Acts of Cultural Vandalism #7 - The Black Chapter and the Price Equation

This edition of Acts of Cultural Vandalism is about a curious artifact from a supernatural series from the early-1990s called YuYu Hakusho. This award-winning manga by Yoshihiro Togashi was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from December 1990 to July 1994. It was adapted as an Anime TV series from 1992-5 and resulted in two movies and a couple of OVAs.

For the people who haven’t read or seen this series, it is about a high school delinquent named Yusuke Urameshi. He rescues a young child from been run over by an idiot in a Porsche and gets killed himself, resulting in him becoming a ghost. However, according to the afterlife’s books he was not supposed to do so (They didn’t think he would try and save the kid (he would have survived anyway without him rescuing him, according to the books)). After doing a series of audacious challenges set by King Enma, he is returned to the world of the living as a underworld detective specializing in the activities of demons living and doing nasty things in the human world. The series starts out as kind of typical detective series like Case Closed or Life on Mars, but then suddenly turns into a martial arts battle series, like Bleach or Naruto. The entire series is a mix of the author’s interests in the occult, horror films and a smattering of Buddhist mythology.

The artifact this blog is about is an artifact called “The Black Chapter.” It’s a video tape of thousands of hours of all the terrible things humanity has ever done (which is astonishing, considering that you can only get up to four hours on long play on VHS). You might call it “the ultimate video nasty.”

P154-5 of volume 14 of YuYu Hakusho 

(first published by Shueisha Inc. in 1993, 

translated to English and printed by Viz Media, LLC in February 2008)

The first thing about it is that it’s a video tape. It’s easy to imagine that this record of horror wasn’t always a video tape. It will have once been an illustrated scroll, then a book, then a reel of film before it became a tape. If it still existed today, it will have been converted to DVD (or Blu-ray for the HD picture!) or become just a large video file on a server somewhere on the internet (which would be scary if it really did exist. Someone could see it without warning while looking for videos involving kittens!).

The second thing about it is how the diabolical creator of this video captured the footage for it. Considering that the tape was made in the 1980s-early-90s, there will have been a lot of stuff going on in the world that will have been possible to capture on video tape. But what about times before video tape existed? Film can only go as far back as the 1880s, which will have covered a lot of bloody history and injustices. But what about before that time? What about the violence of the medieval world or before that? Unless the demons who made this tape had access to time travel technology or had some form of motion picture camera and recording device then, the tape in question is only would have only the record of a century worth of violence.

And now the biggest question of all, what if someone watches it? Is it like the tape in the 2002 horror The Ring, which is an Americanized remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring, which is the adaptation of the 1991 novel Ring by Koji Suzuki? Could this tape have been the inspiration of Ring? I doubt this, considering the dates. But in YuYu Hakusho someone did see it. Kiyoshi Mitarai (the light-haired sort-of-feminine guy in the scan above) was groomed into a group of conspiring fellows called the Sensui Seven, who's leader planned to dissolve the barrier between the demon world and the human world in the hope that humanity will be beaten to a bloody pulp for their immoral actions. The Black Chapter was the perfect recruitment tool.Not surprisingly, the tape had the desired effect, turning this middle school outcast to a potential heartless serial killer. Fortunately, Yusuke and his "pals" (and I use the quotation marks for a valid reason, and'll take forever to explain) intervened and showed him the tape was, in fact, as bias as Fox News.

But that's just one person, who was intentionally warped for someone else's means. What if someone unintentionally watches it? Are they any real world equivalents to the Black Chapter? The only real world equivalent I can think of is American geneticist George Robert Price who devised the Price Equation of evolution, which turned out to be his Black Chapter revelation. 

George R. Price (1922-75)

George Price was an extraordinary scientific character. A doctorate in chemistry, he was a consultant for the Argonne National Laboratory (an offspring of the Manhattan Project, which developed America's first nuclear reactors for civilian use). He then dabbled with medical research at the University of Minnesota. In 1955 and 56, he wrote two papers to Science criticizing the pseudo-scientific claims of extrasensory perception (or ESP). During the height of the Cold War, he tried to convince the American government to spend $2billion on giving every citizen in Hungary two pairs of well-made shoes as a way to free Hungry from the Soviet Union (they didn't do it, of course). From 1961-7, he was a consultant of graphics data processing for IBM. In 1966 he was treated for thyroid cancer, which partly paralyzed him and made him dependent on thyroxine medicine. With the medical insurance money, he moved to Britain in 1967.

