unpacking issues

I used to think I liked to pack and unpack things. When I was a freshman in college, I had so much fun moving out of my first dorm, and living somewhere new. Three years, three dorms and a handful of unforeseen trips later though, I've realized I really don't enjoy task of uprooting myself and all my belongings at a predictable interval of five months. And it's not just because I have enough stuff to fill more than ten bags and containers. It's because I've realized - how could I not, given my complete antitheses populate my tiny social sphere - that I'm a couch potato. Really.

I've also realized though, that this is the lifestyle I'll have to learn to love if I truly am to become my ideal FSO [Foreign Service Officer]. If my mother's job is any indication of how my future will look like, then it probably means living in a different house - in a different country - every few years, adjusting to all sorts of weather and terrain, etc. Oh yeah, and being game enough to eat absolutely all kinds of food. [And this is where my mother fails, because she's a picky eater, and the fish she likes best are in our hometown.] Not to mention, I'll probably never get married. Ha. Ha.

But whatever. This is my life, and this is what I want to do. So everything else can just suck it.

PULSES

PULSES by UP Dulaang Laboratoryo
A Play Inspired by People Living with HIV
By Icarus and Iscariot
Direction Pat Valera | Choreography Katte Sabate, Al Bernard Garcia | Music and Sound Design Teresa Barrozo | Lights Design Meliton Roxas, Jr | Set Design Sigmund Pecho | Costume Styling Lhenvil Paneda | Original Song Fitz Bitana | Stage Management John Mark Yap | Cast Celine Fernando, Camille Hernandez, Gry Gimena, Paul Jake Paule, Jules Dela Paz, Nicolo Magno, Elora Españo, Al Bernard Garcia

It’s difficult to sum up the Pulses experience in just one theme. I was talking to B during the intermission, trying to weave the pieces of the story into one of the linear plots I’m accustomed to, when I realized the show wasn’t meant to be taken as a package. Like Pulses, as in those beats in people’s wrists which indicate life, the stories featured in the play are short, quick, but all important. They all mean something.

The stories I liked best – or, in reflection paper format, the stories which struck me most – were those of Christine and Bo. Both are around my age, probably watch the same shows I do, go to the same places I do, and if these characters existed in real life, we might even have mutual friends. That’s why their stories got to me. I love how Christine maintained her positive, strawberry-tinted outlook despite knowing she was dying a little every day. There were so many black and purple bruises on her body that even though I knew the actress was only smudged with makeup I could tell how much each must hurt. And with Bo, I could relate to his opening lines, as he introduced his character to us. I was so sure only OFWs and sex workers could get HIV. But I’m not either, and I’m from a good school, a good family. It can’t happen to me.

The story featuring the mother – which, if I understood the post-production forum correctly, was based on real life events – who had passed the virus on to her child after acquiring it from her sea-based husband was the one that seemed most real. As in, it could happen anywhere, to any normal household in the Philippines. And I really hated it, when I found out that in Region 3 a community had wanted to burn two orphans whose parents had died of AIDS. I don’t hate the neighbors because I know how much something alien and different can frighten you. What I hate is how much we, as a supposedly nurturing country – hospitality, bayanihan and all that – do very little to educate our people about AIDS. I, for one, didn’t know HIV couldn’t be transmitted by kissing. [But I suppose I know a bit more now.]

The story for which I almost cried was that of Tita D. It’s strange, because the actress who took on that heavy role was a former classmate of mine, and in PI100 she had always given me the impression of being forever perky. But when she transformed into Tita D, an AIDS counselor, I was amazed. More than impressed, I was moved. I don’t presume to know anything vital about AIDS, or the lives of the people who live with it, because I don’t know if any of my friends have AIDS, and I’ve never met people who are aware that they have it. The most enlightening thing I’ve seen about life with AIDS is RENT, and even that might have been a watered down version of reality. But with Tita D’s story, I found I could still relate to part of her suffering. How you see people around you being helpless, and how you can’t do anything at all to help them. How you start losing the people who matter to you, one by one. It must suck. More than that, it must hurt. How you can only watch people you’ve become attached to succumb, one by one.

