Archive for August 19th, 2009

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

I finally had the chance to sit down and watch the episodes that have been released so far.  Holy crap.  There are so many things that went through my mind as I watched this.

  • So many of the comments on frostii’s site are filled with the argument of how Mirai is annoying or not, or how she’s unrealistic or not…  Forget all that stuff.  All of those arguments seem totally uncalled for with this show.
  • I’m as old as Mari.  Will I be able to act like her, and go such a distance to do nice things for total strangers?  Or will I be one of the people is totally selfish, like those who are screaming “Don’t just stand there” or those who cut in the line, etc?
  • Disasters suck.  The stories I’ve read as a kid from Great Kanto Earthquake is pretty devastating.  The stories I watched during the Kobe Quake after-mess was pretty bad too.  The scenes and stories from Hurricane Katrina is yet more vivid for being so recent, and equally frightening.  Which brings back the images of human created catastrophe, like the scenes from WWII.  We’re still creating wars.  It’s sickening to think that.
  • They’re lucky that the quake hit in the mid-afternoon.  The aforementioned Kanto quake happened minutes before noon, while many people were preparing lunch.  The damage from fire was just as bad as the damage from the shake it self.  In this show, I’m not seeing the fire damage at that magnitude.  But on the other hand, I really do wonder how safe all the sky scrapers really are.  They made Tokyo Tower collapse.  That was scary enough, and that’s standing only at 333m.  Now they’re building Tokyo Sky Tree to support increased demand for the broadcast power.  What if that collapses?  (Apparently, it hasn’t collapsed, and that’s why they can still watch the 1seg TV I mention next.)
  • Just like many other series these days, cell phones are highlighted prominently in the show.  This time, the 1seg TV system is used quite frequently.  That is one service that I haven’t even seen a hint of it in US yet.  The mobile phone technology gap might be widening from this point on.  I wonder if iPhones would add this capability soon, just so it can compete on this front too?

With all that thought going through my head… I can’t wait for the next episode.  But before that, I have 7th episode Spice and Wolf to translate.

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