And now, what is a story arc (manga or anime) that you find yourself skipping more often than not?
This is the same *anon* from some months ago who asked me about my fave Naruto story arc and for whatever reason I didn't respond to this follow-up question 😅
I haven't really rewatched the series since I finished it... I do remember though that when I was binge-watching, I fell asleep during the filler episodes where Naruto's on a ship. I think it's the episodes with the giant squid, the huge amount of clones that don't want to dispel, the one where he and Yamato get super sick... those episodes. But maybe I'd rewatch those just to watch them properly.
The episodes I wouldn't want to rewatch is that one creepy-looking boy with huge eyes that Naruto & co. befriend as children, that episode with that little girl with genjutsu powers that she can't control, the episodes about Danzo's and Obito's childhoods, and even the episodes about Zabuza and Haku. Basically, I don't want to watch depressing and stressful stuff again!!
Now, now, can it be that the inimitable Mr. Barber is afraid of a little competition? Surely, you’re confident enough that you could outdo some flannel wearing detective? Perhaps you know something about him that makes you shirk away from going head to head with such a man? Please share this information with the ladies. I’m sure they’d revel in such knowledge.
Hello Detective Zimmer frame.
You appear to have activated the anonymous option by mistake while sending your Ask.
It's AAPI month! Any piece of media (book, show, movie, podcast...) to recommend us?
😄 Yes!
Films:
The Farewell, Directed by Lulu Wang - Chinese-born, U.S.-raised Billi (Awkwafina) reluctantly returns to Changchun to find that, although the whole family knows their beloved matriarch, Nai-Nai, has been given mere weeks to live, everyone has decided not to tell Nai Nai herself.
The characters are funny, heartwarming, and believable. The cinematography is moving. My older sister cried in the theatre and has re-watched it several times. ...my family is not Chinese, but my husband is half!
Wayfinders: A Pacific Odyssey, Directed by Gail K. Evenari - This award-winning PBS documentary sweeps viewers into a seafaring adventure with a community of Polynesians, as they build traditional sailing canoes, learn how to follow the stars across the open ocean, and embark upon a 2,000-mile voyage in the wake of their ancestors.
Papa Mau: The Wayfinder, Directed by Nāʻālehu Anthony - Papa Mau: The Wayfinder is a feature-length documentary that takes a retrospective look at the influence of Mau Piailug, a native from the tiny Micronesian atoll of Satawal, on reviving the art of non-instrument navigation in Polynesia. In Satawal, navigators are chosen at birth and begin training at an early age, and Mau was recognized as a master.
Moananuiākea: One Ocean, One People, One Canoe, Directed by Nāʻālehu Anthony - Moananuiākea is a feature-length documentary film telling the story of the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage of legendary canoe Hōkūleʻa. The three-year voyage connected countless individuals and communities from around the globe. Purchase it on Blu-Ray here.
I highly, highly recommend watching these documentaries and watching them in this order. They're online! Wayfinders is a 1-hour brief history of this significant part of the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance in the 1970s, the preceding Western skepticism of Polynesian navigation, historical Polynesian cultural genocide, and the difficulties in reconnecting with the lost art of wayfinding. Mau Piailug is mentioned in the first documentary, but Papa Mau dives deeper into this amazing Micronesian man and how none of this could have happened without his patience and passion. Moananuiākea documents the results of unbelievable hard work to circumnavigate the globe using traditional techniques. It's about the next generation of navigators, environmental advocacy, and a celebration of indigenous cultures and pride around the world.
Books:
Crazy Rich Asians, China Rich Girlfriend, & Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan - Chinese-American Rachel Chu travels with her boyfriend Nick Young to his home in Singapore for his best friend's wedding. Unknown to her, Nick not only belongs to one of the top ten wealthiest families in Asia but is possibly the sole heir to his family's great fortune.
I've watched the movie many times, and it's WONDERFULLY FUN, and yet the books are even better! The narrator is really funny, the side characters get a ton more interesting (particularly Colin Khoo and Kitty Pong). China Rich Girlfriend focuses more on Astrid, her husband Michael, and her ex-fiance Charlie.
The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir by Kao Kalia Yang - Yang recounts her family's escape into Thailand during the Vietnam War, their immigration to America, and the challenges they faced adapting to a new place and language.
This was a required text before going to college, and it was definitely one of the best books I have ever read in my life. I met the author at a guest speaker college event, and she is one of the most beautiful people I have ever been blessed to hear and see. I couldn't believe her handle of language...it was like spoken poetry yet she was really just talking.
I have much more stuff I could recommend, but that's enough. Seriously, if you watched and enjoyed the Disney movie Moana, then you should watch the wayfinding documentaries.