It was in Britain that his revelation happened. Building from previous work by William Hamilton, Price devised an equation that described the relationship between organisms and species and their genes (and how much of the same genes they share). According to this equation (in the simplest terms I can think of), the more genetically close two organisms are, the more willing they'll help each other. In other words, if you are on a car ferry on a multi-car road trip, one car containing you and your brother/sister, one car containing your cousins and one car containing your best friends, if the ferry sinks with all of them having an equal chance of drowning, (no matter how much you like your friends and hate your family) you'll rescue your relatives first without thinking (closest sibling first of course (As you two are in the same car)). This equation helped prove that altruism (the caring of others) in all its forms (from famine aid to christian kindness) has evolutionary logic. By caring for others that share the same genes, you'll insure those genes' survival. However, the equation also proves that an equally beneficial measure for gene survival is the the killing off of rival, non-relating organisms (even if it kills the attacking organism). This meant that war and violence was rooted into human life as breathing. It was this part of his findings that shocked Price and can be said to be cause of what happened next. 

In 1970, the strong atheist had an religious experience and converted to Christianity, becoming an avid bible scholar. He even wrote a lengthy essay entitled The Twelve Days of Easter, where he argued that the calendar of events surrounding Jesus' death in Easter Week was actually slightly longer. He later moved away from scholarship to community work, with a strong spirit of selflessness. He allowed the homeless of North London shelter in his home and gave away his money and processions to help alcoholics. But they weren't grateful for his generosity (as they stole from him) and he was thrown out of his rented house because of a construction project (preventing him from sheltering the homeless). He became depressed as a result, while he hopped from squat to squat. In January 1976, he did the ultimate selfless act - he committed suicide. 

If a human being saw the contents of the Black Chapter, could this be the result? For an atheist, probably, but what about a christian? I think I'll leave this for you to ponder....

I first heard of George Price on the BBC Documentary Darwin's Dangerous Idea (2009) presented by Andrew Marr (who backed him when he was voted in the top ten greatest Britons of all time in 2002 (he came fourth)). Since 2009, the story of the scientist who devised an equation that described human kindness and proved that violence was in human nature, who then became a christian and gave away his processions to help the homeless (and committed suicide) was in the back drawer of my memory (I even forgot his name). I didn't plan to include biological mathematical theory to a blog that was about a fictional video nasty, but the story fell out that drawer into my conscious and I made the connections between Kiyoshi Mitarai watching the Black Chapter and Price and his equation. I like it when this happens, when an obscure story you heard long ago that has some relevance to what your writing suddenly jumps into your mind.

And now the final sketch, and its another thing that could happen to anyone (who may not be human) who sees the Black Chapter.

Acts of Cultural Vandalism #6 - An observation about a boy who like cake!

On the night of Friday 5th April I developed a fever. I was shivering so much with such a temperature I literally couldn't sleep that night. I was meant to go to take my nephew and mum to the cinema in the early Saturday morning, but I couldn't because of the lack of sleep (they went on their own  without me and saw Wreck-It Ralph. My Nephew liked it but found the Call of Duty style game bit scary (I haven't seen it let, so forgive me for getting this description of the scene wrong)).
My first two weeks of April are packed for me, because of my nephew's Easter holiday from primary school. But this "surprise break" and and some ill feeling that prevented me from eating (we all do waste a lot of time eating food, even on the go) I had a lot of free time that day's afternoon (before Doctor Who and Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway) so I decided to watch a DVD that I purchased a long while ago but didn't develop the will to make time to place in the DVD player let alone press the play button soon after buying it (I have a lot of them - movies, series and so on).

On that sunny Saturday afternoon I watched the first several episodes of the anime romantic comedy series Ouran High School Host Club. Starting as a manga first published in LaLa magazine in September 2002, it was adapted to animation in 2006 and then was adapted to live action in 2011 (which isn't unusual in Japan).

