Sakura-Con

Sakura-Con opens this weekend in Seattle. It’s a full three days of intense creativity, energy and excitement.

Seattle’s anime convention draws thousands.

What is anime? Anime is animated stories in books, movies and episodic broadcasts. It is also a Japanese cultural celebration.

The official definition of anime is: Japanese hand-drawn or computer animation.

Personally, I think it’s so much more.

Anime knows no boundaries. It pulls people together from diverse walks of life, diverse cultures, old and young (okay – mostly young), artists, voice actors, animators, gamers, and cosplay aficionados.

Anime started in Japan (1917) and is still mostly Japanese, though you can now find some “anime” created and produced in other counties. It spread like wildfire in the last few decades and is enjoyed around the world.

My favorite part of anime is the rich tradition of stories that rely heavily on mythology and crypto zoology. Among my favorites are stories that revolve around Yokai, supernatural monsters and spirits from Japanese folklore.

As a cat person, I’m fond of the bakeneko. http://yokai.com/bakeneko/ As Japanese cats age, they become more powerful and take on more human characteristics. They can shapeshift, possess humans, and can speak. The longer the cat’s tail, the more powerful they can become. The Bengals are quite hopeful about the possibility of these powers, especially if they involve mastery over can openers.

Sakura-Con: http://sakuracon.org/

Anime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime

Yokai: http://yokai.com/

Cosplay (costume play): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay

Next week, I’ll return to our regularly scheduled mythology.

~lisa

 

Writers Anonymous

Writers are known as solitary and elusive, but they exist among us. You’ve probably seen one or two of them without even realizing it.

Writers, otherwise known as those who write, live in more diverse habitats than the ubiquitous crow.

While a secluded ivory tower without any distractions or restrictions on their time haunts their dreams, most writers live out in the social sphere. Many are happily disguised as normal “non-writer” people.

These writers among us, who work and play next to us, also go to parties, play sports, watch television, and sometimes even own animals other than cats (or owls).

Overall most keep up a good façade that hides their inner nature. Most writers don’t want you to know how much they study you. They mine their daily social interactions looking for nervous ticks, rhythms of speech and the archetypes into which you fit. The world, outside of the ivory tower they crave, is their playground.

Another secret (& I know I must be breaking some secret code in telling you this) is that writers congregate. They join critique groups, writing clubs, support groups and type furiously at speed writing tables.

Even more than that, writers by the hundreds will go to writing conventions. They seek each other out, springboard off of each other’s energy and somehow bring a little more magic into the world.

This week is the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Conference. http://www.pnwa.org/

And I am going in…

~lisa