Is this Imanga once again allowing me to jump on my soapbox for things no one else cares about!!!!!!!!! 😍😍
Starting from Top-Top-TOP FAVE to Also Top Fave!!:
1. Cats
Did I watch the recent movie? Nooooo. I'm way too scared to see if they ruined my #1 beloved musical as much as others say they did. I have loved the stage musical since I was a little girl because of the white cat, Victoria. Since I danced ballet, her beginning solo made me 🤩. People never understand why I love Cats. I just love the dancing!!! so much dancing!!!...and the fun songs...and the magic....I don't actually care about plot that much. BUT Cats does have a plot!!!!!!! Mr. Mistoffelees saves Old Deuteronomy and Grizabella gets reborn in the Heaviside Layer!!!! My childhood dream was to be cast in Cats as any one of them. Race doesn't matter because everyone's in makeup and wigs anyway 🥺 I'll be on Broadway in another life I guess...
2. West Side Story
The dancing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And the music, of course, is just...the best. I had the opportunities to play the soundtrack on the clarinet in my high school orchestra AND dance a ballet piece in my last high school production, so the music is injected in my veins, I swear. Also, who doesn't love watching "gangs" of men dance with so much grace. I just adore this musical 💕💕 Every moment is so vivid and heartfelt. My third NaruHina fanfic was based on this musical.
3. Grease
John Travolta. omg. He's such a ham. As a kid, I did not at all register how absolutely uncool the T-Birds are...like the Pink Ladies are way too good for them. What I love about Grease is that there is so much more to appreciate about it when you're older and can understand what all the characters are talking about lolll. But also the songs are so much fun, the coming-of-age angst is real, and somehow, after alllll of the hijinks, the characters actually mature??!! This musical has arguably some of the best character development ever. Also the 50s poodle skirts context is just so cute.
4. Les Choristes
Coming in, completely unexpected with NO dancing whatsoever, is Les Choristes. I first watched this with my French Class, no subtitles, we had to try to comprehend it by ourselves. My teacher stopped the film and replayed scenes twice while we filled out worksheets about what was going on. I don't know what it was about this scene... "Action; réaction" where Rachin grabs his own talking hand, we just thought it was hilarious. We'd burst out laughing each time. Besides that, this film is beautiful. It's like a French Kinpachi-sensei with singing. We thought that Pépinot was just the most adorable little boy ever. The song "Cerf-volant, volant au vent, ne t'arrête pas..." that whole song was my internal soundtrack for those blessed weeks. And then when the movie was over, like absolute fangirls, we squealed over grown Jean-Baptiste Maunier, the actor for bad boy singing prodigy Pierre Morhange. Gosh. Good times. ONE DAY, FRANCE, ONE DAY.
5. The Sound of Music
Classic. As a small kid, I used to sing the songs in the shower! The songs are extremely kid-friendly despite the heavy stuff going on in the movie. In high school, the first dance I ever choreographed for a show was for the Ballet 1 girls to "My Favorite Things," and it turned out really, really cute. My older sister likes to tweak the lyrics for "The Lonely Goatherd" to be about me and my husband, and she actually sang it at our wedding😂. Basically, this musical is precious, and Julie Andrews is such a show-stealing star!!!
After that, honorable mentions in no particular order are My Fair Lady (plot & romance are good, Audrey Hepburn is 💗), Moulin Rouge! (soundtrack is amazing...Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor omgg, omggggg 😩), On the Town (this soundtrack IS my heartbeat, also GENE KELLY and FRANK SINATRA), The Phantom of the Opera (nothing beats watching this live), Fiddler on the Roof (has grown on me tremendously over the years), Rent (also has grown on me over time), A Chorus Line (I, uh, live vicariously through the auditionees' stress), Singin' In the Rain (classic, also, GENE KELLY), and Flower Drum Song (ok, it's like the first majority-Asian Am cast ever so I excuse the dated racism, the songs are fun).
My tastes in musicals run old thanks to my mother. I was watching at a young age films that made no coherent sense to me, but I didn't care. I just loved the music and dancing. I've ended up dancing to the majority of the soundtracks on this post for various performances, and noowwww, I feel like watching Cats. And Les Choristes. And On the Town. but it's really late.
WaterRolls told us her love story... Shamylicious told us her love story... Will you official share yours with us? 🥺
mmmmmmmmmmk.
It’s crazy long, and I’m not going to tell every interesting point, but at least some of what happened through college.
The backstory of my fic “relax and live” provides a tiny bit of context to this.
*
Our second-to-last year of high school, sometime near the end, one of my good friends told us that some of the ****** High School guys were coming over to townside after school.
I could meet the guy she was crushing on. “What’s he like?” I asked.