After the show, there was a short discussion on HIV/AIDS. Some nice people from Take the Test talked about AIDS awareness, and I realized I wanted to write about the experience for my blog. I had stopped writing here because I felt nothing was going on in my life anyway. Just a loop of school, work, Arashi – nothing had broken the monotony for months. But watching Pulses, somehow, I felt it was an injustice that I was seeing my life as something boring. Watching stories about people struggling to live, despite knowing they don’t have as much time as most people, it kind of gives you a feeling of responsibility. Like, you have to live, you can’t begrudge yourself the opportunity to be alive, not when thousands out there are dying to live a life like yours. So yes. This is me, writing again. Because I want stories like this to be written down, for people who care to see. If I can’t write about my life, I suppose I can write about the lives of the people around me.

24 September 2011

Onii-chan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne

The Onii-chan referred to here is Takanashi Shuusuke, who we assume to be a junior in high school. Being your average male teenager – and considering his double-edged personality – Shuusuke often finds himself carnally attracted by his younger sister Nao. To complicate matters, Nao also has hidden desires for Shuusuke, and while he thinks she’s innocent and pure, in truth she’s forever hatching plots to push her brother to commit incestuous acts with her. The ebb and flow of their not-so-filial-relationship develops a tsunami-like impact when Shuusuke eventually finds out that Nao is adopted. Despite this, he vows to treat her as he would his nonexistent biological sister – no menial task given the lengths Nao scales just to get him to see her as more than just that.

I got into watching this highly entertaining – albeit unabashedly perverse – anime because of GotWoot Subs. They did the best subbing work on Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, which I actually followed just for the heck of watching something that deals with the paranormal, and I’ve been downloading some of their releases since. [They’re really good, although they take on shows ‘no one else does’.] Because I never planned to watch OnK – it was never in my ‘to watch’ list on MAL, and I never scoured DVD encampments for it – it doesn’t fit my type. Strangely though, I followed it until the end, and honestly, it’s good. Brainlessly, wantonly comical, but that doesn’t make it any less of a laughtrip.

There honestly isn’t much of the character aspect here though. In fact, we hardly ever know what these kids busy themselves with aside from collecting porno mags and looking up girls’ miniskirts. Not to mention, two of Nao’s friends and some other girls who show up in the latter episodes are given very little airtime – in truth, their on-off presence does nothing to push the plot forward, whatsoever. But I do appreciate Shuusuke, and I really like his friends, the AGE Explorers. I love how their relationship’s so warm even though they’re bonded by something as crazy as a love for all things pornographic. They remind me that friendship is found under the most absurd circumstances, that friends are bound by the weirdest reasons. I guess that’s why I love those boys.

The art’s good – or maybe that’s because I torrented everything, and I’m just shocked by the transition from pirated DVD grain to massively multi-pixeled clarity. The colors are rich, and well-blended, and just right for an anime of this kind – not too shounen, but not too adult either. Still, it’s the music I love best about OnK, really. I love both the OP and the ED, and even the BGM is super kulit, like something you’d expect out of a Doraemon episode. I particularly love these lines from the chorus of the OP:

I want to cross that line | I just have to know how paradise tastes |

Maybe it’s sweet, or maybe it’s not | Either way, it’s a fabulous world |

That should give you an idea of what to expect from this show. I guarantee you’ll ask yourself multiple times why you’re watching this show, but I also assure you that once you reach the last episode – which is completely off the anime timeline and just plain inconsistent with the rest of the series, but never mind – you’ll realize all the censored panty flashes and major WTH moments were worth it.

Recommended for: open-minded people looking for a lung-deep laughtrip

Recommended Subbing Team: GotWoot Fansubs [gotwoot-subs.net]

Episodes: 12 (2011)

Photo Credits

Index Down

Emory.edu