Journal 68 Phrases, Switch 2, My Vintage Cartoons and Games

Hey girls. How was your week?

Do you ever think about how phrases like “Be yourself” can backfire? Phrases like “Follow your heart,” “Push yourself,” “Try new things.” I wonder sometimes how these phrases could be misused. Life can be so hard to figure out.

Even in ancient days it took people a lifetime to realize the most basic obvious things. It’s so much harder when you’re young. I can’t imagine being young and having the internet today.

Nowadays, it feels like the most obvious things to talk about are taboo.

Well, I want to share that this week we bought a Switch 2! It was time to shake things up and try new and different video games (although I keep calling it a Wii). I'm looking forward to getting to know it. Once I started playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I was hooked! What do they put in it?

For several years I have been playing games on the Xbox: I got into games, enjoyed games, got confused by games, faced challenges in games, but I was always very mellow and never worked up. It was a relaxing experience!

No games made me as neurotic as playing this game haha! I was both addicted and it would make me angry! The controller almost got hurled across the room. Why did it work me up so much?

If it does this to a kid, parents have to be mindful of the designs of software and not blame the child for following the design, the same way we all get influenced by design. For example, incessant phone notifications.

I remember getting miffed at Nintendo a long time ago. I played Harvest Moon DS, a farming game, and had a cow named Tart, as part of a dessert naming theme. I tried the online feature, but the name was censored. After that, Tart’s name remained censored in my game even after I stopped playing online. It was incredibly annoying.

I have been thinking a lot about my late childhood cartoons and video games. 2000-2005 was big for me for video games, and 2005-2008 was big on cartoons, anime, and manga. It has been twenty years since 2005. So the twenty year cycle to make something vintage and trendy again has roughly completed. It also feels like a natural time for me to revisit them. Any earlier and it would be too “in the past.”

My cartoon interests were Winx Club and any other cartoons I could watch on the public channels. I did not have cable, so I did not see fancy shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender until I was an adult. And my most special anime was Tokyo Mew Mew. I recently learned that it was remade into a new adaptation. I never expected that. I even got emotional like a total fan. Okay, I cried. I never get like that!

I remember in the US there was criticism over the outfits of the characters. It was a reinterpretation of Western clothes, from a different country, in a different context, so I don’t think the criticism is valid. Westerners also reinterpret other cultures’ clothes. The ensembles are more modest than what I see sold to preteens at Target today. The characters and the story are wholesome and modest. More modest than many American tween shows, especially some of the new ones.

I think the censorship of shows like Tokyo Mew Mew by 4Kids could be studied. What were they trying to achieve over the minds of children with all of their strange little edits? Very creepy and subliminal. Many original studios pulled the rights from 4Kids, but the damage was done. At that age I started really using the internet and kept up with fan sites that documented the censorship as the show aired. Now, those sites would be met with copyright infringement notices.

Speaking of copyright infringement, I am also sad for all of the anime music videos that were lost. I don’t think young fans today even know about anime music videos. Or other types of fan videos that were so prominent in the late 2000s. It was an art form. Anime conventions used to host AMV competitions. So much creative energy and talent. So many young teens learned to edit videos from this.

I did not watch anime again for a long time. One of the few anime that popped through my hiatus was Hakumei and Mikochi. I was so happy when in the credits I saw Reiko Yoshida, one of the creators of Tokyo Mew Mew. She is the writer and Mia Ikumi was the illustrator.

Then there is my favorite video game of all time... I hesitate to say it because it’s special hahaha... but the game is...

The game is Chrono Cross, released in 1999 by SquareSoft. I also liked the Spyro series and the Harvest Moon series.

I really liked Chrono Cross, and was in awe of the main female character, Kid. This game was so beautiful and inspirational. The warm climate setting and beautiful little villages were lovely. The music was beautiful. It had environmental themes.

I think video games peaked in the early 2000s. And it was the last vestige of good cartoons before the pre-internet people retired or were forced out.

The prospect of indie games, which used to look so promising, have let me down. Rarely do they manage to bring it home. There are games I would never have imagined as a middle-schooler, but they all have such political messages. The games targeted at women can be especially manipulative, many in a “cozy” and “cute” package.

Nowadays, these industries are so desperate they resort to sequels, remakes, and AI. I don’t think there is a lack of talent per se, maybe a little, but the industries want such a grip on the stories, and have desecrated so many series, and constantly make weird secret little edits, that highly talented and creative people want nothing to do with them. Yet they are so desperate, they mine the internet and independent creators for ideas.

With zero legal protections from AI, they are having no trouble harvesting those ideas. Can’t make an AMV because of the corporation, but can have your work stolen by the same corporation. And you might never know what part they stole. What times we live in.

I was happy to share my favorite cartoons and games with you.

Stay strong, cool cats!

Asya Carrino