amie689

2014

A runaway horse.....

A friend lost her father in the beginning of the year and her mother just as year comes to an end; another's strained marriage started to dissolve, finally culminating in a divorce. My mother's health and spirit to continued to see saw, MH370, MH17 tragedies; water restrictions, another friend loss a son to an infection unexpectedly. Political bickering, religious intolerance and strained racial relationships. Global injustices and human rights violations. On a personal and professional I had struggle to find the direction I am going. 

And just as the year is about to close, we are hit again by a massive flooding, and the loss of another airline. 

A year of trials.. some of those tested have come out flying, others have shown their true colours. 

May we all learn from 2014, and march on wards to a better 2015, a better Human race.. one humanity. 

To those who have been me, all these while, or even for a brief moment... there is only so much words can convey, but "Thank you. You have been greatly appreciated", is all I can say. 

Caught the movie last night. 

It was EXCELLENT. As a live action adaptation of the much loved manga it fulfilled every fans dream of seeing the characters come to life. The action, the characters and character dynamics and interaction were where the movie shone the most and exceeded all expectations. 

The action - It was fast, breathless and breath taking. Packed and excellently choreographed, there so many details I know to be there but just couldn't digest fast enough, I wished I could just watch everything on slow-motion, or rewatch all the trailers and repeated gif sets to comprehend the moves. To be honest, any action not involving Kenshin or Soujiro seemed slower by comparison, but everyone was performing magnificently; Misao was literally kicking ass, and it was mind boggling that to even consider Tanaka Min was 69 years old.  

The plot - It could be because it was a very fast story telling, but while I knew what happened in the manga; with movie, I struggled to 'see' from the point of view of the characters on how the change of sequence of events in the movie would drive the story for one point to the other. Excellent though it was, this was where I felt the movie was weakest and need the most trimming. Of course, my reasoning would have been biased by the manga. And to my fangirl heart, it was nothing that repeated watching couldn’t solve.... hahaha.

The characters - I won’t go into the details, but I love every bit of KenKao, SanoMeg, Kaorux Sanox Yahiko sibling squabbles, Misao Jiya Aoshi.. Shishio, Soujiro, Cho… in short all the characters and all character interactions. 

A bit of a down note I would have to say for myself was that, I found that a prior knowledge of the manga and anime was a barrier to viewing the movie objectively. I wanted to just watch and enjoy, but as much as I kept myself open, I couldn't 'un-know' and I found myself trying to align what I see with the manga. I wanted the movie to be excellent, which it was; but I couldn't decide it had succeeded on its own merit.  

One thing I realized was that while I loved the manga and the Kyoto arc of the anime, I didn't want it to be a remake of either since the movie wouldn't have the luxury of time to give them justice. I wanted to be surprised with view it fresh eyes. Maybe it was odd, but I did find myself wishing the movie story was trimmed to the bare essentials, with less fan- service.. but at the same time I was aware that would have been a near impossible task, for even the side-stories had messages dear the fans. 

One good thing that came with my realisations was that if Jinchuu will ever be filmed I don't care if they follow the story line at all. I just want the emotions and lessons captured, and I think they can do it. 

Lastly, the Malaysia experience. Since my last outing with the first movie, I was hoping (albeit foolishly, I know) that they’d just have two subs.. but of course that didn’t happen. As expected, there were three. At least the font size were smaller and didn't obstruct the lower third of the screen, unlike the first time. In general I tried to avoid reading subtitles at all since the English was at the bottom; a bit too far from the action happening in the middle of the screen.  

I knew better than to read the Malay ones... but unfortunately,  sometimes I can’t help but see, because it was at the top. 

At first, there was the moment when I thought the subs said ’ these were Shishio’s officers who were killed’ (I’m translating what I think the translation said- it should have been these were the officer's Shishio killed; hoping that I was wrong because it was fast). And there were plenty of odd moments here and there because the English translation was contextual interpretation which not necessarily captures the Japanese. It was further compounded as the Malay subs was based on the English words.  

Then, the clincher came,

Kenshin: Katana o tore, Shishio Makoto

English: Draw, Shishio

Malay: Lukis, Shishio

I didn’t need subtitle for what Kenshin said, but there was a sudden moment of disbelief and I was like, “Eh.. was that Indonesian? I don’t think so..where did that come from?” I looked at the English and just cracked up!! 