It involves the students of a fictional elitist high school in Tokyo, an unusual school club and one scholarship student named Haruhi Fujioka. One day, while trying to find a quiet place to study (like you do in high school and college) Haruhi stumbles into an music room and encounters the school host club that occupies it. During this meeting of cultures Haruhi accidentally breaks an renaissance-era vase worth ¥8,000,000 (US$80,000 in the U.S. English manga tranlation) and is made to pay back the costs by becoming a host for them. But (and here's the clincher) the club members soon within a few hours of making Haruhi a host find out that Haruhi is actually ... a girl. All sorts of hilarity (and some fourth wall breaking) ensues afterwards.

Now, a "host club" (you will have to click this link to learn more) is an establishment where well-dressed or theme-dressed young men (for a fee) engage in sweet loving conversations with (mostly) female clients over a drink or two of various beverages. Some mild kissing could happen in such places, but that's it. Nothing beyond that. There other places for that, which has nothing to do with host clubs and they like to stay as far away from that territory as possible thank you very much, ignorant pricks.

Now, it will take me forever to explain to the non-otaku among you the cultural concepts this series mostly parodies and satirizes, so below is a link to a paper written by Tania Darlington from the University of Florida entitled "The Queering of Haruhi Fujioka: Cross-Dressing, Camp and Commoner Culture in Ouran High School Host Club" which thankfully covers everything I would have said if I had to explain why the series is a hit.

http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_3/darlington/

But, I'll add this. If your a fan of Little Britain, you'll like this series (but you may need to develop a tolerance to the colour pink, as its the most dominant hue in the show's colour scheme).

Now to the main reason for this entry. One of the "hosts" is the shockingly-seemingly-innocently-cute Mitsukuni Haninozuka (also known as "Hunny" or "Honey"). Here's a picture of him.

This 17-year-old(?) is a huge draw to the club. Why? Just look at him. His blonde hair, big brown eyes and short stature make him look like a child (and he knows it). He has a child-like voice (just listen to it in the anime), takes afternoon naps, owns a cuddly toy (which was made by his late grandmother (striking the heart strings already) and.... he loves cake (boy he love the cake!).

Really. He really likes the cake!

Look at that pile of empty plates!

In fact, he likes cake so much that for a few nights a week, he'll have "cake nights," which can only be described as extreme midnight snacking. But the thing is, he has to metabolism to eat a lot of cake and gain no weight at all. It's... kind of creepy..... (according to his younger brother Chika).

If cuteness were a weapon, he'll be an atomic bomb (and I use to term "weapon" for good reason, which I'll explain later). Now, when I first saw images from this series in Neo magazine back in 2009 "Honey" didn't stand out to me. I saw all the characters on a flat equal platform (a raised pink platform, as they were on the cover and the anime of subject in that month's main article).

Neo, Issue 56 - April 2009. Where I first heard of the host club.

But now that I have seen them move and talk on liquid crystal something about "Honey" hit me. He somehow remained me of someone. Another anime character from years ago. But who.....

Oh yes, now I remember. The character on the right eating noodles is Max Tate. And here's a few pictures.

Max Tate (left - series 1, middle series 2, right - series 3).

He is the youngest (12 when we first meet him back in series 1) member of the makeshift team of unlikely mates in an alternate universe the Bladebreakers. He is a good-natures, happy-go-lucky kind of guy (which, isn't surprising, considering he's half American). He is a bit of a flirt (It was once revealed that he dyed his hair to impress the girls, which may explain the slight change in shade from series to series (as seen in the pics above). If he were a dog, he'll defiantly be a golden Labrador. So, so far, he is like "Honey."

However, unlike "Honey," Max is not a big sweet tooth. His most noticeable food craving is mayonnaise (or mustard in the English Dub), which he has on everything and is very willing to have others try his dietary passion (to the annoyance to some....).

But if you browse the pages of Beyblade fan fiction on fanfiction.net (which numbers over 20,000 by the time of writing (which is surprising for such a series), putting it in the top 20 most written about franchises in the anime and manga group. Ouran High School Host Club is also in the top 20, just below Beyblade with over 18,500 in the time of writing) you'll find that Max is portrayed many times in a role similar to "Honey's." He is portrayed many times as a flirty sugar-crazed maniac. Here's a few examples that really show this characterization.

