Cullum Perfect Blue Identities

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I honestly have no idea where to even start with the movie Perfect Blue. It was enjoyable to me, but then again I like thrillers, suspense movies and Alfred Hitchcock movies. Mima is an ‘innocent’ pop singer in a three woman group called Cham! When she announces her plans to become an actress and stop singing, stuff hits the fan. She becomes stalked by Me-Mania, starts to lose touch with herself, people get murdered, and she almost gets killed. For most of the movie, I thought Mima was crazy, like Nina in Black Swan. I wasn’t able to distinguish if Mima was doing something or someone else who thought they were Mima was doing it. I thought she was killing all these people. The moment I knew for sure that it was not her killing everyone, is the moment that the Mima jumping around in the dress turns into Rumi in the street. 

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Through most of the film I feel like Mima isn’t even sure of who she is as a person; this does not surprise me at all. As a female celebrity she has all kinds of people dictating who she should be, how she should act, and what she should do. She changed from a innocent pop singer to a rape victim that had pornographic pictures taken of herself. Her fans basically feel like she doesn’t have the right to stop singing and move on to acting. Rumi thinks Mima is ruining her(Mima’s) reputation and ultimately tries to kill her for it. Her office manager, Tadokoro, is pushy and wants Mima to become an actress. Me-Mania/Uchida is just a crazy stalker that is more than a little upset that she is pursuing a career in acting now instead of singing.

I’ll tie this post up with a little spin on the webpage about her that is written by someone claiming to be her. This is extremely frustrating. I had someone from another country use my pictures and name, my facebook pictures and information, and make a facebook. They spoke some sort of Arabic language, and only had guys added. This is irrelevant, but the point I’m trying to make is that you feel very invaded when someone does something like that. As soon as this aspect was mentioned in class I was thinking ‘oh wow, that happened to me !’

Cullum, Botchan Corrupt Principals

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In Student Days, you can automatically tell that education in Japan is a serious thing. The film in class made it obvious that there was also quite a bit of corruption in the education system. If you had money or if your parents were a ‘big deal’ you could get in without the good grades. Unfortunately, for Botchan, he had no such connections and he had to study. In the film from class, a series of unfortunate events happened to Botchan. His sick brother, that had not even been prepared for the test, passed the test; Botchan, who had studied hard and long, had not passed the test. His brother also ended up with the girl he was in love with and wanted to marry. 

In Botchan it was pretty evident that the principal and the vice principal (Red Shirt and Buffoon) had all the power, and they did not exactly use it right. Hoffa had been kind to Botchan since the moment he had arrived. On the first day of class, the students immediately started ridiculing Botchan. Every day he arrived to class, they had a new cartoon drawing of Botchan with mean things that were meant to humiliate him written next to it. After his night duty mishap, he confronted Red Shirt and Buffoon about it and on a fishing trip, Red Shirt and Buffoon pinned the students behavior or Hoffa. After they turn against eachother, Hoffa stands up for Botchan and Botchan then realizes that Red Shirt and Buffoon were the ones behind the students. The principal and the vice principal were corrupt! 

Our Senior Sweatshirts

In my high school, we always joked with the teachers, but we would have NEVER dared to treat a teacher like the students in Botchan treated Botchan. There was far more teasing among students like the kind in Botchan. My senior year, there was an issue that the student body, mostly the senior students, complained and pushed so hard to get through, that our principal quit over the intercom about. At Belle Chasse High School, we had/have to wear uniforms. A black or red uniform shirt with the school crest and khaki shorts or pants. We had to wear white, black or red socks and we had to have lace up shoes. If you wore an undershirt, it had to be black, white or red. On Fridays, we were able to wear club and senior shirts. We were told that we weren’t going to be able to wear any sweatshirts or shirts that didn’t say ‘Belle Chasse High School’ on it anymore. This excluded all of the club shirts, club sweatshirts, some sports team shirts and last but definitely not least, this means we couldn’t wear our senior sweatshirts and shirts. We were outraged. Everyone got their parents to call to the school and complain. We had bought these shirts sweatshirts from the school, so why couldn’t we wear them to school? Students were dropping by the principals office to complain, and parents were showing up to school to yell at the principal. We ended up pushing him so far, that he told us ‘no more uniforms, I quit’ over the intercom. 

       In my four years of attending Belle Chasse High, there was one teacher that got punched twice. He was seriously annoying and unnecessarily mean to his students though. My freshman year he told a student to shave and that he was writing him up and the kid straight up punched the teacher in the face. Senior year, he took someones phone away, they stood up and slapped him across the face, took their phone and left. So I thought it was appropriate to include a video of a student punching a teacher in the face. This is exactly how the punch went down freshman year, except the teacher didn't push the student first. 

Cullum, Good Power in Ninja Scroll

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I am not going to lie, I actually enjoyed Ninja Scroll. When trying to pick one central topic to blog about, I, once again, can not just choose one specific topic, so I’m choosing a broad one. The most obvious theme in Ninja Scroll is powerful beings. Everyone from the characters considered to be good to the characters considered to be evil are powerful in this movie. Having power sometimes destroys a person and turns them in the direction of being evil. In my opinion there were far more ‘evil’ users of power then good in Ninja Scroll. I will start with the first most powerful character, focusing heavily on him. This blog will be fairly longer than my first two.

