The Ego Episodes

Wednesday, May. 04, 2005

I didn't plan this to be about a movie ...

Yesterday I had my last paper – that is, the last paper I’ll ever take as an undergrad. Hold on a second, you say. Why are there no whoops and yays and okay, where are the exclamation points? Don’t get me wrong. I’m so relieved. And I’m happy. When I got out of the exam hall, I couldn’t stop smiling! Fortunately, I bumped into a friend, who told me, “Happy … holiday!” with matching hand gestures. Hee. Anyway, so my friend made me think about what I’m going to do now.

What am I going to do? I have a list. But when he asked me that question, I told him, “I … don’t know! I really don’t know what I’m going to do and I love it!” (Note the exclamation points. I used a lot of them yesterday.) He laughed. Being a final year student himself, he understood my sentiment.

When I uttered those words, I meant, I’m basically free to do anything I want! My brain can breathe now! Since I’ve been liberated from the manacles of having to study for anything, I now have a lot of options -- options, to spoil myself for the rest of the day. So you see, when I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do and I love it!” I meant, “I don’t know what I’m going to do [to spoil myself rotten today, nyahahaha!] and I love it!”

But my friend maybe meant to ask what my plans are after school. Sigh. That was the last thing on my mind. This leads me to think that maybe, I’m not ready to have a job and be cut loose, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, back to spoiling myself. The minute I stepped into my room, I turned on my computer and searched for downloadables. Ooh, new episode of Desperate Housewives! Love this day! While waiting, I decided to watch Samurai X, the movie, also known as, the greatest anime movie I’ve watched so far.

If you recall, I love Samurai X, the series. I’ve been watching it since high school, but I had to forgo it when my mother realized that she’d been missing the evening news (TV Patrol) in another channel. Eventually, they stopped showing it. I didn’t think I would see another episode of Samurai X – not, until I got here.

When I found out that Jerome had some episodes with him, I squealed with excitement. I greedily borrowed a few CDs and with the first episode I watched off it, I became an addict. However, school stuff got in the way of my addiction, so again, I put off watching it and had to return the CDs after watching only 4 or 6 episodes.

And then this movie came out. (Aren’t you glad I got to this part already? I am.) What I love about Samurai X is that it’s realistic. The characters don’t have sonic booms exploding from their hands or ray guns spouting off their fingers. Kenshin is none of those. He is a samurai turned commoner, with a reverse-edged sword as his only weapon. His superpowers lie in his ability to use his sword so that it won’t kill, but protect those he loves and of course, his beliefs. It’s the same reason I love Spiderman. He’s the most realistic comic hero I know.

[Spoiler alert!] Also, there is a WHY. If you have read Kavalier and Clay, good for you, because you know what I’m talking about. The reason Kenshin is the way he is is that, he finally realized the error of his ways and tries to atone for them by refusing to kill anyone with his sword. Again. Ever. He, of course, gets tormented by his past and this is the part that I love. You get presented with a situation wherein you wonder whether Kenshin is going to kill that very, very bad guy who killed a man he respected, and just, very, very evil, and yet (yet!), just as you think, oh yeah, he’s definitely going to kill him, he refuses to kill the man. I mean, whoah, right? You just have to admire him based on that display of self-control. You and I know that the world needs more of that.

So as you can see by now, this entry (written with a generous dose of post-exam euphoria) will be about Samurai X – because I’m not yet done. This movie makes reference to history, thus filling me in on some facts about the Meiji Restoration that I didn’t get to learn when I was still studying World History in high school. I know. It’s lame of me to learn history out of an animè, but you know what? I don’t care. History is more interesting this way. And if I get to become a history teacher, I’m going to give an assignment to my class, requiring them to watch a movie like this one.

This movie did not fail to move me. In fact, I cried. This is nothing new. But it’s an animè! Nobody cries over that! I know. But I couldn’t help myself. There was the oh, look at me, my eyes are welling up with te – (sniffs, then out came big drops of tears). And I’m supposed to be celebrating.

I did celebrate! It was gooood. That’s for next entry. Coming up sooner than you think.

{ joycie at 9:30 a.m.}