What-might-happen

Maxie-goes-to-the-Amusement-Park

Maxie-Plus-Sugar-equals-DISASTER

Max's-Sugar-High-Adventure

Maxie-Hood

You get the idea, especially that last one where Max (in a sugar high state) thinks he's Robin Hood (with hilarious results).

Despite the fact that Max has probably never been pictured eating a piece of cake, chocolate, candy or anything that most people can call "sweet" in any of the 150-odd episodes of the animated series (which I have watched for "research reasons") and the 14 volumes of manga first published from 1999-2004 (which I have flicked though also for  "research reasons") the fan fiction writers do so anyway. Why?

Its become such a cliche in this fan fiction forum that prominent Australian fan fiction writer AquilaTempestas wrote this chapter in the fan fiction "Dear Beyblade Authors," in 2012 imagining his disgust....

Chapter Two: Sincerely, Max

Dear FanFiction Authors,

Why do people think I'm always high on sugar? Do you think I'm a drug addict? Have you considered I might just be a happy person? I like noodles. NOODLES. Not sweets! Besides... sugar rush is a myth. Geez.

Yours sincerely, Max

Is there something about small white boys with blonde hair and big eyes that instantly sends a message that says "I'm a glucophile" (see Invented Word 2)? Their not children, their teenagers. And also, why is it the blonde, not the brunettes who get the cake. It seems a bit borderline racist. And this could seriously damage them (health-wise). They could be many blonde-haired Caucasians out their who are now diabetic because of girls feeding them so much sugar (sometimes against their will)! I'm worried about this. If these "kids" get overfed with sweet things (and are not careful) they'll soon lose their cuteness, which will affect their chances later in life. In extreme cases, they will become so obese that the only people who would make a pass on them in their late-teens will be elderly perverts.

With that in mind, could "Honey" or Max become a possible Chris Griffin? No. "Honey" is 17 and has the metabolism to process a lot of cake, so he will be fine. And if he did start building weight, he can easily get rid of it. Why? Remember that I said that "If cuteness were a weapon, he'll be an atomic bomb"? I said that with good reason. That is because, behind his cute exterior "Honey" is a fierce weapon of mass destruction. He is a martial arts black belt. In fact, beyond that! He was a champion before he entered high school and was head of the school's karate club, until he defeated his dad in a friendly fight. "Honey" proved so powerful that he was told not to fight, all-out, in public in risk of making Japan look like it had a secret weapon. It was this incident that led to "Honey" becoming part of the host club (no need to fight and all the delicious cake he could eat). Only occasionally you'll get to see this darker side of "Honey," as he's done a very good natural job hiding it. So what about Max? He never touched the stuff in the first place, so why are you worrying? The idea that he is a glucophile is your invention.

So what can we learn from this observation? First of all never assume that all cute-blonde-haired boys like sweet things and that even the most innocent-looking glucophile can have a dark side.

And now the final sketch, and as this entry has been about Ouran High School Host Club its about the misjerious Hitachiin twins Hikaru and Kaoru and their silly game of "Which one of us is Hikaru?" As twins who have perfected the art of been identical and been different at the same time, their childish game could easily be adapted as the final game in a daytime gameshow. 

(Sorry for the delay. A lot had happened at my end in the past two weeks which AFKed me.)

An alternative history in FMA

I just had a thought about Fullmetal Alchemist (one of my favorite mangas of all time) and its a scary one.

What if... Maes Hughes lived through the events of the story and lived long enough to see the invention of... the carousel slide projector? Oh the horror!

Imagine that! Endless slideshows of baby pictures of Elicia (Which is made worse for Elicia, if you consider that the events of FMA take place in the 1910s and will be in her 40s by the time the slideshow horror).

I did plan to have my own drawings to be on the wall of this picture, but it will have taken ages.

So I had to modify other people's images, so sorry to the original creators of these images. 

I do plan to replace them with my own in the future.

Or maybe, Elicia (or Hues' "friends") will stage their own slideshows as revenge.

I know Armstrong and Fuery aren't in this picture. 

It'll be 50 years since the events of the story,

 so I'm going to leave to you to ponder why they aren't there.