My husband, who was concentrating was so irritated, “What the hell are you reading!”

They’d translated the English 'draw' for drawing with a writing instrument, instead of taking the sword out of sheath. 

Needless to say I made a very conscious effort to stay where the action was or dive down quickly to the English subs, for the rest of the movie. 

It added a hilarious note to the fun drive home, though

amie689.tumblr.com/post/101985…

Someone once asked me, if the live action movie had in any way impacted my ruroken fan art painting. 

When I first embarked on ruroken realism or semirealism (which ever way you wish to look at it) I very much was inspired by the late Hakubaikou. She showed me how real the idea could be.

I had long felt just as Dir Keishi Otomo said in the open lecture on the making of the movie  

.. that beyond the superlatives of the Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu, or whatever school of fight in ruroken. It was a story of a swordsman, one who would have gone through the war and felt just as Kenshin did. He felt real. The story felt real. It was a piece of Japanese history told in a personal scale. The internal struggle to hold true to higher principle and to atone for past sins were very real human issues, whatever the age of man or history. At the period where I was dealing with issues of adolescence (personal and professional), painting ruroken as real people gave me the opportunity me to reflect on the strength, motivation and the beauty of the human character. 

One beauty of ruroken saga was that there were gaps in the storytelling; in the manga and anime timeline or even in the everyday scenes. The Japanese characteristic avoidance of overt demonstration left many details in the subtext; Understated and just implicit enough to tantalize the intellect and emotions of readers who are prone to analyze (or over-analyse) stuff. These became a playground for fan artists and fan writers alike; to run amok with their imagination and still keep the characters in character...So I painted the moments I could identify with, fleshed out scenes, practiced and perfected postures, expressions borne from my imagination and emotions. I had often said, by way of explanation on why I choose portraiture, that I paint emotions, and the human form is my canvas.. and for me ruroken was an excellent canvas. Whenever there was a need for an emotional outlet, I’d escape to the ruroken world and sketch out a scene possible in the canon timeline. 

My ruroken summary in effect is the summary of my progress in painting. 

It seemed everyone in the fandom hoped that it would be made into live action, and yet feared it would be turned a fiasco should Hollywood get their hands on it. There was too much history in it to risk it turning into a comic superhero live action commercial product.  And then there’s the hero… ‘small, athletic, who could be silly and yet serious.. ’ (I didn’t mention androgynous, feminine handsomeness because don’t think that a problem among Japanese actors ^-^x) And of course the action sequences, how to extend the human capability into the superlatives, yet still be believable and realistic. When I first started painting ruroken, there were no rumours yet of the most likely candidates of who could portray Kenshin.. I had one as character reference but he was tall and rather past the age, he could do action and be serious, but not so much the clumsy comic.

When Ryomaden came to being (an excellent series, in itself), it seemed like serendipity and a pilot study rolled into one. Keishi Otomo and Satoh Takeru meeting, the cast, the direction and story telling were all inadvertent testing ground for the movie. 

But I digress.. back to the question of my ruroken fan arts. 

Yes, it has impacted my painting.. because even when taking into account the condensed scope necessary in movie story-telling, it had exceed beyond most expectations and quite simply filled in those gaps that I mentioned before. And as an inadvertent result of its success, quite a number of artists (old and new) are churning out ruroken fan art. It has become quite hard to be original; and a certain quirk of mine is that I have a certain dislike for copying.. even of an idea, even if art is essentially a copy of life. 

I may do a copy of a screencap one day just for practice, ( or stressed) but for now I don’t feel the need.

I’m quite content to just enjoy others' works; the speculations and the screencaps and gifs other fans are putting up. 

Just enjoying myself. Very much.

Thank you heckyeahruroken.tumblr.com/  

 

When writing, imagine we are creating a piece of jewelry... the words like gems... string them up so they become a beautiful necklace.. it doesn't do to just throw them carelessly about .. 


And don't forget the get rid of the sand.. (ie: edit the unnecessary fluff).. or your jewels won't shine..


Even beads make beautiful pictures if you arrange them with care.... 

After a near 5 year professional hiatus,.. I'm finally preparing to pick-up the threads of my old life. Scary and daunting, I'm painfully aware of how long it has been since I've seriously looked at anything related to what I used to do.. at least, looked at them the way I would have, should I have had to deal with them..