Starting a New Review Series

To whom this may concern, (basically the nice way of saying "to those who cares" since I know not a lot of people read my stuff, maybe they're busy perhaps... aaand I'm getting off track.)

Anyway, I'm just writing this to announce that I'm going to start a whole new series of reviews soon. So to those who're interested (probably not a lot) basically I've been watching a lot of movies, watching a lot of shows, playing a lot of video games so I thought to myself, hey why not write reviews about them. This is mainly to help my creative juice running and also give me practice in writing (the actual reason is so that I would stop feeling butthurt about my favorite shows or games all the time xP).

There are a few criteria I'd like to mention about my reviews, though:

The first thing is that I will be reviewing mostly movies, games or shows that I've seen or experienced. Even old movies, games sometimes, so for example I will be looking at how an old movie's received by the audience back in the old days and I'll see how the movie holds up to modern standard (in my opinion of course) that way I'll try not to have nostalgia get in the way. For example the famous horror movie Psycho is an undeniable horror masterpiece back in the days however when translated to modern standards it just doesn't hold up as much as when it did back then.

The second thing is that I will also be reviewing some Anime as well. BUT I must stress the fact that I will not be reviewing ANY OF THE JAPANESE DUB in any anime. This isn't me hating on the Sub and being a Dub fanboy, but the reason is simply because that I DO NOT KNOW THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE. And cannot in good conscience give a fair review of the Sub. Because voice acting is A LOT more than just sounding like a badass. It's about the character, because these characters are people, and they should sound like real people. Because to be honest, most of the time (to me) the characters in sub just sound the same to one another, there's little variation, I can't tell if one character is a guy from the North or the South, I can't tell what's his personality and social status is like through his word choice, and worst case scenario the sub just sound like a high pitch p**nstar or an edgy teen instead of actual people. This isn't me hating on the Japanese voice actors, I know that they're probably superstars at what they do. But it's just that I do not know Japanese, I do not know their dialect, I do not know how they typically speak so I simply cannot judge them. That's why I will always choose the Dub if I have that option, even if the Dub is god awful, I will at least be able to judge on their voice acting.

Finally, one last thing. I will be categorizing Anime using the "style definition" instead of the "origin definition". And what I mean by that is that there are a lot of people who only consider Japanese animation Anime while others consider any show with a similar distinct exotic art style an anime. I'm more partial towards the latter simply because I'm a guy who believe in creativity and freedom of expression, and to think that there's an idea limiting that freedom just doesn't sit well with me. For example, I'm Vietnamese, and if I want to make Anime in a company in Vietnam, or America then I should be able to do just that and be allowed to call my creation an Anime. Imagine somebody looking through a list of recommendation for cartoons and finds an Anime there. Or if a really good Anime was produced but not many people know about it simply because many Anime recommendation lists doesn't include just because it's not from Japan.

All of this start to fall apart when you consider the fact that according to the Japanese people, Anime = Cartoons. There are no difference. Which begs the question on why do we even use the term "Anime" in the first place? Well, the answer is simple, it's to distinguish the style. We use it so that it won't confuse people, and the daily conversation won't be awkward, like this: "Hey have you seen the new cartoon Naruto?" or "Hey, I heard the new anime Spongebob is really good." It's technically correct, it's just really awkward.

So that's why I'll be categorizing my Anime review using the "style definition", so expect to see some non-Japanese stuff like RWBY or Avatar in my Anime section.

With that butthurt rant out of the way, I hope I didn't scare all of you away and I hope y'all stick around to hear what I have to say (or don't, it's your choice, obviously. Can't force ya)