Most memorable about what she said was, “His hair goes fwooshhhh when he runs.” (She had seen him playing soccer.) And “he always carries candy with him.” She showed me with her hands what his hair is like, and I didn’t understand her at all. Mostly, I still had no idea what he was like personality-wise based on her description.
We waited at the autoline after school. Most everyone had gone home by then.
When he came around the corner of a building...
I wonder if it was love at first sight? Or something similar. At the very least, superficial attraction. I thought he looked like Daesung from BIGBANG, my favorite singer at the time (voice like an angel, omg). And this boy’s voice was similar, low and soft.
We all walked to a Japanese specialty supermarket some blocks away, to like, buy seasonal Pocky and stuff. I wanted to know what she was talking about, but when we asked him to run, his hair didn’t do anything unique. Apparently, he had cut his hair since then. Also, he carried a small Keroppi drawstring pouch full of Japanese candy. He said he takes it everywhere with him.
I didn’t learn much about him. Didn’t understand why my friend liked him other than that it’s pretty cute that he carried around candy in a Keroppi bag.
Cut to Summer Break, we were all invited to my friend’s beach house birthday party. He was invited with the other ****** High School guys that I had known for about a year. The whole night, he was suuuper quiet. Super quiet. Seemed to zone out a lot and was generally kind of boring. My friend and him hardly talked, actually he hardly talked to anyone, he came off as a little emo. And that was that.
Until our last Spring of high school, almost a year later.
The ****** High School boys needed dates to prom, so same as the year before, we ****** School girls paired up with them based on height. I was paired with Mr. Quiet. My good friend who used to crush on him ended up not going because a different boy in this same group had recently confessed to her, and she turned him down, and he would’ve felt too awkward with her being there... (If I mapped every single Love Triangle that happened among these two groups of 5 girls and 4 boys in our last 2 years of high school, this story would be crazy long but probably very entertaining😅).
Mr. Quiet and I somehow hit it off that night. He recounted to me later that he had never danced so much in his life, and was generally wow-ed by the experience. Later on, our two groups met up for our last high school fair, movies, zoo, other fun things. I learned more about him, that we both shared a love of sweets, languages, and held positive respect and friendship with our siblings (a Big Up). We chatted a lot on Facebook messenger.
A week before I had to leave for college on the Mainland, he asked me to go to the beach with him. He asked me to be his girlfriend :)
On the same day he asked me out, about an hour or so later, I found out he was atheist based on what a favorite teacher of his told the class about her negative experience at church. I was like... “okay...”
A couple of dates later in that last week to the movies, and I left for college.
During college, I met a girl from Kenya who prioritized her relationship with God, and when we talk about ✨MIRACLES✨, her and her family’s lives were full of them (I’ve never met a girl like her before, and I don’t think I ever will, in terms of someone being a totally beloved child of God). The relationships she pursued in college inspired me to talk to my boyfriend about spirituality, whereas before I was going to ignore his atheism.
In various Skype calls, it was implied that if he didn’t believe in a higher power, we’d eventually, probably have to break up... but even after so many talks/discussions/arguments about it, he didn’t want to break up with me for some reason???? (how many atheist guys would stick around for a girl like me...when I think back on this, I’m still shocked he didn’t break up with me.)
He agreed to go to my friends’ Bible Study with me that summer when I came home. I also took him to a church in his community, one of those young people churches, and he actually had school friends there, too. In the end, it came down to what he thinks Love is, and where he thinks Love comes from. And that summer,,, he decided to become Christian. Later, he told me that he had intended on proving me wrong by looking for falsehoods and stuff, but Idk what happened there.
So that was amazing. I could only hope, pray that he would consider believing in God. He tells me he came to the decision on his own, and not simply to save our relationship. His personality changed for the better, some of his weaker points, like patience and empathy (like while driving...), improved a lot...he noticed it in himself, too. He continued to attend church even after I went back for school. He told me on reflection that the timing of his new beliefs helped him through forgiveness and grief... At that time, he began the process of healing his broken relationship with his alcoholic father, who passed a few years later due to his ailing health.
Hm, I was finally in love. I was always quite cautious about being open with my feelings, but especially with the distance, I didn’t know if what we had would last. I used to be quick to have crushes, but on the flip-side, I don’t like feeling vulnerable, so I was saying, “I love you,” in response to his words earlier than I truly meant it. With the drastic changes he made in action, I realized I had found someone extremely special. I didn’t meet anyone in college who could possibly be better (in kindness and looks, seriously).
A bunch of other things happened, good and bad, and here I am over 10 years later, hopelessly in love!!!!!!!!! I could go on and on about how wonderful my husband is.