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The most powerful, influential character I noticed in Ninja Scroll was definitely Jubei. He was able to defeat Gemma twice, the first time he was able to regenerate himself. The second time, what he desired most ended up leading him to his demise when Jubei cut him in half and left him in a river of melted gold. Jubei is also very cunning and is able to trick some of the eight Demons of Kimon. Jubei is not only powerful, but very honorable and loyal, like a Samurai should be. In the end, Jubei does not follow Dakuan to his next destination to get rewarded, but instead he cuts whatever the old man was holding a brick of gold in so that it falls in the water. I believe his reward was knowing the the old man did not get the gold. When Kagero offers herself to him to counteract the poison inside of him with the poison inside of her, he declines her offer. He does not just decline her offer because he is respectful, but he does not do it because he feels like he would be raping her. My interpretation is that he believes she will be wondering wether he had sex with her to cure himself or because he actually wanted to. This shows that Jubei is not only superhuman physically, but an amazingly remarkable person mentally as well. He is the Robin Hood of Samurai’s after all. 

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Kagero is a very powerful woman in the movie. She is a woman Ninja. After Jubei ‘saves’ her from the oni, she follows him, determined to pay him back for his help. She ends up dying to defend him, which I think makes her more of a Samurai than a ninja, but thats just my opinion. Anyone that even touches her is poisoned and dies.. She killed two Demons of Kimon, including the oni and the shadow puppeteer, with this very poison. She is a superb fighter and is the only one that survived the trip to the ‘infected’ village, even if Jubei is some what responsible for her survival. 

Cullum, Mya : Akira Blog Post

Before I had even pressed play on the streamed video of Akira, I could tell there was going to be a lot of action in it. Eleven o’clock on Wednesday night was the first time I had watched an anime film, that was not produced by Studio Ghibli, all the way through. I had noticed multiple themes throughout the movie and trying to write about just one was too complicated for me. 

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The first thing that jumped out at me was how controlling the government and higher powers are in the Akira.  Ever since the 1988 disaster, the government has cracked down. They set up lengthy check-points all of the time. They even have check-points at the mall that the citizens basically have to shop at. At the school, the disciplinarian figure just started slapping the characters in the face and was screaming ‘discipline’ at them when he did it.

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I also found it terrible that the government knew about the genetic research being done on these children, which brings me to my next point. I personally think that doing genetic research on children is wrong, especially ones that did not consent to it.  As the film opens up, you see the child that was abducted forced to go back to the facility. This child is an esper and he has psychic abilities. The scientist and Colonel Shikishima decide that its okay to just take the wounded Tetsuo with them back to the facility with them. When they take Tetsuo back to the facility to heal him they realize he has the mental frequencies that are similar to the former powerful Akira. They automatically start thinking of the powers he could posses and what he could be capable of. The doctor and colonel give Tetsuo capsules that make him develop the psychic abilities without Tetsuo even knowing. They later realize they cannot control Tetsuo because Tetsuo cannot even control himself. Ever since he obtained the powers, he gets random pains when he uses them.Tetsuo loses control of himself when his pain and emotions grow too overwhelming. Tetsuo ends up creating a disaster much like the one Akira created.

Mya Cullum~

From My Facebook!

Hello everyone! My name is Mya Marie Cullum and I turn 18 on Labor Day. I am from Belle Chasse, Louisiana and I'm a commuter here at Loyola. I work at the Palace Cafe on Canal street and I LOVE it there.This is not my only blog, I also have a Tumblr, which I am ALWAYS on in my free time. I love the color purple and Hello Kitty! Right now I'm on a 'Young the Giant' kick. I'm into indie music and floral patterns. My hair has been blue, purple, pink, red, bright blonde, and orange. I have two little brother, one is 8 and one is 10. I used to be a cheerleader in primary school. I like to eat food, a lot. I'm thinking that I won't have much of a social life this year due to school, work-study, and my job at Palace. For the last three years I have had a job, I haven't gone a day without one. I've worked at PJ's Coffee of New Orleans as a barista Quiznos Subs as a sandwich artist, and now Palace Cafe as a hostess. I'm very outgoing and this year I have vowed to work out, I'm trying to utilize as much of Loyola as I can. I'm a Mac user and I HATE PCs. As a dare during senior year I joined the school's 'Miss BCHS Pageant'. I ended up winning second runner up and EVERYONE was surprised by this, not just me.
I enjoy Studio Ghibli anime. I love Howl's Moving Castle, Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away. Non-anime things that I love anyway include video games, books, tv, food (again), music and random miscellaneous items that have sentimental value to me. I enjoy not having a social life by playing Fallout3, watching ABC family (because lets be honest, Pretty Little Liars, Switched at Birth, Secret Life of the American Teenager and the Lying Games are pretty amazing), watching Fringe, blogging on tumblr, playing Pokemon, watching Misfits and reading. I love Looking For Alaska, Cracked Up to Be, Beautiful, Harry Potter, Southern Vampire Series, and the Mortal Instruments. Now go laugh at that baby picture of me as a pumpkin.