imagination,” and the other as “creative imagination.”

SYNTHETIC IMAGINATION: Through this faculty, one may arrange old concepts, ideas, or plans into new combinations. This faculty creates nothing. It merely works with the material of experience, education, and observation with which it is fed. It is the faculty used most by the inventor, with the exception of the who draws upon the creative imagination, when he cannot solve his problem through synthetic imagination.

CREATIVE IMAGINATION: Through the faculty of creative imagination, the finite mind of man has direct communication with Infinite Intelligence. It is the faculty through which “hunches” and “inspirations” are received. It is by this faculty that all basic, or new ideas are handed over to man." - Napoleon Hill, #TGR

What Hill calls the creative imagination in my opinion is just forgetfulness. In other words when the mind cannot recall the connection between old concepts, it just makes up connections which are not necessarily true, and if you (i.e your mind) keeps on guessing enough times, then eventually you will come up with a new useful connection between concepts. This connection itself will be a new concept.

Another way to understand this view of creative imagination, is to look at how random mutations in our genes, which are mostly harmless and occasionally useful, have led to our evolution simply based on what works in that environment. I imagine that forgetfulness fills a similar niche. It is not that there aren't people who have near perfect memory of their pasts but if they can't forget past ideas and events, then that leaves less space for mistakes in thinking and therefore less potential for growth. This is probably why such health conditions are rare despite not being impossible.

I suppose you could also draw a similar parallel to the way that AI hallucinations work as well, although frankly I don't know enough about AI to make that connection with any certainty. Not that I know much more about how the human mind works. This is just a theory of mine based on my own personal experience as a very forgetful individual. I feel like because I am forgetful I am constantly forced to think on my feet, and so it helps me to make new connections which may not always be the most intuitive but which are creative. The main way that my thinking evolves is by asking questions upon questions, and the reason why I have so many questions is because I often forget what is obvious to others.