I recently found a fan fiction about Mustang's division doing The Rocky Horror Show as a charity performance. The only qualm I have about this fic is that The Rocky Horror Show wasn't first performed until.... 1973! But the idea is crazy enough for me to forgive the author. The second chapter was only published on the 29th March but I think this is worth reading.

Mustang's crew does The Rocky Horror Show

Dedicated to the memory of Brigadier General Maes Hughes 

1885-1914

Pokemon Snowmen

Here's a question. It's snowing and you are an avid Pokemon fan. Which Pokemon should I model? Of the 500-odd creatures to choose from, what is the best to model in the medium of snow? An ice-type (for the obvious reason). A water-type (which would work when the snow starts to thaw), like this well-sculpted Blastoise.

A Pokemon that's white in colour, like this Togepi?

Or something very ambitious or showy, like this Mewtwo one.

Or this very good one.

I'm sure this is a Pokemon, because of its design, but I have no idea what Pokemon this is. 

It's likely to be one of the legendary ones of the later generations, 

but I can't find it in my resources on this image alone. 

Or (the most obvious of all) a Pikachu.

But I think I just found the best snowman you could make. The inspiration came from this picture sent in by a reader to Pocket World Magazine (I occasionally buy it to add to my archive and for my nephew).

A Ditto snowman by James Harvey (aged 10) (from Pocket World Magazine Issue 140 March 2013)

A Ditto. Its perfect. Its simple. It requires little snow to make (ideal for when your urge to create is delayed to when the snow starts to thaw) and (and this is the best bit) its the only Pokemon that can have its ability truly acted out in the medium of snow - transform (but you may require a lot of snow if you plan to transform Ditto into something large (like a Gyarados)).

I like to point out that the Pokemon snowmen images were looked up on Google Images (so I have no idea who made them (except to Ditto)).

Additional note - I just remembered the Zorua and the Zoroark, the recently discovered creatures that can also transform. However, they are difficult to build, as they are fox-like animals on four legs and a lot of hair.

Acts of Cultrual Vandalism #3 - A thought about monster-human unity

I just had a thought. You know in the fictional worlds where monsters, like vampires, werewolves, various demons, and so on, exist? They are usually in conflict with human beings. Some of these people (and I use the word "people" for good reason) usually see themselves as somehow "superior" over mere humans, like white people use to have over everyone else until World War II.
But here's my thought. What if an alien from outer space visited this version of Earth and saw these "monsters" (and I use the quotation marks for good reason) and then saw actual humans, that alien wouldn't tell the difference. Their intelligent (and I use the term "intelligent" loosely to consider the wide spectrum of intelligence levels in the world (Stephen Hawking to Homer Simpson)), (mostly) bipedal creatures with two forward-looking eyes, small noses to have expressional faces, omnivore diets (though some of their teeth can suggest other diets), high vocal ranges (especially the Sirens) and (the most noted feature by humans) various features that have been shaped by human sexual tastes (I don't need to tell you what these things are).

And that's just the biology. Their behavior can be described as similar to humans. If you research human behavior, the many of things you'll find out can also be applied to "monsters" too.  (It's not surprising  since much of this fiction was created and inspired by humans.)

Now, with all this in mind, the boundary between "monster" and human is actually more blurred than you may think.

(But what about witches some of you may ask? Technically, they are individuals with special knowledge, like scientists. They can be neither human or "monster" depending on their genetics. On that note, what about human-"monster" hybrids? Threat them as mixed-raced people? Yes, but not in a racist way! Mixed relationships are on the rise (and I welcome it) so live with it, morons.)

Now, to end this thought, I'm going to follow the example set by Adam Hills. To all those "monsters" who have little regard of their fellow human and humans who think these "monsters" are all menaces that must be dealt with who may be reading this.... DON'T BE DICKS!!!

If an advanced alien race decide to invade Earth and enslave humanity, they will also enslave what have been degradingly-called "monsters" as well, as they don't care about things like supernatural abilities or unholy or in-moral activities. They'll clump you all together indiscriminately and you'll all then have a common cause in a  fight against your invaders. So to make this transition to harmony happen before such a thing happens to us all DON'T BE DICKS!!!

And now a word from our sponsors....

Have a guess who they are. 

For everyone who has worked it out, before you ask I didn't draw the boobs because I'm not that childish!